Puerto Vallarta, Mexico

Each morning I sit out on our balcony overlooking Banduras Bay with my breakfast. Depending on my time of arising, the sky and the ocean are shrouded in their own particular shades of light and dark: black water and sky with a few bright stars, shading to deep blue, then to blue-gray, the sparse overhead clouds in colours of magenta and mauve, reflecting the sun as it rises behind us from the east. Opposite on the bay other communities come to life as their night lighting dims and dies. Some mornings I watch one or more massive cruise ships slowly fording the deep waters across from us, pausing close to the city for a pilot to board and guide their impossible bulks into the confined spaces of the marina dock. I feel and I know that I am privileged to be here witnessing the coming of the day in this place of beauty.

This winter my husband Peter and I are spending four and a half months in Mexico, two months at my condo in Puerto Vallarta, a month in Cholula, just south of Mexico City, two weeks in Mexico City itself, then another month back in Puerto Vallarta. Our moving about in this fashion is dictated by promises to others to use our condo and by our interest in seeing other cities in the country.

We have been in Puerto Vallarta now for almost four weeks. Last year at this time the city was undergoing the consequences of Covid-19. Tourism, the main staple of the city’s economy had been badly hit. Businesses were closed, many of them permanently. It was quiet here. Generally everyone wore a mask when venturing outside. One could not enter a store without one and without sanitizing one’s hands. Those conditions still hold today, though with vaccinations, mask wearing outside is more rare. At this moment the Omicron varient has not come to Mexico, but it will.

There are issues involved in spending time in this beautiful country. A generation or more ago people worried about unsafe drinking water that could lead to “Montezuma's revenge.” That scourge has been put to rest by water treatment facilities, but another, more lethal problem now concerns potential visitors: threats of violence perpetrated mainly by competing drug cartels that crisscross the country’s various states. We have had no experience of this problem here. There is a stable presence of police and the army protecting the city, one of Mexico’s important centres of tourism economy. Much of the violence perpetrated by the cartels is against one another’s members, as they vie for positions of power within the country.

Our days are simple as we live here very like we do in Toronto: walking, shopping, reading and writing, taking care of projects that we have taken on. One of our usual routes of perambulation is along the River Cuale, one of several streams that ferry rain flow from the surrounding mountains down into the Pacific. It empties its cargo just a block from our place. Our route upriver leads to a favourite market from which we regularly collect fruit and vegetables.

A few months ago a storm carrying heavy rain and intense winds hit this area, creating havoc on the river and for the city. The area where we live is called the Zona Romantica. The Cuale is the dividing point from this, the old part of the city, and its newer side to the north. There is a highway above the city which allows entrance and exit to our area courtesy of a system of tunnels through the mountains. Other than this oft used passage, there was but one other way to come to or to leave the Zona. Two bridges cross the river, one on its eastern flank, the other to the west. Cars and trucks would enter our area on the western bridge and leave on the one to the east.

These are serious bridges, engineered and built to withstand constant traffic of cars, trucks, and buses. Nonetheless, the storm destroyed the bridge to the east. Since, the western bridge has been pressed into double service, streaming the flow in both directions. In the meantime the remnants of the western bridge have been removed and a new one is in the process of construction.

We were aware of the fallout from the storm before our first walk upriver a few weeks ago, but were unprepared for the changes we found. The river itself had changed: broader and more swift in some areas, with places of rapids formed over stones brought down from the hills. The concrete pavement along the south side was broken here and there undercut by erosion of the soil beneath, fallen down to the river bed. On the north side lay several sections of large concrete structures, later identified as the former swimming pool and deck of a high rise condo building just upriver. The building itself was undercut by the river’s rise and rapid flow. All of its residents were forced to evacuate until the its underpinnings can be righted, a process barely begun as building the new bridge is taking precedence.

                            On-going work to rebuild the western bridge

Mexico is a prodigiously wealthy country in its history, its culture, its diverse topography, and its people. It is, however, hobbled by the impact of the succession of wars with internal and external forces, by endemic corruption, and in the last half century, by the American “War on Drugs” that transformed it into a major conduit for illegal drugs flowing north.

My intention with this blog is to write about Mexico as I learn about its history and as I experience it while visiting and living here. 

Hasta lavista (something like: see you next time, or, see you when I see you.) Brenda

Written on December 10, 2021