Smelt in Puerto

Jan 30th -31st 2011
Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca, Mexico

The inside walls and general state of the humble rented `temperary-casita` belies a very pricy location: quiet, below the noise and perpetual downshifting of mufflerless trucks on the highway and above Zicatella Road and beach . ´Temperary´ in that my four-month-previously-reserved casita of three years is occupied by ´la pinche lluevona, pechona, gringona, morena, amazonia amable pero retresada con la renta.´( Translated: The large charming buxom amazonian mulata woman, who is behind in her rent.) The ´permenant casita´, if and when I do get it, will get a thorough cleaning by me.

The perfectly framed coconut palm and giant- timber-bamboo-view of the oceon requires that sunsets are savored, preferably from the hammock on the front porch. The entire wall surface inside and out have been textured in a slap-mold technique of stucco finishing, taking on an irregular quilted look. This might sound appealing except for the minor detail that the `hotel`, like the bricked walks between its units, has been sliding and slipping into bankruptcy, and over the hills for years. Maintenance even in times flush with tourism is either deferred, avoided or is as rudimentary and superficial as possible. AND if not at least culturally frowned upon, certainly not a mentality `developed`, shall we say, in the `Costeno` staff. Maintenance suggests a future, or a preoccupation with it, and therefore adversely affects living in the moment, a very Mexican sensibliity when at all possible. Which isn`t to say that Mexico does not have its fair share of `hand-wringers`- poverty and hunger are real issues. Drunken husbands who consume the last hundred pesos for a mescal binge do exist . I know from first hand experience. He was the caretaker for a while at my brothers old place here in Puerto.

The walls, in particular the tall interior walls, when they infrequently are wiped or cleaned, are cleaned only as far as a very short indigenous woman can reach, perhaps a third of a way up the wall. Extension poles, rods or ladders are too`high tech`, an unnecessary expense and must be hauled up and down the slope to the various `casitas` in the tropical sun or in the torrential rain. Consequently what could be sensual `quilting` , becomes in fact molded and airbrushed dust-dunes, with years accumulation from this sandy, perpetually under construction, coastline. Upon these dunes, looking not unlike river rocks covered in a fine white-ish sand, are little strands of dust. When one lies on the bed under the spinning fan reading, these strands move, twitter, and flick their tails like tiny and not so tiny coastal smelt or baby poly-wogs. And although the blades of the fan obviously turn in the same constant direction, oddly, the `dust-smelt`move in their own peculiar fashion and direction. There are the `squigglers`, the `spinners`, the tail `whippers`, the determined `migrators`, and the mini-schools of smelts paddling and undulating in unison.

Me? Yo? The large, motionless, flat, sand shark resting on the bottom in the torrid heat.
But for eleven to twelve dollars a day, who can complain?
`Si, como no!`
Abrazos
Esteban