The War Zone By Michael

On Monday, January 17, a 25-year-old Mexican man on a motorcycle rode down a trafficked Mazatlan street. He was apparently directly involved or related to parties of the Mexican drug war. Accordingly, another party to the same war, and different side, lay in wait and sprayed the rider with bullets from an AK-47. At least one of the bullets hit the young rider and killed him. Another of the bullets destroyed the knee of an innocent bystander, 69-year-old Canadian tourist Mike DiLorenzo, walking on the sidewalk with his wife.


Cartel territory
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-10681249

I've known about the Mexican drug war since President Calderon declared it. I've known about the high number of murders--many gruesome attacks in public places--attributed to this war. Yet I've not felt that Mexico has turned into a war zone. I did not hesitate to travel to Puerto Vallarta with Eleanor in May 2010 to check out Del Viento (in fact, the biggest danger we faced on that trip was from los mapaches, but we survived that incident). Windy and her mom enjoyed a pleasant week in Mexico in December.

I know that my perceptions are not aligned with most Americans. Friends of ours who love and know Mexico have stopped travelling there. People have questioned the wisdom of our plans to drive through Mexico on our way to Del Viento this summer. Granted there are whole cities in Mexico that I would not visit at this time, because of the violence associated with the drug war. But there are also parts of the world where I would not sail, because of incidences of piracy. Mexico is a big place.

Why the disparity of perceptions?

I think my lack of fear in visiting Mexico stems from my information sources.

• It's been almost 20 years since my home life included cable or broadcast television. But because I have access to the Internet (New York Times, Google News, etc.) throughout each day, I know what is going on. I am as current as any CNN junkie. But my choice of news media sources limits my exposure to video of beheaded bodies and Policia SUVs ablaze (they are not played over and over in the course of a single news report, and then played again days later to illustrate a general reference to the Mexican drug war). The accounts of Mexican drug-related violence I read tend to be longer and include more information and a tempered perspective, they are not abbreviated to accommodate the commercial timelines of television. Finally, the accounts I read are in my own voice, not the voice of a professional delivering practiced alarm.
  


• I read the blogs of many cruisers living in Mexico (many of those with kids). They offer glimpses of their daily lives in Mexico, wandering the streets of Mazatlan and other coastal cities. They travel inland on buses and in rental cars. They are Americans and Canadians reporting from a nation that bears zero resemblance to the apocalyptic war zone depicted on the nightly news in cities across the U.S..

12 hours ago, I read a blog post by cruisers on Just a Minute, a family of three and a golden lab, who have been in Mazatlan, all over town, for the past 8 weeks and loving it. Loving the city, loving the people, loving the experience. Loving it before Mike DiLorenzo was caught in the crossfire, loving it since. The crew aboard Whatcha Gonna Do are right now travelling inland, in and around Oaxaca. The pictures and stories they posted are inspiring. Along these lines, Latitude 38 publisher Richard Spindler offers his informed perspective here (several references, starting in the middle of the page) and here (search "drug" on this page).

• I have close friends who are retired and who own a home and live full-time in La Paz. They are not worriers, but they are also prudent and informed. With regard to their personal safety, both report feeling safer in their adopted city than the Southern California beachfront community from which they moved.

I have no interest in trying to downplay the problems Mexico has been confronting over the past few years. It is bad (where it is happening) and could certainly escalate and spread. But I do resent the way those significant problems (as they are today) are presented to folks north of the border. I think that the televised news media in particular, dependent as it is on shocking video and hyperbole, is not accurately reflecting the scope, the focused impact, of the violence in Mexico. I think this broad-brush reporting is captivating viewers and selling commercials, while selling short the truth.

I resent this because I think the false perceptions this is creating among many folks north of the border, is having a devastating effect on the Mexican tourism industry. And that hurts ordinary Mexicans. I think that in most areas of Mexico (and particularly along the Pacific coast), Mexicans are more affected by decreased tourism than by the drug war. I think this real decrease in tourism is a byproduct of the American and Canadian media.

I spent much of yesterday reading online press concerning the situation. What struck me most was the disparity between a 4-day-old Associated Press (AP) report relating cruise ship lines' perspectives on Mazatlan, and the blog posts I read daily from cruisers in the same city.

AP reported that the Disney Wonder cruise ship cancelled its planned 27 Mazatlan port calls for 2011, dropping Mazatlan from its "Mexican Riviera Tour" and substituting an extra stop in Cabo San Lucas. Holland America Line cancelled a planned January 26 Mazatlan port call, substituting Manzanillo. As Carnival decides whether to scrap a planned February 2 Mazatlan call, its representative gives the clearest (though not real clear) reason for the change: "There have been some recent security incidents that that have made cruise lines concerned about the safety of their guests."

Are these Mazatlan port call cancellations in the wake of the DiLorenzo shooting, a direct result of the DiLorenzo shooting?

AP reports that Carnival is moving its 2,500-passenger Spirit to Australia in 2012, citing, "...increasing fears over traveling to Mexico."
The same AP article adds:

The industry magazine Seatrade Insider quoted Mazatlan Port Director Alfonso Gil Diaz as saying the incidents causing concern were minor, such as one passenger whose necklace was snatched. "Mazatlan is very, very safe," the magazine quoted Gil Diaz as saying. "It's a shame because last year we had 526,000 passengers with no incidents ... This year there were three very minor things outside the terminal."

Oh, and what does DiLorenzo think of all this?

His local British Columbia news station reports that, "He says if he recovers fully, he has every intention on returning to his favourite vacation destination and possibly even buying a home there." In a more recent story, the station reports, "Mike still believes the shooting was a rare and random event and hopes it doesn't deter other people from traveling there."

But Mike, that ain't gonna sell commercials.

--MR

First Contact By Windy



Del Viento's home for now

Last week I saw our boat for the first time. (In fact, it was the first time any of us have been aboard since we took ownership last June.) I arrived at the small, private marina in Puerto Vallarta where we are renting a slip until we move aboard. After the bump and surge and dust of the local bus, the marina was positively serene. It is a postcard of cozy multicolored villas, skirted by palms and giant bird of paradise plants, and with a small, still harbor home to fishing boats, sailboats, and a couple large power boats. I walked down a brick and stone path and stood for a long moment regarding our boat with excitement and a pinch of fear.

Until that moment, I don't think I'd acknowledged, even to myself, my quiet fear. What if upon boarding I realize we'd made a big mistake? What if I find the cabin dark and claustrophobic? Most of all, what if I can't imagine our family living happily there?

The long, narrow, plastic ports squinted at me. The teal canvas looked cheerful and sharp. And then I was aboard and turning the key and shoving the companionway hatch open, feeling so completely focused and thrilled to be there.



Excited to be there!

Heat billowed out of the hatch, carrying the smells of diesel, mildew, and head.  I scanned the interior. Nothing obvious was wrong, but everywhere my eyes rested there were surfaces to oil, or polish, or clean. My strongest initial impression was that this boat really needed someone to inhabit it--which is what I was there to do, if only for a week. (Note: our boat sitters are excellent and conscientious. My impressions did not stem from any negligence on their part; on the contrary, they have gone above and beyond more than once.)

My mom arrived that evening and we spent a productive six days scrubbing, inventorying, measuring, and making a few simple repairs. Each evening we rested over a delicious meal and a margarita at a local restaurant, and each morning we started up again. By the end of the week, we'd covered every inch of the boat.

Aside from adding a thousand and one items to our to-do list, I learned that the Fuji 40 has an incredible amount of storage for the size of the boat, miles of headroom, and woodwork of rare beauty and precision--after 30 years each drawer glides smoothly into place and doors close with a satisfying click. The topsides are functional and free of ornamentation, with wide side-decks and and an expansive foredeck. In short, it is a lovely boat with a superb layout, and I can't imagine a better choice, either aesthetically (for me), or functionally (for my family).

Remaining are the needling fears I have been aware of since we began our 5-year plan. I fear for the safety of my children aboard--though rationally I know they will be safe. I fear for our finances--well that one isn't irrational at least. I fear leaving everything and everyone behind, not returning. Yet, I'm comforted that these fears amount to little compared to my overwhelming feelings of excitement for the adventure before us.

--WR

Mapaches

So we were in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico last week, checking out the boat we plan to buy.

Earlier in the second day, in what can be characterized either as expedient parenting, sincere and measured benevolence, or self-serving indulgence, I promised Eleanor ice cream...”later, if you work with me Boo.” I needed to focus on my survey of the boat, with little distraction. I empathized with Eleanor’s boredom and her overall impatience. It was hot and we were sweaty.

Now, as Eleanor reminded me, was later.

I nodded and addressed the hotel clerk. “Hay una tienda cerca aqui que se vende helado?”

The response was considered and...negative, no helado.

An aging gringo in the lobby, who I’d assumed was just another guest, reassured me there was ice cream near. He and the clerk obviously knew one another and they had a discussion about the place. He told Eleanor and me to follow him. On the way he explained that he used to live here with his daughter. He said that when he was my age, this ice cream place was a favorite haunt. He said that seeing Eleanor and me together made him wistful.

We got our helado.

The next day, as we were getting out of the luxurious pool beside the marina, Aging Gringo reappeared.

“Hey, listen to me. Tonight, after dark, walk out to the highway. Across it, behind the taqueria is a place called Mapaches. Take your daughter there. They have raccoons you can feed, they give you a little piece of dough. She will love it.”

It was our last night and I had promised Eleanor dinner at a “fancy restaurant,” an Italian place we’d seen the night before, suspended above the water with lots of sparkling lights. We were both eager for the experience, but I had been worrying about my lack of a clean shirt (reminder to self: pack more than one-shirt-per-day when traveling in the tropics) and spending money to eat at a place where Eleanor would only order plain noodles with some melted butter-—no, margarine, we are in Mexico. This Mapaches place seemed like an out.

“Hey Boo. Would you rather go to the fancy restaurant tonight, or go to a place where we can feed raccoons?”

“Raccoons!”

This time of year, it doesn’t get really dark in Puerto Vallarta before about 10:00 pm. We were too hungry and tired to wait and found ourselves dodging traffic across the busy highway on the later side of dusk.

Mapaches is not a restaurant in the sense of a closed building, but rather a road-side stand with tile flooring and a roof, but no walls. The kitchen was diner-like, surrounded by a bar and stools. Outdoor plastic tables and chairs filled the rest of the space. Off to the side was a juke box and one of those metal contraptions shaped like a car or animal or spaceship that kids sit on and that jiggle for about 60 seconds for each quarter deposited...or in this case, two pesos.

As I’m taking the place in, I’ll be damned if there is not a raccoon, sitting there next to Eleanor, much like a cat. She hadn’t noticed.

“Eleanor, look.”

She’s learned to “be like Jane Goodall” in wild animal encounters and she sat down breathlessly near the creature, willing it to approach her, hoping against hope. Surprisingly, it did, and much to her delight. She turned her smiling face to me, seeing if I noticed this amazing event. In doing so, she missed the three or four others who quickly approached her from behind.

Her smile turned to giggles.



Before I could really process the information, there were about a dozen raccoons checking out Eleanor, and a waitress walked up to Eleanor and handed her a piece of dough...raccoons appeared from everywhere, running. More raccoons than I could quickly count, in a feeding frenzy all over Eleanor, who was now freaking out, jumping up. And they kept coming, it was suddenly like a sea of rats, like you’d see in a movie. Eleanor extracted herself from the mass, shock on her face, definitely shaken up, before I could even react. We were both stunned, right in the middle of the restaurant, a mass of fighting raccoons where there had been just one, sitting like a cat.

“Wow, geez. Let’s sit down at a table.” I Iooked around for some appropriate reaction to the pandemonium we’d just been a part of. Nothing. Business as usual. Two guys walked in and sat at the bar; they gave passing glances at the raccoons (now largely dispersed), but were not offered any dough to feed them.

“It hurts.”

“What hurts…oh, he scratched you?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you sure it wasn’t his teeth? Are you sure he scratched you?”

“Yeah.”

The waitress approached to take our order. The menu on the wall was pretty meat focused. We settled on two plain cheese quesadillas, an order of guacamole, an horchata, and a Negra Modelo. She left and we again shook our heads at what had happened, it was really overwhelming. Juxtaposing the neutral responses of the people around us and the fact that we were nonplused, made it all the more surreal. Eleanor was not attacked, but she was buried in a pile of frenzied raccoons.

[Why the hell, at this time, did we think we were about to enjoy an uneventful meal of quesadillas and guac? –Ed.]

So the drinks and food arrived lickety-split. I was gratified to see the woman making our tortillas just as I do at home, with plastic wrap in her press. (Of course, her tortillas emerged from the pan more pliable than mine; need to keep playing with that recipe.)

After our drinks, our waitress set down our plate of guacamole and a single quesadilla before each of us. Then she walked away. We both noticed the head pop up from the seat next to Eleanor. We looked at him, kind of cute sitting there with us at the table.

In a flash, he was on the table and off the table, and Eleanor’s quesadilla was gone. She laughed, thought it was hilarious...and then...there are at least 35 raccoons around our table, most fighting each other loudly for a piece of Eleanor’s dinner, many others trying to climb on our laps. There was a row of paws along the table edge, noses and faces pulled up, eyes looking.

The waitress came by and swatted at a couple stepping onto the table from the empty chairs.

“They took Eleanor’s dinner.” She nodded and said she would bring another. She headed back to the kitchen. Three raccoons were on the table at once. Following the waitress's lead, I pushed them off.

“Boo, we just have to be bold, just push them away when they come near you.” Soon, I realized that’s all we were doing, trying to protect all fronts at once. Eleanor stopped laughing. They were multiplying. I noticed my quesadilla was gone, and I hadn’t eaten it. Little black hands grabbed a chip stuck in top of the guacamole. I used the back of my hand to push back a raccoon trying doggedly to get onto my lap….”ah, geez!”

“Did he scratch you?” Eleanor asked.

“No, he bit me.”

I looked at my hand as the waitress approached, just a little scratch from his teeth, not a puncture wound or anything, but it was bleeding. The waitress shooed the raccoons matter of factly as she set Eleanor’s replacement plate down. It felt wrong to me to allow this woman to put food in front of my daughter, like she’d taken a cub from a mama bear and set it in front of Eleanor.

“They got my dinner too, necesito un otro.” She explained that she was willing to replace the first plate, but that if I wanted more, I would have to pay for it. It seemed like an absurd position, but I couldn’t focus on conversing in Spanish to respond—-she’d just set the equivalent of a baby bear cub in front of my daughter and I was worried for her safety. I nodded, bring me another.

Eleanor was fighting the valiant fight, losing bits of her quesadilla to little black hands as she held the thing tightly, too distracted to eat. A raccoon grabbed the flower from behind Eleanor's ear and made off with it. The situation was out of control. We’d both been wounded and I wondered if I was a negligent father remaining here, could this get worse? Should we get rabies shots?

“Boo, eat as fast as you can, really, just shove it in. We’ll get ice cream if you hurry.”

“I can’t!”

I fought the raccoons for my guacamole and then got smart. I kicked the two plastic chairs several feet from our table and smiled at Eleanor, happy with myself, wondering aloud why our waitress hadn’t done this. This reduced the threat to the tall ones peering over the edge of the table (our drinks and plates had earlier found their way into a little cluster at the center of the table) and the tenacious ones grasping our legs in a bid to get on our laps. A couple raccoons bridged the chair-table gap with their bodies, but I pushed the chairs back even further.

The waitress brought my quesadilla and left. Eleanor and I were a bit smug, feeling in control. We could relax a bit and laugh at the experience. We just had to learn to manage the situation. I used my quesadilla to wipe at the guacamole still on the plate and...BAM! A large raccoon made a flying leap from one of the chairs I'd pushed back, landing on our table, sliding smack-dab into our cluster of dishes and right up to me. He recovered quickly, grabbed a hold of the quesadilla in my hand and wrenched it from me, before jumping back to the tile floor and fighting the others for his prize. In an instant, two other raccoons found their way onto our table, we were no longer in control. I told Eleanor to stand up, we were abandoning ship. I handed her the horchata and grabbed my beer. We stepped away from the table and watched it be taken over, picked clean, and then quickly abandoned. Each of us stood in the middle of the restaurant, clutching our drinks with three raccoons each standing at our feet, pawing at our legs.

I signaled for the check.

“Let’s get back across the highway, Boo. We’ll get some ice cream.”

-- MR


Post Script: We were early, too early. What I left out of this story is that about the time we got our check, they began feeding all of the racoons in the back. Eleanor went to ride that two-peso contraption and more diners filed in, largely unmolested. Raccoons milled about with full bellies and people tossed food to them and took pictures. I could understand the business model and see our mistake. Even more cars pulled up as we left, we the too-early gringos.

The Return of Miguel and Eleanor

It sounds like they had a blast. Dolphins at the bow and all. I don't have all the details because they got in late, and now Miguel's at work. He says the boat is "bigger and nicer" than he imagined. I'll prod him to write something about their Mexican adventure here.

We're still waiting on the surveys. Ideally, all surveys would have been done while Mike was in Mexico, but our surveyor is stuck on what sounds like a nightmare of a boat delivery. Cruising writer Beth Leonard says, "You can pick the time or you can pick the place, but you can't pick the time and the place." This is our first nibble at that reality.

It's hard to believe that we are so close to buying a boat. I feel like putting a "For Sale" sign in front today. We really do need the year to wrap things up neatly though. We have long list of small home projects to complete before we sell. The animals need new homes. I'm taking a Wilderness First Responder course through the Wilderness Medicine Institute (NOLS). The list goes on. In fact the whole list business gets a little bit insane. I'll save my cynical thoughts on lists for another post.

I've scoured a few more images off the web, mostly from the Fuji site. Above is a stock photo of a Fuji 40. Only a handful of these boats were built so there's not a lot of info out there on them.

--WR


The deck plan (click to enlarge) might come in handy later.


This is the actual boat we're trying to buy.