Alejandro, Huichol artisan, lives in the Sierra Madres but comes to Yelapa regularly to sell his creations to tourists.
The hem of her long, brightly patterned skirt dragged a bit at the back when she walked, as though she might have shrunk. She carried a big, low-slung woven bag that bounced off her left knee with each stride. Her feet were big, callused and bare, but her arms displayed intricately beaded bracelets.
Local Huichol Indians sell beaded bracelets and artifacts, popular among the expats and tourists.
Partially hiding her face was a huge blue cotton hat tied on with a purple scarf, and she walked confidently but with her head down as if in deep thought. When she looked up at me I was surprised to see a face that looked to be about 110 years old.
Travellers coming in to Yelapa Pier by panga
Yelapa people can be loosely grouped into three types: Locals, brown skinned with dark hair and bare feet, and most often busy with some task (cleaning the hull of a panga, cleaning fish, washing clothes, playing beach soccer); tourists, pasty-faced, soft-fleshed, carrying cameras, and wearing “resort clothing,” including attractive shoes, ill-suited for the village’s rocky streets; and, thirdly, the “ex-pats,” (ex-patriots) mostly Canadian and American but with a few Europeans here & there, coming in all descriptions of dress and grooming. The latter group are mostly close to-, or post- retirement age folk, including the lady with the blue hat. The tropical sun takes a toll making it easy to tell who’s lived in this latitude the longest.
The pale way
The tourists are day trippers, shipped in on a big double-deck tour boat, several times a week from Puerto Vallarta — 45 minutes away by water. They come to see the “authentic old Mexican village” for a few hours: some just lay around the beach enjoying margaritas or Pacifico beer from one of the little cantinas on the sand; others buy a guided mule ride up the river to the falls; some simply wander the little streets looking at the town and trying to avoid running children and wheelbarrows, as well as the mule muffins. The latter are easy to spot because they’re inevitably lost in the town’s dusty maze, pointing quizically” this way?” and checking their watches.
Unnamed ex-pat heading toward the pier
“Magdalena,” the lady with the blue hat, originally from the U.S., now makes her home in this tiny town among the ex-pats here. Her given name was something else at one time; however, like a few others, she chose a Mexican name to use for her seasonal residency in Yelapa. And Magdalena is a good example of our temporary, fluid community here. She lives “up river” (the Tuito River which flows from the Sierra Madres down into Yelapa Bay), while Mardy and I live out near “the Point” (the tip of the southern part of the crescent that is Yelapa Bay.) Still others live in rooms rented by the month in the village. But we all come together for fun & music often: at Rosario’s Restaurant (on the beach), El Cerrito’s (high on the path overlooking the bay), El Oasis (on the river) and other places, which open & close somewhat unpredictably. So many musicians make their winter home here that it takes little for an impromptu group to bring out their instruments — guitar, drums, keyboard, mandolin, guitarone, harmonica — and fling themselves into a jam… and to jam as long as there are people to listen.
Jungle arts
Magdalena is one of many painters here, and she’s rarely without her acrylics and paper. Maybe it’s the ever-present sun that oils and fires up the muses in this place. Yelapa fosters a free-wheeling sense of discovery and creation, an awareness of being beyond the pale, outside the lines. Here people smile a lot, wear strange clothes and say outrageous, delightful things, sometimes. And art shows seem to materialize almost weekly — usually at Lagunita, the “hotel” (a collection of palm huts by the beach).
Some of the day's writers gather for almuerzo (lunch)
Every Monday at 10:30 the writers meet in the small, lush garden in back of El Eclipsé Café in the center of the village. The mix varies depending on who’s in town, and we spend a couple of hours together writing in response to the challenge of the day (i.e. “Begin with ‘If only…’,” “Write about love without using the word) for 45 minutes. And we hope nobody across the street turns up the mariachi music too loud to talk. Then we take turns reading what we’ve written. What a rich trip that is! It’s like peering, momentarily, into someone else’s relaxed and eloquent psyche.
This year, the ever-surprising Paloma (her adopted name, from New Mexico), who facilitates many of our writing sessions, also brought her collection of beads and offered free sessions of beading — again in the garden behind the Eclipsé. A satisfying number of local women and children, as well as ex-pats, came for it, each of us assembling a necklace (collar, “coyar”) or a bracelet (pulsera). We managed to bead together, communicating only in Spanglish and sign language. Somehow it worked. We had a ball.
