Almost paradise

Almost paradise, how could we ask for more?

Almost paradise

After sleeping soundly I woke to the sound of waves breaking on to the beach in the bay down below. It was a great way to start the day. I got myself ready and Sim took me to Margarita’s, a place down on the beach for breakfast. The breakfast was huge and a bargain at 60 pesos. The view over the beach and the Pacific made it even more of a deal. We were the only people in the place too. After breakfast we drove over to met Jamie, Sim’s ex (but still his best friend) and Sim’s cousin Miriam. I made plans to go to the beach with Miriam as Jamie was working and Sim wasn’t a beach person.

View at breakfast

Miriam and I made our way to the beach. It was the one I had seen from my bedroom balcony that morning. The beach was practically deserted which meant that we could relax without having to listen to screaming children or other beachgoers music blaring out. We settled ourselves down on to our beach towels. I covered myself in suntan cream. Despite it being the end of rainy season there were only a few clouds in the sky and it was a warm day. I asked Miriam how she was finding Mexico. She had moved down from Canada not long after Sim had moved over from the UK. She had quit her job in Toronto and taken the plunge to move somewhere warmer. As we chatted I realised that we had both gone through similar experiences. Both quitting good jobs to do something a little different, both leaving a place we had lived in for a long time and both leaving lots of friends behind. It was nice to be able to talk about how that felt with someone else who had been through it.

We went for a swim in the sea to cool down and the conversation turned to the topic of men. I said that Mexico was probably not going to be a great place for me as I prefer my guys on the tall side. Miriam said that when she first moved down she wasn’t that taken by the local Mexican men but that her tastes had evolved. Miriam is pretty and blonde so I am sure she has no shortage of admirers. After our swim we went back to our towels to lie in the sun and dry off. Miriam told me that the beach we were on was used in the film Ten with Dudley Moore and Bo Derek. It was used for the scene where she is running along the waters edge, braided hair and Dudley is running towards her. I suggested to Miriam that she should get her hair braided and we could recreate the scene. She didn’t seem to be up for it.

After a couple of hours of talking and tanning we were both ready to head back. We walked along the beach and then up the steep winding road back to Sim’s place. It was quite a hike and it made me realise that after 4 months of travelling, not running regularly and going out eating and drinking so much I was a little out of shape. By the time we got back to the house I was sweating like a whore in church so I had an ice-cold beer in an attempt to cool myself down. It did the trick and I followed it with a shower and a siesta before dinner.

After a good snooze I got up and got ready and was downstairs waiting five minutes before the time we had said we would go out for dinner. It was only my second day in Mexico so I had yet to learn about getting on to Mexican time. We headed out of the door around 45 minutes later. Sim, Miriam and I went into town for some dinner. We ate at El Vaquero. Despite the fact that we were sat outside on a balcony overlooking the street it was still really warm. I used it as an excuse to get through a couple of beers with dinner. The food was great, and it was nice to have something spicy. After dinner we headed to a nearby bar for a nightcap. As I scanned the menu I saw they had Amaretto, which is a favourite after dinner tipple of mine. The serving of Amaretto was huge – it came in a massive polystyrene cup filled with ice. There was enough Amaretto for Sim and I to share and have two rather large measures each. I slept well that night.

How could we ask for more?

The next morning we were up early. We had arranged the night before to meet up with Miriam and take a bus to a place a little way along the coast called Barra de Navidad. The journey took us about an hour. We took a first class bus which meant it didn’t stop en route to Barra and it had seats and windows. Miriam, Sim and I got off the bus in Barra and headed into the main street. It was a very small seaside town and the shops and restaurants were clustered on two small streets along the beach. Miriam had been to Barra before and told us of a good place to go get breakfast.

The remains of the restaurant

We headed towards where Miriam thought it was. We stopped outside a place, Miriam saying that she thought this was it but that it looked a lot different to when she was there. We sat at a table. We were the only people there. As we sat down Miriam said she now knew why the place looked different. The terrace we were sitting on was right next to the sea. Miriam said that she remembered sitting on the terrace when she visited before but the restaurant also had an inside area in the building next to it. The building was no longer there. Instead a pile of rubble marked where the restaurant had once stood. The kitchen was now located under a makeshift roof at the side of the terrace. A woman brought us a couple of menus and asked if we wanted a drink. We ordered coffee and juice. Sim asked (in Spanish) what had happened to the restaurant. The reply back was “It fell down”. No further explanation or details, simply “it fell down”. She seemed very laid back about the whole thing. It must be good to be that relaxed about your restaurant falling in to the sea.

After breakfast we walked along the sea front. We were asked by a guy if we wanted to hire a boat for the day, which we didn’t. We were then offered a ride over to a small island which he pointed out to us. It was in a sheltered spot where the river emptied into the sea. The island looked empty but there was a bar and restaurant over there. The price for the trip was pretty cheap so we took him up on his offer and made the short crossing once he had managed to get his boat to start. We made our way to where the bar was and settled in at a table. We ordered a round of drinks. The spot was paradise. It was as though we were on our own private island. There was nobody else over there other than the two woman staffing the bar and restaurant.

We made a half-hearted attempt to play volleyball as there was a net a little way out in the warm water, paddled, drank and chatted. I even managed a snooze on a sun lounger that I dragged down to the waters edge so that the waves could lap gently against my toes as I relaxed. I could quite easily have stayed there for days. At one point we were besieged by four children in a big canoe who picked a spot a few feet away from where I was laying out to land the canoe and run around screaming on the beach for a little while. I wasn’t impressed but a couple of glares at them and they soon got back in their canoe and paddled off.

When it was time for us to head back Sim asked the woman in the bar to call our boat man to let him know he should come and pick us back up. He soon arrived and we thanked him. Sim chatted to him about his boat and how much something similar might cost to buy. The man said he would get some prices for him and give him a call in a week. The bus back was time for me to get in another nap. I was definitely adjusting to the speed of life on the Mexican coast. The people all seemed very laid back and there was no sense of urgency in anything that they did. Sim and I grabbed some dinner on the way back to his and then it was a dip in the pool, a gin and tonic and an early night for me.

“Almost paradise, how could we ask for more?” 
Lyrics from Almost Paradise from the musical Footloose