A MILE IN MY OWN SHOES – The Ways of Wanderlust

It’s silly I know, but one of the ways my Latin American travel/adventure trips move from crazy notion to harebrained scheme to actual occurrence is that I envision one of my favorite pairs of shoes stepping down the streets or trails of that distant place. Oh…and I’m in the shoes.

For Puebla, Mexico, it was my then-brand-new Keen ultra-lite sandals. In Buenos Aires, it was the Merrell Encore clogs. Havana saw me mostly in my Ecco Yucatan sandals. Oaxaca, in my Birchbury leather sneakers.And now, for my upcoming fall trip to Mérida, I'm thinking my new, walking-on-a-cloud Skechers Slip-ins. (Though for this trip it might make more sense to revisit those Yucatan sandals.)

       I make room for adventure in
       a future that thinks it’s already
       scripted for something else.

Why does it take footwear to lead me to such places? I suppose it’s like any other serious intention in life; to make room for adventure in a future that may not be ready for it, or thinks it’s already scripted for something else, it helps to imagine oneself there. The rest of the plan then starts falling into place around that image.

The shoes get me to that place of my imagining in a way that simply Googling the place cannot. More than just reading someone’s description or looking at photos, they seem to put me there physically. I can actually feel it, my connection with the ground.

FEEL THE YEARN
I remember reading Thomas Mann’s novella, Tonio Kröger, when I was in high school. Mann used the distant sound of the Posthorn to represent the siren song of Tonio’s wanderlust.

There’s nothing as powerful as a dream. For some, like Tonio, it’s just a hazy, unsettling yearning; for others it’s more like a prayer. I see it as simply committing my wishes to the wise ways of the Universe. And, since my Higher Power wants me to be happy, it makes space in the future for the fulfillment of those wishes and then enlists my own intentions, planning and a bit of elbow grease to make them happen.

You see, I have this hunger to keep expanding the realm of my being. To learn new things, meet new people, behold ever-more-stirring expressions of Nature’s beauty, get out of my egocentric, way-too-busy self and closer to the ideal of oneness with everything.

Nothing better satisfies that yearning than travel. (And travel, specifically to Hispanophone places, also lets me pursue my late-in-life quest to get reasonably fluent in Spanish.)

     My wanderlust exerts the same
     pull that being a homebody does,
     but in a different direction.

DIFFERENT STROKES
I realize that, for many, life’s less about opening new realms than deepening the ones they already occupy. That’s fine. I actually envy you homebodies, for your ability to happily grow where you’re planted. And for the strength of your commitments to a beloved place and the people you make sure frequent it.

I suppose I could say my wanderlust exerts the same kind of pull that being a homebody does, but in a different direction. To be honest, though, I feel a bit guilty about how selfish it is. I try to salve the guilt by recalling how many other worthy endeavors demand a choice between familiarity and exploration.

Wanderluster. Full-nester. Aren’t they really like introvert and extrovert, where one is better than the other only for certain purposes. Shouldn’t it be possible to be some of both, to balance the two?

How does one do that? As my mother used to say, when you’re torn between two valid paths, sometimes you just have to follow your nose…

…and, I would add, your shoes.

"To my mind, the greatest reward and luxury of travel is to be able to experience everyday things as if for the first time, to be in a position in which almost nothing is so familiar it is taken for granted."
BILL BRYSON

EL CHAVO RUCO – Reflections On Turning a Young 80 In Zihuatanejo

I’m pretty sure I cry more than most men. It doesn’t take much: sad movies, acts of heroism, glimpses of redemption and simple human kindness.

I also cry when Sally and I say goodbye in late March each year to our beloved second home, Zihuatanejo, Guerrero, Mexico, where we’ve once again spent the month.
 
It’s happened every one of the 17 years we’ve been coming here, that “last-campfire” sense that something very special and rare, in a breathtakingly beautiful place, with some very dear people, is coming to an end.

The feeling is especially poignant this year for two main reasons: first, because we’d had to abandon last year’s trip—and nearly this year’s too—due to some medical concerns. Secondly, because this time we celebrated my 80th trip around the sun with a “destination” party involving all my closest family members.

EL CHAVO RUCO
This year’s visit was special for other reasons too. Among them the good fortune that, at 80 and 78, respectively, Sally and I are still able to travel—a blessing we now know we can no longer take for granted. And to walk…a lot.

As always, we’ve plied the winding road a mile-and-a-half into town every morning—a grinding, seemingly all-uphill hike in Zihua’s tropical heat and humidity—with the sole incentive being an iced Assam tea and a nice mango smoothie at El Cafecito, a shady, breezy oasis just across from the beachside fish market.

PHOTO: Jane Simon Anneson

Some days we also brave the return hike in the afternoon. We slap a sweaty high-five at the accomplishment, only to then face the five-story stair climb from the street up to our villa.

All that exercise, together with the dent the climate puts in our appetites, has pared me down nearly to my high school playing weight. And Sally, she never played football, but let’s just say she’d still have no trouble landing a job as a runway model.

(The age-defying effects of life in Zihuatanejo were reflected in the theme and the little skateboarding crocodile character I created for my birthday bash. I call myself El Chavo Ruco, which translates roughly to the Punk Geezer.)

I must have been a Mexican fisherman in a previous life.

THE LONG VIEW

Why such an affinity for this place, for its people and culture? It’s the colors, the smells and flavors, the unfailing grace of the people, and the musical, poetic texture of the language. They all touch me in ways my Germanic heritage—or for that matter most of a life in German / Scandinavian Minnesota—never could.

For lack of a better reason I sometimes tell people I must have been a Mexican fisherman in a previous life.

And Nature here is just stunningly beautiful and exotic. The arresting washboard rasping of the chachalaca birds that rouses us each morning. The translucent little geckos plying our walls and ceiling for bugs at night. The hummingbirds that flit in to sip on the fuchsia bougainvillea that underlines our no-fourth-wall view.

It might be the occasional sighting of scorpion or tarantula. A humpback whale breaching just outside the bay. And, again, that view. Zihuatanejo wraps around the best-defined, most sheltered bay on Mexico’s Pacific coast, home to roiling schools of bait fish, hefty jack cravalle, squadrons of spotted eagle rays, and the occasional whale shark.

And the infinite reach of that hazy horizon; once you clear Zihuatanejo Bay there’s no landfall for 3,067 nautical miles (the Pitcairn Islands).

¡TUTÉAME!
I want to think that the way people here touch my heart is based on more than the obligatory host-to-guest deference one usually receives in a tourist town. Here it feels like true kindness and generosity. Part of that may be a response to my own willingness to honor another’s culture—including the language—but I suspect it’s more than that. The more time I spend here the more I believe it's an innate quality of being a Zihuatanejense.

By now, many locals have become easy, comfortable friends—folks we’d love to welcome as guests in our home someday. I’ve begged a few of them for years to tutearme (use the informal personal pronoun tu instead of the more polite usted mandated when addressing a guest, superior or elder). It’s one of the great triumphs of my Spanish-learning journey that some have finally relented.

Most, I hope, appreciate that not all of us have turned into monsters.

MAGA WE ARE NOT
There’s another reason this year’s trip has proven unique: Sadly, we now must apologize for being Estadounidenses (from the U.S.). For having allowed the ham-fisted regime of an ignorant, monumentally insecure, utterly indecent little man and his billionaire partners in crime to suck the air out of Democracy’s room.

We explain that this tsunami of ugliness has happened despite our votes and those of about half of our countrymen and women. Some Zankas try to be diplomatic in their responses; a few just laugh; most, I hope, appreciate that not all of us have turned into monsters.

What a contrast the imminent collapse of our own homeland’s storied big-hearted, welcoming spirit with that of a people who, despite having themselves suffered under the boots of such beasts, despite the scourge of corruption and narco-warfare, have somehow managed to preserve that amiable spirit. Mexicans here still know what’s important. Still welcome folks who don’t look like them.

HASTA PRONTO
In late afternoon the panga traffic lacing together the two ends of Zihuatanejo Bay’s string-of-pearls beaches slows and stops. Then, once the sun sets over Cerro El Almacén, night falls quickly here in the tropics.

Soon, starlight perforates the night sky’s black membrane. As we sip a nice mescal on the terrace, we can already see a hundred times more stars than we can through the veil of light pollution back home in Minneapolis.  

Knowing we’ll have to wait nearly a year to return, we soak up as much of this feeling as we can. This amazing night sky, the delicious Pacific breeze, the eternal whisper of the surf…

Zihua, our precious, fleeting tryst with paradise, Hasta pronto. See you soon.

Volcanes del Corazón – Guatemala, November, 2023

It’s November and once again my wanderlust has lit its fire under me. 

I’m off to Guatemala. For no more of a reason than that I’ve heard it’s beautiful and I know several people who’ve been there—including one family member on whom the place has had a life-changing effect.

The focus of my trip is twofold: First, my daughter, Amanda, will be joining me for a week; second, I'm enrolled in Spanish school, continuing my dogged quest for fluency.

We're based in the beautiful former colonial capital, La Antigua Guatemala—or simply La Antigua—where, after my morning classes, we explore the town on foot. Then, during the weekend between my two weeks of school, we head for the drop-dead gorgeous Lake Atitlán.

I'll be posting a more detailed reflection of the experience, but for now here's the story in pictures—my ten-minute slideshow.

TAKING THE HEAT – The Price of Decorum

As much as I’d love to be Mexican (I’m convinced I was a Mexican fisherman in a previous life), I’m occasionally slapped upside the head with the reality that I am not.

                                    ~   •   ~   •   ~    

I’d arrived in the central Mexican city of Puebla with my friend and Spanish tutor, Carlos, looking forward to a week of exploring this grand old colonial city and its surroundings with him.

Carlos, born in Puebla, had also brought his wife and kids, planning to stay with relatives and spend time, between our outings, with them and other family members who live in Puebla state.

But that very first night, on my way to dinner in my hotel, I received a call from Carlos. His ten-year-old son had just suffered an attack of acute apendicitis and was going to be in the hospital for a few days. Just like that, our Spanish-learning-on-the-fly itinerary evaporated, and I was on my own for the rest of the week.

That’s okay, I thought. I’ve spent countless days exploring various Latin American locales by myself. I can do this.

      Turns out I’ll be dining solo…
      with an audience.

FAMILY
But in a twist I found incredibly sweet—and typically Mexican—Carlos had other plans for me. The next morning my phone rings, and it’s one of his cousins wanting to know if I’d join him for an excursion to nearby Cholula, with its monumental cathedral, world’s most voluminous pyramid and stunning view of the nearby volcano, Popocatepetl.

Next day, it’s another of Carlos’s cousins, offering to show me around Puebla city. And so on…

Later in the week I’m invited to a nephew’s small, suburban townhouse for dinner. I arrive by taxi at about 6:00 and there’s Manuel and his wife, Isabel, welcoming me as if I were an old friend of the family.

After polite greetings from the couple’s two small children and a bit of conversation over a beer, Isabel gestures toward a small table near the kitchen. Weird, I’m thinking, it’s set for just one person. Well, it turns out the whole family’s already eaten and I’ll be dining solo…with an audience.

Isabel has devoted the afternoon to preparing the beautiful signature dish of Puebla. Chiles en nogada is a seasonal recipe consisting of fist-sized poblano chiles stuffed with picadillo, a thick, savory meat stew, then slathered in snow-white walnut cream sauce and sprinkled with pomegranate seeds and parsley.

As blown-away as I am by the presentation, I’m apprehensive about sitting down with the whole family just watching to see how much I enjoy the amazing meal they’ve worked so hard to prepare for me.

It’s a very warm afternoon, and I don’t think the lower level has air conditioning, so I’m already sweating. Uncomfortable as I am, I’m even struggling with my normally decent Spanish.

PRAISE THROUGH GRITTED TEETH
I lift that gorgeous first bite to my mouth and…Wow!, this really is delicious! Or so I think for about ten seconds. That’s when the heat kicks in.

    I figure a big swig of my beer will
    douse the fire, but it’s like pouring
    gasoline on it.

Poblano chiles are supposed to be relatively mild—about half as hot on the Scoville scale as jalapeños. But this must have been an unusually hot one; to this gringo’s innocent taste buds, it might as well have been one of those infamous ghost peppers.

If I was a bit uncomfortable before, I’m now feeling like a lobster dropped into boiling water. And that’s about the color my face is turning.

Of course, I’m gushing praise for the food, smiling and nodding my approval, but inside I dread the ordeal suddenly facing me. You absolutely have to eat at least 80 percent of this ample serving of food—and look like you’re enjoying it—or risk offending this very nice, very generous young family.

I’ve worn my nice, semi-dressy, white guayabera shirt, and by the time I’m half-way into the ordeal, the sweat’s rolling down my body, wicking into my shirt wherever it touches.

Wait, maybe a big swig of my beer will douse the fire…oh, my God, it’s like pouring gasoline on it. What I’d give for a dollop of yogurt!

IT’S ALL GOOD
Needless to say, I survived the evening. And I’m proud to say I finished nearly all of that beautiful chili en nogada. I was happy (to be done with the ordeal); my hosts were happy (that I “liked” it); and I’m sure all of Mexico was happy that they still needn’t call me one of their own.

What do you think? Did this recall any of your own cross-cultural mishaps? We’d love to hear from you!
 

WALKING THE TALK – How Learning Spanish Has Become My Ticket to Adventure

They say one of the best ways to stay sharp as one ages is to learn a new language. Great. But they also say that the best time to learn that new language is when one is about three years old.
Perfect! It’s the best of both worlds for me; I’m a senior citizen who, I’m told, often acts like a three-year-old.

                                      ~   //  ~  //  ~

My roots are a typical American melting-pot amalgam: a little English, a bit of Italian…but mostly German. My family celebrates that heritage in a well-documented trove of family lore and with a few fine decorative and artistic German heirlooms handed down through the generations.

So, naturally, when I faced the choice of either French or German as my foreign language in high school, I went with the deutsch. Never gave it a second thought.

  None of it fit my 
  romantic image of myself as a Mexican 
  fisherman in a previous life. 

AN EPIPHANY
Flash forward to about 2002. It was then, at the age of 57, during one of my several identity crises, that I decided I hated German. Truth be told, I’d never liked the hard, guttural sound of it. I didn’t much care for some of the national characteristics it conjured up for me either. None of it fit my romantic image of myself as a Mexican fisherman in a previous life.

Besides, it was becoming quite clear that I might never even visit Germany. But I had been traveling to Mexico, with my parents when I was nine, and a couple of times with friends as an adult. Then I got married, and Sally and I continued the trend, spring-breaking in nearly all of the popular Mexican beach towns.

I think it was Mazatlán where the epiphany happened. As I usually do, I’d boned up on a few basic pleasantries in Spanish so I could be a more gracious visitor, a better representative of my own country.

But on this one short cab ride, when it came time to pay the fare, the limit of my competence in the language came up and bit me. For some reason, cien (a hundred) and diez (ten) switched places in my brain, and I was convinced the driver had stiffed me.

He explained with patience I didn’t deserve. Red-faced, I apologized and handed him the pesos…and a little extra for the painful lesson. And it was at that precise moment that the trajectory of my late-in-life quest for Spanish literacy took off.

IMMERSION IS THE KEY
Next time in Mexico, I decided, I’ll be able to carry on at least a simple “How’re the wife and kids?” conversation with a cab driver—and be able to correctly count my change. Those were my goals.

So I signed up for a St. Paul Public Schools Community Ed. class: Spanish for Beginners. My teacher was Silverio Rios, an engaging 40-something Mexican who’d been living and working in the Twin Cities for several years.

One evening after class I asked Silverio to join me for coffee and we chatted a bit about my goals for learning his first language. Toward the end of that first get-together, he told me of his plans to take small groups of his students on week-long Spanish immersion trips down to the part of central Mexico where he’d grown up.

That idea captivated me, and, as I was then a graphic designer, I offered to design and write his brochure for him. He accepted, offering in exchange a spot on his inaugural trip.

And so, Voces del Español was born. In August 2003, Silverio, I and three other students flew to Mexico City, then bussed to Querétaro City, and finally rented a car for the drive to the charming little town of Tequisquiápan, which would serve as our home base for the week.

The format involved formal classes in the mornings and an excursion each afternoon. Silverio had designed all the activities to encourage our use of the language in everyday experiences, such as buying produce from the local market or ordering dinner at a restaurant for everyone in our group.

Also included in those experiences was joining Silverio’s relatives for typical family events like a birthday, a wedding and going to the cemetery to tend to family graves. On different occasions we helped make bread with his mom and joined in the elaborate preparation of a mole.

WHERE LA ACCION IS
By the end of that first Voces trip, I realized my original goal of engaging in small-talk with a cab driver had already been eclipsed. Now I knew I was capable of more.

My Spanish learning was to become the theme—the key, one could say—to many more travels in Latin America. I eventually went on three more Voces immersion trips with Silverio. With each one, I gained more tools and more confidence in expressing myself. (Not to mention the great joy of being virtually adopted into his family.)

I’ve also travelled to Spain, Peru and Argentina, and attended language schools in Veracruz, Mexico, Panama and Cuba. All, if not dictated by my quest for better Spanish, at least encouraged by it.

   My goal had been edging up too,
   like one of those mechanical rabbits
   that racing dogs chase, always just
   beyond reach.

NOT LOST IN TRANSLATION
One measure of my progress has been the time lapse between when I think of something to say and when the words actually come out of my mouth. I remember quite clearly when that interval was five to ten seconds. In most of my attempts to join a conversation I was getting left behind.

But my competence level kept edging up, and that time interval down. At some point I realized my goal had been edging up too, like one of those mechanical rabbits that racing dogs chase, always just beyond reach. Now I wasn’t going to settle for any less than holding my own in those conversations with native speakers.

I have my moments—occasionally glorified by a couple of tequilas. They’ve included many conversations with Silverio, members of his family or Spanish-speaking friends I’ve met on my own, about a range of topics from art to zoology.

Once I get going, I enter that rarified air where only the relatively fluent survive. Where my mind goes right from hearing the Spanish to replying in Spanish, without passing through an English translation.

I suppose it’s another measure of my progress that I’m now less focused on vocabulary and grammar than on the finer points, like minimizing my English accent and incorporating common filler words—the Spanish equivalents to the English “um,” “well,” “then” or “so”— into my speaking.

Yes, I’ve a ways to go, but I can definitely see the prize. It may be that I’ll never be able to actually grab it; that might take a few months living in a place where no one speaks English. Maybe in my next life.

EMPOWERMENT
It’s amazing, when traveling, what knowing the local language does for a person. For me, it’s been kind of like watching and envying a competent musician, and then, with a ton of work, being able to play myself.

My new second language opens doors—to friendships, to avoiding conflict, to finding my way around. And for Sally, it cuts through the awkwardness of her having to shop using just hand gestures.

I can even feel my Spanish competence affecting my posture as I walk down the street, especially in areas where I may be the only person in that town who looks like me. I enjoy seeing the look on a person’s face when someone who looks so unlikely to be a Spanish speaker handles their language so capably.

More than once, that person has explained that they’d expected me, at best, to speak English with a heavy German accent.

                               ~   //  ~  //  ~ 

POSTSCRIPT: My dad, at about the same age I was when my love affair with Spanish began, was also dreaming of learning the language. He chipped away at it, but with all his home and business responsibilities he never really got past the basics. I know that a great part of my motivation has been to honor his dream and make him proud. I believe I have.

TEQUILA SHOTS – A Decade’s Best from Zihuatanejo, Mexico

 

It’s been a decade now that Sally and I have been spending a month each year in Zihuatanejo, that lovely Mexican city—though it’s still easy to think of it as the sleepy little fishing village it was till the early 1970s—on the Pacific coast of Guerrero.

Among the aspects of Zihua that have so enchanted us are its many sensory qualities—colors, smells, sounds, animal, plant life…even the euphonious rhythms of the language—that we just don’t experience back home in Minnesota. Wonders that strike these color-averse, bland-palate, mealy-mouthed products of Northern Europe as truly exotic.

As a career designer and a highly visual person, I suppose I appreciate a place’s visual wonders most of all. Furthermore, there’s something I can readily do to capture and express that visual affinity with Zihuatanejo: I take pictures, lots of pictures.

So it was no mean feat distilling a ten-year anthology of captivating images down to a few representative favorites. So many facets of culture and experience to document; so many esthetic elements to consider—composition, clarity, lighting; and then there are the intangibles, factors like originality, spontaneity, heart.

Here, in no particular order, are my 30 favorite images of the winsome wonders of Zihuatanejo, Guerrero, Mexico.