Hay Que Festejar

Me and Elizabeth are about to walk out the door to go to a birthday party for Argelia, one of her "amigos" at school. We had no idea what we were in for.

Argelia has just reached the age of three, which turns out to be a very important passage here in Mexico.

I was grateful we had a nice present and wrapped it prettily, because this wasn't just another cake-and-candles affair. There were at least 300 family and friends there, about evenly divided between kids and adults.

We gathered at the Casa de Arbol, a party place with a covered patio and a playground surrounding a banyan tree with a trunk the size of a large elephant and a canopy that rose fifty feet or more overhead. Halfway up there was a wooden deck with a playhouse, linked by a swaying rope and plank bridge to another playhouse from which little party animals could slide through a plastic tube to the ground.

Not far off was a trampoline enclosed with a net. There was an art table with crayons, play doh and paints for anybody who cared to take a seat. There were adult and kid food lines, seating with tablecloths and napkins, sideboards piled with candy, custard and cakes.

When it was time for the piniata, there were four of them, one after the other, so there were plenty of swings for the whole crowd, and certainly plenty of treats and toys to scoop from the ground.

There was even a face painter to put seahorses, shells and hearts on anybody who could sit still enough for it, which Elizabeth could. A hired photographer documented all.

I commented to somebody standing next to me that it was more like a wedding than a birthday party, mentally calculating that if this was what a birthday calls for around here, we'd have to rethink our family economy.

But Pam told me later she'd heard that the tradition of big third birthday celebrations dates from the 19th Century in Mexico, when three was the age at which a child was deemed to have survived what was then a very high infant mortality rate. Apparently expressing communal joy over anyone younger was thought to be tempting fate.

Mexico's infant mortality rate today is well below the world average, and in any event Argelia herself certainly has little to fear from it. Her parents and grandparents are doctors, and the extended family surrounding her last Saturday looked glossy and prosperous.

Elizabeth bustled from venue to venue for four hours, pausing only to stuff herself with grease and sugar. None of the attractions looked UL approved, so I stayed as close to her as I could while exercising my meager Spanish on anyone who looked polite enough to tolerate it.

When we collapsed exhausted into the car at last, Elizabeth sighed contentedly as she waited for me to unwrap one of her lollipops for the road. "Was that party for me?" she asked.

I just told her I was glad she'd had fun. What hostess wouldn't be thrilled to know she sent her guests home feeling that way?

It's So Obvious

There are some things we can all agree on.

Well, no, actually there aren't. But I keep forgetting and finding myself faced with awkward silences or worse when I try to make party talk out of one of those things we supposedly can all agree on.

The first time I remember it happening was back in the '80s when I found myself standing at a hotel bar in Des Moines next to a pretty girl and decided to chat her up while we waited for our event to start.

CNN was gassing away on a TV above the bartender's head, and an item popped up on convulsions in South Africa as apartheid neared its final days.

"Who in their right mind," I wondered aloud, "would imagine that it's okay to run a country by suppressing the rights and opportunities of 90 percent of its inhabitants?"

D'oh.  "Anybody who can get away with it" is the right answer to that naive question. There are lots of such people, and they've been getting away with it on every continent but Antarctica throughout recorded history.

One of them was my bar companion, whose accent I had failed to register as South African. Who'd have expected to run across her in Iowa? I thought she would throw her martini in my face. She didn't, but she gave me a piece of her mind and a passionate lecture on the shortcomings of her indigenous countrymen.

No matter how utterly wrongheaded or even downright evil you are sure something may be, there are people who are just as sure the world would be a better place with bigger helpings of it. Don't assume one of them isn't seated beside you at dinner or sharing your church pew.

I was reminded of this lesson last year when I saw an article in the New York TImes about people in Chelsea and the West Village who wished the High Line Park had never been built.

The High Line Park is a mile or so of scenic landscaping installed over the tracks of an abandoned elevated freight line, providing hitherto unseen and unexpectedly stirring mid-rise views of the surrounding converted warehouses and factories, stylish new condo and hotel buildings, and the Hudson River.

It struck me the moment I saw it as visionary, an indisputable benefit to mankind. A rusting hulk of unused infrastructure, haven of derelicts and vermin, had been transformed into a beautiful space, open to all, without displacing anything or anyone. Surely we could all agree that this was an unalloyed good.

But no, the park's very perfection and popularity doomed it in the eyes of many locals, who complained to the Times that rents were rising and the new crowds of well-heeled visitors were spoiling the post-industrial funkiness they treasured in their neighborhood.

Which brings me to the images above, before and after views of the Los Muertos pier here in Puerto Vallarta. It's where fishing, water taxi, and snorkeling excursions begin from the busiest beach on the bay. The new pier was just opened this month to great fanfare. Even without the opening night lighting, it's very good looking and far more useful than its predecessor.

Around the central sculpture there's lots of seating with excellent views of the bay, the town and the surrounding mountains. And the business end of the pier descends toward the water in three levels so boats can be easily boarded, high tide or low.

The old one really did look that bad, a crumbling lump of cheap concrete and rotting iron work. Still, there are people who miss it.

I forgot myself a couple of weeks ago and innocently remarked to an acquaintance at a social gathering how puzzling it was that anyone should prefer the old wreckage to its replacement. She happened to be one of the contrarians, and once again I had to listen to the indefensible being defended.

"I've done it again," I said to myself.

And once wasn't enough. Not a half hour later I was talking with a man who's been slowly building his own house next to the barbecue restaurant he runs in the rain forest just outside town. I casually told him how strange it is how Mexican builders seem to leave rusting rods of rebar sticking out of the roof of almost everything they put up.

I expected to share a wry chuckle and a shrug with him at the fecklessness of local builders. Instead he replied, "I've sure got them on my house. If I have a good year I may go up another floor."

Some people never learn. Maybe that's something we can all agree on.

Wardrobe Malfunction

Anticipation is half the fun, and sometimes more than half.

When I was still working and looking forward to the day when we'd be living full time in the tropics, I sometimes expressed my longing by ordering clothes I imagined I would need.

As a result I now have a closet full of fancy shirts and white linen pants I almost never wear, some in their original cellophane wrapping. Most of this stuff came from websites I now realize are aimed at people who have been invited to destination weddings in Aruba or Costa Rica.

I also have a couple of straw fedoras which it turns out I can't use much. They are quite snazzy, but they mark me as a tourist and potential sucker for the cheeky floggers of tequila and time-share condos who line the streets near the beach. Leaving the hats on the shelf spares me the need to choose between wasting my time or being rude to people who after all are just trying to make a living.

I did place one order that has paid off big time though. I bought four pairs of swim trunks, in blue, green, red and black. You can swim in them of course. But they're long enough to look like ordinary shorts if you tuck in the drawstrings, and they've got pockets on the sides for change and keys, plus one in the back for a wallet.

They dry in minutes, and unlike their owner they never wrinkle, shrink or fade. I'm sure they must be manufactured out of some heinous petroleum derivative, because you don't get benefits like these unless there's been a pact with the devil.

I have found that my life now takes me to few places or occasions where these shorts don't work just fine. With a T-shirt, I'm good to go for the beach, pool, or happy hour at the neighbors'. With a wash-and-wear shirt that has a collar, I can get into any restaurant in town. For a charity gala or fancy cocktails, I can rip the cellophane off one of my cubavera.com specials, still no need to change pants.

When I packed to come here, I knew I would almost never need socks. But it has come as a pleasant surprise that I also almost never need underwear.

Well, now I really have over-shared. But what else is a blog for?

The Cheap Seats

It costs about U.S. $75 to get into a high speed inflatable and go speeding across the bay for close-up views of the humpback whales that swim down from Alaska to spend their winters along the Pacific Coast around Puerto Vallarta.

I only paid about twice that for these oversized binoculars and tripod, but now I can stalk marine mammals and a good deal else for free from the comfort and safety of my living room.

I'll admit it's not really a substitute for getting up close and personal, where you can see the scars and barnacles on their shiny hides and hear the deep throaty gasps that accompany their expulsions of spray and mist.

In fact, if it weren't for the tourist barges I'd see far fewer of the creatures long distance, because nine times out of 10 the way I spot them is by noticing a cluster of boats heaved to in the bay. Focusing in on them, I see spouts, dorsal fins, and now and then the lifting of wide flukes that means the whale is diving to cruise the depths for as long as 15 or 20 minutes.

When there's not much haze, the binocs give me such glimpses almost to the horizon. But the ideal distance is close enough to see the action with the naked eye, in which case the glasses make a real show out of it.

That was the case a couple of days ago when I looked up from my book to see a couple of boats flanking some disturbed water in which a gout of spray suddenly appeared that was larger than either of them. A dark shape rose up, and then there was another huge splash.

I lunged for the lenses and got them aimed and focused just in time to see the entire length of that frisky adult whale, certainly a testosterone-driven male, thrust free of the water, then fall back in a cloud of spray that soaked everybody on the nearest boat and probably scared them to death.

It was the best look at a living whale I ever had from any vantage point, ashore or afloat, and for my money those binoculars paid for themselves in that one exciting moment.

Sharps and Flatulence

I'm already on the record as a heartfelt admirer of Las Peregrinaciones, Puerto Vallarta's 12 days of homage to the Virgin Mary as she appeared in a 16th Century vision to an Aztec convert to Christianity near what is now Mexico City. In this manifestation she's known here as Our Lady of Guadalupe, or La Guadalupana.

But notwithstanding my deep pleasure in watching them, I have to say I'm puzzled and bemused by the musical accompaniment. My Spanish will have to get much better before I've got the chops to interrogate someone who might be able to explain it to me.

"Peregrinaciones" translates roughly as pilgrimages. During the first 12 days of every December, Vallartans assemble in groups, usually consisting of colleagues from their workplaces, to march at all hours along Juarez Street two blocks below our place to the Church of Our Lady of Guadalupe, which greets them with extravagant pealing from its many bells. They are ringing as I write this.

Each group has its own personality, but a typical one includes the following elements:

1. At the front, a banner identifying the pilgrims by the government agency, grocery store, hotel or restaurant where they work, thanking the Virgin for the blessings of the preceding year and asking that she look with favor on their lives and their work in 2013.

2. Pilgrims carrying boxes or baskets of flowers, food or other goods to be left in Mary's honor at the church.

3. A drum and bugle corps.

4. One or more groups of dancers, sometimes wearing traditional Mexican folk costumes but more often dressed as Aztecs, most of whom cheerfully perform and march on the rounded cobblestones in their bare feet.

5. An oom-pah band, which is the main part I don't get.

6. The main body of pilgrims singing "La Guadalupana," a ballad that recounts the legend of the vision and celebrates its place at the heart of Mexican culture. Their massed voices are lovely and even after nearly two repetitive weeks the carol has not lost its appeal.

It's a very rich mixture and emotionally powerful, even for lookers-on like us who only dimly grasp what the processions mean to the actual participants. Even Elizabeth is riveted and has asked several times to be taken down the hill for a closer look.

What's so odd about it all is the horns. The buglers sound like halftime at a high school football game. Oom-pah music is absurd even when it's played well. When the band members are the rankest sort of amateurs who probably haven't played together since last December, the result is a musical pratfall. I can't make sense of it as theme music for such a sacramental occasion.

Yet the processions go by, one after another, and virtually all of them have somehow come to the conclusion that off-key Souza and rusty tubas are just the right touch. The Virgin keeps coming back year after year, so she must like it too.

Mexico, Land of Contracts

I'm not an economist, but I think it would be hard to beat this as a model of how spasmodic interplays of human idiosyncrasy can spawn a market on which an alert entrepreneur can then feed for as long as it lasts.

That's our Christmas tree above, and it's alive, although I doubt it's very happy in our 85 degree days. But we're watering it daily and sweeping up the needles it's dropping in protest.

In fact, it's not really "our" tree at all. We're only renting it from an outfit that delivered it to us with its ball of dirt and plastic pot and will come pick it up later when we're done with it.

I don't know where they'll take it. But their pitch is that killing fir trees by the million every December is evil, so they swear they will put it back in the ground somewhere to go on with its life.

Will it be somewhere the tree can really put all this behind itself and keep growing? Well, I think such places may exist within a day's drive from here, maybe two days. But gasoline is expensive and the roads into the mountains aren't that great, so the promise is a serious one. I hope they really intend to keep it.

You can buy dead Christmas trees here for less than the rent we're paying. That would be just as effective in nourishing our nostalgia, salving our homesickness and helping us construct the tissue of white lies otherwise known as the "magic of Christmas" for little Elizabeth.

But it would crush our aspiration to be eco-friendly and life affirming, which seems to intensify with age.

So here in aging expat-rich Mexico, one of Mitt Romney's "job creator" types has sniffed us out. Merry Christmas, everybody.

Discontent of our Winter

This is part of the wall on which we had to fill in a large picture window, formerly a source of sunlight and wildly romantic vistas and now blocked by a new building as I'm sure I've mentioned.

We hired a contractor recommended by knowledgeable friends of friends to come in and do the job. I suppose there was no way we were going to be pleased with the results, but not being pleased is not being pleased whether you expected to be or not.

The guys took out our lovely wood-framed window, built an aluminum frame inside the opening and covered it with a sheet of waterproof wall board. Aside from a plaster ramp on the exterior window sill to deflect any drips that get between the two buildings during the rainy season, the board itself is directly exposed to the narrow space outside.

Since there was no room for access to that outside wall, our workers next applied a heavy layer of cement to the inside, laced with some kind of sealant that supposedly will keep moisture from seeping through the wall and spoiling our paint job. On top of that they put a layer of ordinary plaster and a coat of white paint. We followed that with two coats of the pale blue we wanted.

But when we stood back from the finished job, we saw to our dismay that the outline of the old window was faintly but clearly visible, mocking our grief over the loss of the view. If you stare long enough at the picture above, you might detect the lower lefthand corner of it.

When we complained, we were told there was nothing to be done. The wall board is absolutely flat, they said, whereas the rest of the wall is like all masonry surfaces in Mexico, which is to say uneven at best and crudely pocked and off-plumb at worst. No reasonable amount of human effort, they claimed, could duplicate what casual haste created with conspicuous lack of effort.

As I wrote a while back, I'm actually a fan of the overall look that mediocre workmanship and materials  produce around here. So in addition to my unhappiness over the phantom window frame, I'm also caught up in some cognitive dissonance over why it's there.

If you're thinking that I've reached a place in life where I have to reach for a pretty high shelf to locate something to be unhappy about, no need to say so.