HOW WE CAME TO LIVE IN MEXICO
My first look at Mexico 1967
My father and I took the train from Superior, Wisconsin to Las Vegas to attend the American Pharmaceutical convention.
We saw all we wanted the first day and took a $13.00 flight to San Francisco, rented a car and headed south to San Diego, spent the night, and the next day entered the Mexican state of Baja California, sightseeing, shopping, and sampling food and drink. Dad and I had a glorious fun-filled two week trip and returned home by train.
1970
My next trip to Mexico was with my wife Jane. I won a two week all-inclusive trip to Europe, the Caribbean Sea islands or Mexico. Our choice was Mexico because we thought that was one place we would never return to. We didn’t speak a word of Spanish, but all went well and our fun-filled honeymoon adventure was wonderful.
Three years later
We were in St. Augustine, Florida, aboard our dream boat Dursmirg having completed our maiden voyage and our five year plan of building our boat and sailing south to where there was no snow.
I saw an opportunity to put my newly acquired navigation skills to work. It so happened that St. Augustine was the world’s trawler building capital, and across the river from our docked boat were hundreds of newly launched trawlers awaiting captains to take them to distant destinations worldwide.
I soon found myself headed to Yucatan in Mexico captaining a brand new 128 ton trawler, one of many I would deliver to Campeche, Progreso, and even to La Paz, Baja California, on the Pacific Ocean, a twenty eight day voyage. My deliveries to Campeche were five days at sea followed by numerous logistical bureaucratic paper signings and stamping that made it a two week turnaround trip. As one of my crew members said; “The Mexicans nail one of your feet to the deck, and for three days you run around in circles signing papers.”
When my deliveries were to Campeche or Progreso, I had to go to Mérida, Yucatan, to fly home. Often there was a several days before my flight. I along with my crew had time to explore the interesting streets, markets, and cantinas.
Ten years later
After selling our apartment business in St. Augustine, Florida, and then making an excursion in our shrimp boat Secotan to Tampa for the winter something happened that changed the course of our lives. The fishing was bad, and we discovered we could take a freighter from Pinellas Seafood dock, a division of Red Lobster, to the Bay Islands of Honduras for one hundred dollars each, round trip. We talked to the captain, and he agreed to take us with him on his next trip in two weeks. It seemed too good to be true and it was. When the freighter returned two weeks later, our bags were packed, and we were ready to go, but somethings happened to change our minds. The captain and crew and even the dockside personal were all changed. The new employees were surly with an unfriendly attitude, but what totally convinced us not to make the trip was what we witnessed when the freighter returned. It arrived after dark and hastily began unloading for over two hours before the customs inspectors arrived. They rapidly unloaded freight that was not refrigerated lobster. We weren’t going to be passengers on a clandestine smuggler’s vessel. The next morning we were on our bicycles headed for a travel agent. We were still going on a trip and would implement plan B, which was possibly flying to the Bay Islands of Honduras. The price of air fare was going to make that option out of the question. Surprise! There hanging on the wall at the travel agent was a large travel poster featuring Mérida, Yucatan, Mexico. This was a place I had visited on boat deliveries from St. Augustine and loved, perfect! We purchased two tickets to Mérida and were on our way. Ironically, Jane and I, thinking that a visit to Mexico was a once in a lifetime event, we chose Mexico as the place for our honeymoon, never expecting that we would return. Somehow Mexico had cast its magical magnetic spell over us.
Here I was headed back to Mexico once more, this time with my wife at my side. I was drawn like a magnet back to Yucatan.
Yucatan, Mexico
We planned to make our Yucatan excursion an economical no frills adventure; staying until we ran out of cash. On our previous trips to other parts of Mexico we had gone first class, or on an expense account. This trip would be a totally different experience giving us a somewhat magical prospective.
As our plane approached Mérida, Luis, a fellow passenger, told us that he was a friend of the pilot, Armando Troyo. He said that Captain Armando loved to joke with the passengers using a subtle play-on-words. Sure enough, Captain Armando announced on the PA system, “We hope that you enjoyed your flight with us today, and that we will see you again soon. Before landing put your seats in the upright position, stow your trays, fasten your seat belts, and, of course, be sure to take all of your personal defects with you.” This place was going to be fun!
This was Jane’s first visit to Mérida, and she became nearly overwhelmed by the hustle and bustle of street commotion.
The next day, after a fascinating morning sightseeing, Jane and I arrived at the Mexicana Airlines office ready for our surprise lunch to which Luis had invited us when we met him on the airplane. As we were soon to discover, Luis Rosado was not known for his punctuality or reliability regarding appointments. Leaving his office precisely at one o’clock for his lunch break was, however, one of the rare exceptions to this. Take charge Luis was like a secret agent. His main job at Mexicana was to pamper the first class clients. Luis told us to just follow him. Out the door and down the street we went, and less than a block away we entered a dilapidated old building that by all outward appearances looked completely abandoned. We stepped through tall neglected doors, which were well
-weathered by age and each hanging by a single hinge, and into a spooky courtyard that spoke of another time. Seedlings were sprouting from cracks and crevasses around the terraced second story balcony, and even from the rooftop above. In the bygone glory days of this once elegant edifice, formerly known as La Union Social Club, lavish parties and elegant banquets were held at this very spot. Surprise! In this weed tangled, dusty, and neglected courtyard sat some tables, and a waiter in a starched uniform was waiting these tables. This was our end destination. This was the La Union Cantina! Luis was a regular here. We proceeded to a table where several of his friends were seated. The attentive waiter, known to all as “Pedro, El Bueno” immediately brought Luis a Superior beer, his customary brand. The introductions were made, and lo and behold, there was someone we already knew; the famous Mexicana airplane pilot, Armando Troyo. After we were seated, Jane and I couldn’t help but noticing the young fellow that we had just seen pull up outside with his rickety little donkey cart and unload a block of ice from under a shaggy burlap cover and then proceed to drag it away tethered by a rope. To our surprise this young chap followed us into the cantina still dragging his by now rather discolored block of ice across the nasty patio floor. His final destination was the kitchen from which our lunch was being prepared. So, the tourist guides that cautioned us against using the ice in Mexico had some merit.
There was no shortage of beer or food, and nobody had to ask for service. Our waiter kept the table full of freshly made dishes from the kitchen and lots of beer. Everyone there loved to drink lots of beer. To go with all this we also had numerous homemade sauces that ranged from easy and delicate to hellishly hot and fiery scorching. There was no shortage of laughter at our table. Captain Armando kept us entertained with joke after joke. Here are two jokes that Captain Armando told; “What do you use those big guns for?” Cuban, “I shoot cans.” Reporter, “But, they are such big guns, what kind of cans do you shoot?” Cuban, “I shoot Puerto Ri-cans, Mexi-cans, and Ameri-cans.”
Another joke by Captain Armando: A trans-Atlantic flight is having motor troubles and losing altitude. To keep the aircraft aloft the flight crew is pitching everything overboard. Still losing altitude, they are down to just four passengers; a Frenchman, an Englishman, an American and a Mexican. The Frenchman is first to volunteer and hollers out, “Viva la France,” and jumps. Next the Englishman valiantly steps to the door and hollers out, “God Save the Queen” and jumps. Next the American steps up and hollers, “Remember the Alamo” and pitches out the Mexican!
We were now in a world apart and our destiny would be forever altered by this encounter. Over time we were going to have unbelievable adventures with all of these amazing people we were now celebrating lunch with.
The hook was set; Jane and I had found our next dimension in life here in Mexico, the one country we had thought just ten years earlier that we would never revisit.
These were fun people that had definitely unlocked the secret to joyous pleasures of easy going self-indulgence, and we fit right in. When it was time for all of us to depart, Captain Armando, practicing his English, said, “Drink, drank, drunk, sink, sank, sunk.”? Then by blowing into his empty beer bottle he made the sound of “toot, toot, toot.” He then exclaimed as he was leaving, “This ship is sinking!”
Before we left for an afternoon siesta, the bill had to be settled. We now discovered another ingenious Yucatecan trick for keeping the bar tab. Our diligent waiter came around to each of us with his pad of paper and pencil. Then we saw what he was doing. Standing behind our chairs were the empty beer bottles that Pedro counted and tallied our tab, there could be no argument of padding the bill with this simple procedure. Our new found friend, Luis Rosado, craftily did not reach for his billfold, and so I picked up his tab. Luis proved to be a good first contact, but we soon discovered that he never ever reached for his billfold, but then we were actually paying for his entertaining jokes, lively sing-a-longs, contacts, and guide service, and we were having fun.
Our cantina experience left us totally stuffed with food, contented with the hilarious laughter, and sufficiently primed with beer to make our trip back to our hotel a sweltering struggle in the afternoon sun. The afternoon siesta in the land of take it easy was soon to become a blessed daily ritual for us. Here in Yucatan, this was the only natural thing to do until the heat of the day subsided. At this time in Mérida there were only two places with air conditioning, Mexicana airlines office and Plaza Oriente.
The next morning we packed our few belongings, and we headed by bus to the small quiet port town and fishing village of Progreso. Progreso is one of the ports where I had landed several times previously on my boat delivery trips from St. Augustine nearly ten years earlier. These trips consisted of five days at sea followed by dealing with the Mexican bureaucratic paper mill once in port.
The uncertain logistics of a return flight home made these trips into two week turnaround affairs. Points of interest back in the early 1980’s in Progreso were in short supply and the concept of tourism had not yet come to this former pirate ravaged coast that only saw an influx of beach goers from Mérida during Easter Week and for summer vacations in July and August. El Cordobes restaurant, located across the street from the main plaza in Progreso, was the only place to go for coffee. We were about to discover that the exchange rate was going to kill our expense account.
This was indeed a wonderful time to be in Yucatan. Horse drawn carriage taxis clip-clopped the streets of Mérida while hoards of Volkswagen Beetles straddled two lanes jockeying to be mucho-macho as noisy, coughing, and smoking two cycle motorcycles wove their way down the narrow city streets. VW Beetle’s made up the majority of vehicles and few drivers had a license. Auto insurance was nearly unheard of, and the license plates were rarely current. The philosophy back then being that it was better to break the law and beg forgiveness than to first ask permission.
Every day was a new adventure, and three weeks passed quickly.
Unlike Don Pedro de Mendez de Aviles, the founder of St. Augustine in 1565, who told the citizens of the colony upon his departure for Spain that he would return but never did, we found ourselves drawn back to Yucatan again and again. It certainly wasn’t the coffee!
Every day was an adventure, and three weeks passed quickly.
As our flight from Mérida to Miami rattled down the runway for take off, Jane and I looked at each other, and we both said emphatically, “We are coming back.”
