THE VIRGIN OF GUADALUPE IN PUERTO VALLARTA
La Cruz de Huanacaxtle, Nayarit, Mexico; Tuesday, 13 December 2005

Each year on December 12 all Mexico celebrates the anniversary of the manifestation of the Virgin Mary to a poor peasant named Juan in 1521. In the region of Puerto Vallarta the fiesta covers the ten days leading up to the actual anniversary. Day and night there are processions that always end at the church, cathedral or, in Puerto Vallarta, at the church-shrine for the Mexican Virgin.

We are anchored in the open roadstead at La Cruz de Huanacaxtle across Banderas Bay from Puerto Vallarta and a 45-minute bus ride away. I was on deck in the early hours of the morning before dawn and could see and hear individual fireworks across the water. In fact, we were to learn that the eve of 12 December is the real high point of the season. Nothing loathe, we catch the local bus into town on the late morning.

http://www.maps-of-mexico.com/mexico_country.shtml

First however we have to figure out how to get the dinghy safely ashore. The sea is calm but the tides are now at their high point for the season and slow greasy swells come into Bandera Bay from the Pacific ten miles away. They look harmless and they generally are. But they even seem to get in behind the rock breakwall. There are no dinghy docks or any floating docks at all at present, though a marina is in the early stages of construction. Fishing pangas line the beach and are, as usual, either pulled well up on the beach or tethered a bit off the sandy beach.

We head for an empty stretch of beach behind the breakwall; no doubt it is empty because the fishermen know that it is tricky. As we approach it we get into about six inches of water and the oars start hitting bottom. I thrash away. The same wave breaking over the sandy underwater portion that will whisk you to shore will also try to turn your boat and roll you and, if that fails, drag you immediately back out far enough you to sink up to your waist when you attempt to step out of the dinghy. We make it in one go, getting feet wet and splashing our go-to-town duds. Kathy is wearing long trousers and rolling them up only partially saves them from a dousing. We drag the dinghy up the sloping beach to above the high-water mark and make it fast on something.

I am walking barefoot since my cheap sandals that I have been wearing non-stop since Long Beach have finally given up the ghost. I am taking tennis shoes and socks to wear to town but my feet are still too wet and sandy to pull them on. We run into our “neighbours”, Bill and his wife (unfortunately I’ve already forgotten her name) from S/V Mita Huutuu (Finnish name) who are just dragging their inflatable up along the beach. They have been cruising the Mexican/Latin American coast for six years now and are able to give us some advice and direct us to the bus stop. By the time the bus arrives, I am dressed and ready to boogie.

The bus takes us in past Nuevo Vallarta, past miles and miles of resort hotels until we reach the older part of Puerto Vallarta. The city streets have been blocked off so the busses let us off sooner than expected. We find an internet café and complete our business and then head into town.

At the church to the Virgin of Guadalupe, there are crowds of people and the church is full of people and flowers, with streams of Mexican people coming up the central aisle, often with flowers in their hands, to pay their homage at the altar while the pews, arranged in squares around the church, are filled with people just looking. Many are Mexicans but a lot are clearly tourists like us. As we walk up the uphill short block from the main square to the steps up into the church, I see several people go down on their knees and begin to approach that last block, the steps and the aisle to the altar on their knees, their lips moving in what I assume is prayer. Later, one is being assisted by two women, one on each side, helping him to move forward for he seems exhausted. Two other men are doing this and later while I am sitting in the church observing I see two young and one older woman also working their way up the aisle on their knees. On their knees at the back of the church I see two slightly-built young men, clearly of strong Indios extraction, reverently on their knees and praying.

http://www.wadstein.com/gallery/album39/puerta vallarta 2

I wander off into the traffic-free side streets. Puerto Vallarta was once just a tiny fishing village. Tourists started coming in the mid-1950’s and, after John Houston filmed Night of the Iguana here with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor while the two were having a torrid love affair, being followed in detail by the boulevard press worldwide, the place began to boom. Local tours take you to the house the Elizabeth Taylor built and to other trophy houses of the idle rich. Otherwise, PV is just an overgrown beach resort. Although beaches themselves belong to nobody, the beaches anywhere near town are monopolised by towering hotels and condominiums and the building boom is still in progress. The town is clearly a lot more “with it” than, say, sleepy San Blas or even Mazatlán. But those two places at least have a little more than just tourism. That’s all there is in the economy of Puerto Vallarta. Well, maybe the Virgin of Guadalupe contributes something.

The side streets are full of the typical and enticing open-air cooking stalls along with tables selling homemade cookies or flan (basically egg custard; a national dish in Mexico). I try out some tacos and buy a bag of homemade sugar cookies. Kathleen goes off to find a washroom and in the process meets an interesting Mexican lady.

There is a little typed programme pasted on a window at the city hall on the plaza. Apparently there were processions all night right through till late morning of today. The afternoon is quiet but at 1700 there is a Santa Missa being celebrated at the shrine followed by more processions.

We stake out a corner where we can get a good view. The street is lined with people who have laid out little rugs to sit on the curbs. The bells of the church begin to ring and a group of about forty young people led by a few guitar players come around the corner and up into the church singing the while. From their T-shirts I glean that they are the parish’s Youth for Christ or similar group.

We wait outside for the mass to finish. At 1800 the first group comes along. It consists of about twenty young girls with huge Mayan-looking headdresses and short whispy skirts. They are barefoot and stop occasionally to do a dance routine to a drumbeat. Unfortunately, down the street behind them come the staff of the Capitania de Puerto (Port Captain) are the Professores, i.e. the teachers who have a pickup truck with loudspeakers jacked up so loud that you can barely hear the dancers, drums.

The people in the processions are all singing the same rather boring five-note campfire-sounding song in adoration of the “Mexican Virgin”. The song itself is so depressingly dull and has so few words that I am amazed to see the teachers all with song-sheets in their hands. Apparently badly prepared for their appearance but still the loudest on the block! Back down the street we see farther dance groups. The procession is quite slow because the dancers stop to do routines before turning the corner and moving on up into the church. It is hard to imagine that the whole procession will make it into the church either during the time we have left before we have to catch the last bus back to La Cruz or even that the church is big enough to hold them all at once. I assume that they make it to the altar and are then funnelled back out the side doors again.

About 1930 we start walking back against the flow of the parade, seeing and hearing other processors and musical groups including a drum and bugle corp and other Mayan dancing groups. At one point we come across all the fire trucks and ambulances processing while their emergency lights are flashing and all their sirens, bells and Martin Horns are blaring. I guess the staff and representatives of every walk of life are expected to put up a contingent in honour of the Virgin of Guadalupe.

In Mexico, the streets seem to come alive at night. Where there was a parking lot, suddenly there are twenty open-air kitchens serving everything from carne asada (roast meat) and mariscos (seafood) to corn on the cob to fruit drinks and even hamburguesas y hot dogs. Many first-time visitors to the country shy away from these stands. But we have nearly always had good experience eating there. Americans want food that is totally sterile so they can feel safe, food untouched by human hands. We have found that the more hands that have touched the food the better it seems to taste. Of course, we are careful about eating raw foods and always wash fruit and vegetables and we usually drink bottled drinks. But otherwise we just get in the swing of things. So far, so good.

The bus sweeps us back out past the hotel district to the bus transfer point in front of the huge Wal Mart and Sam’s Club plaza. In between busses I have a chance to dash in and buy a pair of cheap synthetic sandals suitable for wear on the beach or the boat. While they have dozens and dozens of flip-flops, they have only one style of actual sandals; they are black, the pair I buy has a tag on them that says they are Size 6, the shoes themselves say they are Size 7 and I normally wear a Size 9½. Go figure.

We arrive back in La Cruz and launch our dinghy into the surf in the moonlight. The deck of the boat is dripping with dew as it is every night. I wonder how I am likely to be able to get things dry enough for painting in the weeks ahead as we go below with our groceries and packages. Interesting day.