Rags to Riches

                                    Rags to Riches

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            Remember, a few weeks ago I stayed in the sleaziest hotel in Chacala? Lovely town. Ugly hotel experience.

            This week, thanks to the generosity of Kathy and Richard, I am in the most Posh hotel in Cancun, which says a lot! Cancun is “Tourist Mecca”, jaw-dropping beauty.

            My friends also invited Leo. Leo entered our lives as our gardener. Now he’s our friend. It is our bonus that he also gardens.

            Kathy said that this is the Ultimate Blowout Vacation, making use of time-share points they had to use or lose. I said, Wow, and Thanks.

            To get to Cancun from Guadalajara, we chose “Wingflap Air,” cheap with no frills. The plane was powered by dogs running a treadmill in the belly of the plane. The treadmill connected by rubber band to the prop in the nose. The dogs set off a yowl when the pilot released the rabbits. Rabbits ran. Dogs chased. Plane lifted into the air.

            When we got within sight of Cancun, the pilot pushed a button to drop the exhausted rabbits to the ground, may they rest in peace. The dogs settled down to a feast of doggy biscuits. We coasted to a landing.

            Once we picked up baggage, we made a huge mistake. We separated. Kathy and Richard took a shuttle to the hotel to check in. Leo and I shuttled to rent a car.

            The mistake? We did not think to have a copy of the hotel registration. Security is tight at this resort. We tried to phone Kathy. Her phone shuttled us to voice-mail.

            Ever-resourceful Leo got in touch with his inner lawyer and negotiated our way through three security check points before we could drive up to the lobby. Leo is a pro—he hardly broke a sweat. Me, I freaked, considered spending the week in another low-rent hotel. Silly me.

            Ah, the lobby! The grounds! The buildings! The greenery! The pools! The coconut palms! The fountains! The statuary! The turquoise sea! Words fail me.

            The rooms! Yes, the rooms. We made our way to Building 14, Unit 345. At the elegant carved wooden double doors, none of our keycards opened sesame. Kathy released her phone from airplane mode to call the lobby. A man arrived to fix our door lock. He called another man. Five men and forty minutes later, we entered our palatial suite.

            My room alone is an entire suite with every possible amenity. We each have a suite within the larger suite, if you can imagine. In the center we have a huge kitchen (which we will never use), a dining room and living room, all enormous. Each room faces the sea with a lovely balcony. Each room has a bathroom. A Jacuzzi tub sits in a nook on the balcony off the living room. Are you getting the picture?

In addition to the furnished kitchen, we each have our own coffee pot, microwave and stocked fridge. Each bath is stocked with toiletries to serve every need. Except soap. Somebody forgot to leave us soap. Toothbrushes, tooth paste, razors, loofahs, shoe rags, hair products galore, but no soap.

            But we were hungry, have not eaten all day. Dark descended. We left to find one of the several restaurants. I’ll tell you, when it comes to negotiations, Kathy and Leo make an unbeatable team. Kathy talked our way into seats in a reservations-only restaurant.

            We feasted. Such cuisine. Every bite delicious. Impeccable service. Our every desire satisfied before our brains had a notion there might be a lurking desire. Every bite elicited embarrassing mmmmm noises.

            When we returned to our rooms, we had soap. Which was nice. Because that might have registered as the most satisfying shower I’ve ever had.

            But this is not reality. This is not Mexico. This is a Disneyland sort of place.

            In the beginning, we felt a bit out of our element, not quite comfortable. Now we recognize this experience as a retreat, a week for each of us to feel petted and pampered.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

April 11, 2019

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Tempus Fugit

            Tempus Fugit

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            Time flies and the older I get, the faster it fugits. As I contemplate yet another birthday, that mean ol’ tempus is fugiting at the speed of light.

            To add injury to insult, this weekend we will set the clocks ahead in Mexico. I know, you up north are already over the shock of change.  In a few days I will struggle to remember what time it really is, whatever that means, since “time” is but an arbitrary measure.

            Before I wax too philosophical, let me change directions and note that my snowbird friends are flying north at jet speed.

            Crin left for Victoria last Sunday. Julie flew back to Minneapolis yesterday. Jim leaves for Missouri next Sunday. John and Carol are heading out in another two weeks. Pat and Nancie have been gone for three weeks. Kathy and Richard leave again the end of April.

            Like kiwi birds or emus, Lani and I will be left, summer-time flightless birds. Oops, Lani plans to sprout wings in May and fly north for an extended period of time. Woe is me, alone and abandoned.

            Try as I might, I am unable to squeeze out even a crocodile tear since Saturday four of us are sneaking off to Cancun for a week of fun in the eastern sun. At last, I will get to see the Caribbean, unexplored territory. Happy Birthday to me.

            When my friends go north, they leave a hole in my soul and a hole in my daily life. We don’t do all things as a group but our paths criss-cross with frequency. Just this week I had lunch with two different friends. Plus, one afternoon six of us women drove up the mountain to Restaurante Don Luis for a three hour meal that was more laughter than food.

            Judging by stories I am told, the original folks who built these homes we now inhabit, had common ground. They were travelers with campers and RVs, were retired military, and liked to party hearty. Oh, we here are so different!

            The other night, sitting on my patio, Julie and I agreed, our present conglomeration of residents, whom I have come to love so quickly, have absolutely nothing in common. We come from quirkily diverse backgrounds. At times we act on one another like sandpaper. Whatever our roughness, we smooth it out. We share food, borrow ladders and trade plants.

            We are all mature enough to know to look inside our own guts first when we have a problem with another person.

Time. Time is a great helper, a revealer, more often than not, replacing petty snarls and sniffs with understanding and respect. Sandpaper or time, we interact with varying and shifting degrees of tolerance, acceptance and downright liking.

Perhaps it is no accident we were each drawn to be here at this time in life; perhaps there is a strange, unknowable, purpose in grinding our rough edges. Or not.

One by one, we arrived to fill the empty houses. I came to visit my cousin. Others came to visit me. Some were in the adjacent campground and ended up staying to restore a trashed house. None of our stories connect through common ground.

So sometimes we grind against one another. Some sand paper is fine; other paper is coarse. We seem to smooth out any bumps. I’ll miss my friends when they are all gone. But I am easy with my solitude.              

Before I’m alone again, I will move forward the hands on the face of my clock. I will fly with friends to Cancun in yet another time zone and be totally confused. What time is it? Time to celebrate my birthday with chocolate cake and vanilla ice cream. Skip the candles, please.

When I return home, I shall remember that time has a very special grit of sandpaper for we who live alone. Meanwhile, tempus fugit.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

April 4, 2019

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The Sleaziest Hotel in Chacala

            The Sleaziest Hotel in Chacala

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            We told her. We told her. Never again is she allowed to pick the hotel.

            “The owner is really nice,” she said.

            “Yes, the owner is a nice man; his wife is nice, his three-year-old daughter is cute.” The hotel is sleazy.

            Not sleazy in the way of an immoral business conducted in a hotel on the outer edge of town posting hourly rates, but sleazy in the way of shabby, dirty, sordid, inadequate and unpleasant.

            In her defense, she didn’t know and none of us checked it out before we booked.

            I suppose we’ve all had an experience like this, if we’ve traveled. I remember a motel off the highway on the way to Phillipsburg . . . but that is a different story.

            Lani, her husband, Ariel, Carol and myself drove to Chacala on the coast in Nayarit. If one has a large enough map and a magnifying glass, one might find Chacala north a bit from Puerto Vallarta. We went seeking a three-day holiday to scout out the town as a possible destination to flee next year’s colder weeks in January.

            We chose Chacala, a tiny fishing village, carved into the mountains on the edge of a small bay, for its isolation and quiet. The setting is beautiful. The townsfolks welcoming and friendly. 

            Our hotel perched two blocks above the main street along the beachfront. Straight up the hill on a street covered with ankle-turning rubble. The hotel office is a cell phone in the owner’s pocket.

Built onto a narrow lot, the two floors each contained three rooms.   My room required a precarious climb up a curving narrow staircase littered with construction debris.

             Sparse. Dirty white in color. A cell with two beds, a bathroom, and one dollar store plastic chair. No shelves, no dresser, no tables. One bedside wall lamp had no bulb. The other lamp had a bulb but didn’t work. The bathroom bulb had burned out and not been replaced. There was not a spot of color. White sheets covered the beds.

I made the best of it. I emptied my suitcase onto one bed, converting it to closet, drawers and shelves. For a mere three day trip, I had packed my two down pillows and my blue plush blanky.

We all made the best of it. After all, what’s to complain, we did have hot water for showers.  

Did I mention construction debris? Work men were building a third floor to the structure, adding three more rooms above. Seven in the morning until dark, hammering, hammering; dust and noise prevailed.

I speak but a minimum of our collective complaints. To say the hotel is “bare bones” might be complimentary. Why didn’t we move out? I don’t know. We grumbled. A lot. We had prepaid, in cash. Perhaps our room fees paid this week’s construction costs. Perhaps hope of a refund was long gone.   

Chacala, a lovely jewel on the sea. Chacala is not a tourist destination, not a high-rise resort town. We popped into several hotels, peered into empty rooms, inquired about rates.  We poked our noses into hotels with a dozen rooms. We checked out others with twenty or thirty rooms, all clean, all colorful, all reasonable in price, all along the beachfront, none perched precariously on the hillside.

We ate seafood at a different restaurant (or street stand) every meal. We found the best coffee in town. We spent hours on the beach, lingering over every meal. We talked. We read books. We lounged. Carol and Lani swam. Ariel and I shared a dozen oysters on the half shell, in ecstasy over every bite while Carol and Lani grimaced with disgust. We had good times.

Then we trudged back up the hill to our hotel.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

March 28, 2019

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