I'll have another

There’s so much that goes unsaid about our experience here, things that are hard to capture and relay succinctly and well. 

Living in the city is loud—car alarms, police sirens, shouting people, screeching brakes, slamming doors, reverberating bass, bursting bombs, not to speak of the clamor and din in our own heads. 

Here, it’s quiet. Except that by quiet I mean a different kind of loud. The first night we slept here, we listened to the night and wondered. And we’re still sorting out the distinct layers of sound throughout the day and night. There are two dogs and two cats that belong to the property, so there is the padding of their feet and the occasional scrape of their claws against the porch floor and screen doors as they try to barrel their way in at various points during the day and night, the unmistakable sound a dog makes when he raises from sleep and shakes himself awake, the rolling over and sighing of an animal in the sun, the yipping when one beast startles another—in this case, usually the cat startling the dog. There are crickets and mosquitos and bees and gnats and fleas and moths and butterflies and dragonflies and countless other bugs, each adding its own timbre. There are birds: some that coo, some that sing, some that whiz past: grackles, cormorants, pelicans, hummingbirds, sandpipers, orange crowned warblers, chickens, roosters. There is the sound, so much like a footstep, of lizards darting through underbrush. There is the clicking of the fronds on a palm tree as the breeze blows through, as well as the creaking of three-story bamboo trunks leaning back towards the earth. Above all this is the sound of the surf—a sound more obvious at night than during the day, but constant nonetheless.

Something that I know at home but forget is that television is foolish and that air conditioning isn’t really necessary if no one else has it either.

Two summers ago, in San Miguel, we went horseback riding for the first time since I was a child. Leading up to the experience, I was afraid—mostly of getting on the horse. Until I got on, I didn’t realize there would be so many other things to be afraid of on the actual ride. I stood on the flatbed of a truck to get on the horse and it wasn’t so bad. In some ways, the ride was a successful experience and in others: my horse ran me through a mesquite grove leaving my scalp and back bloodied and Chris’s horse disappeared with him on it for long enough that our guide, Ray, suspected trouble and left me alone at the edge of a Mexican river without leaving me any instructions about where I was or how to get my horse to move. Over three hours later, at the conclusion of our ride, we were shell shocked but had a good story.   

Last summer, when we were camping in the Smoky Mountains, we went horseback riding again, this time in the national park and there were rules, among them: no open toed shoes, long pants, all horses should follow a single file path. Chris remembers it was about $45 a person, and I remember that there was a platform from which each person got on their horse. I remember because I was still afraid of getting on the horse. 

Today, we went horseback riding on the beach. It was $6 a person, we both had on shorts, I was wearing flip flops and there was no truck to stand on, no platform. There was just the beach and the horse. Our guide, Jose, didn’t speak English, but he made it clear in Spanish that I was just supposed to get on the horse so I did. For someone of my general size and shape, this was a victory. And now I don’t think I’ll be afraid of getting on horses anymore, except maybe a little. We did this in the early evening when the sun was setting, heading toward Punta Zicatela, with no path but the edge of the ocean. It was nice for there to be no rules.

Tomorrow, we’ll spend the day here and then take a night bus to Oaxaca City. The ride is supposed to take 10 hours, and we hope to sleep so we’ll have the whole day to play on Wednesday, and then Thursday we return home.

Together, Chris and I have been to California, Nevada, Wisconsin, Indiana, Iowa, Ohio, Michigan, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York, Massachusetts, and Kentucky. In Mexico, we’ve been to Oaxaca, Yucatan, Jalisco and Guanajuato. In Europe, we’ve been to Italy and Spain. We’ve been to Puerto Rico and Guatemala. This is the first place we’ve been that Chris has said, “We should come back here,” and that makes coming home easier.