As those of you who follow my occasional travels know, Sally and I spend a late-winter month in Zihuatanejo, a one-time quaint fishing village here on La Costa Grande—the Pacific coast of Guerrero, Mexico.
A month’s enough time to get past that first week or so transitioning into “vacation” mode. Enough for the feel, the smell…the rhythm of a place to elbow their way past those pushy little stresses one hopes to have left back home.
The most emotional of my many jottings here about Zihuatanejo usually weep out of me as I’m leaving. As the horizon I clutch—that from the airplane of the rolling Sierra Madre del Sur with Zihua Bay glistening in the foreground— is slowly pulled from my arms.
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| PHOTO: Wil Mertz |
This time, though, I’m changing it up. There are no tears, just joy. For once, I’m going to reflect not on a departure, but an arrival.
A STUDY IN STRATA
This first morning, as I peer out from our open-air, hillside villa, I feel the welcoming embrace of Zihuatanejo Bay, its arms wrapping round my view south-southwest out across the bay and then the vast Pacific Ocean. And today it’s a study in strata.
A clear, cerulean sky bisected by a distinct band of pebbly white clouds; then a layer of light ocher haze; next, just above the water, the “marine layer,” that ubiquitous, blue-grey mass of cool, moist air pressed against the horizon by the much-warmer air above.
The water, too, is striped. In the distance, by the clouds' shadow and other, inexplicable lines of light and dark; within the bay, by the wakes of the little pangas constantly ferrying folks across the bay to and from Playa Las Gatas.
Below that, the sands of Playa La Ropa add a swath of faded khaki, effervesced every ten or twelve seconds by the churning surf.
Would it be silly to ride this theme closer still? To the garland of palm trees lining the beach? To the row of salmon- and pumpkin-hued boutique lodgings just below me? To the bougainvillea-draped adobe parapet of our villa? The top edge of my laptop? The files of little characters I'm lining up across this page?
Yeah, you're right, too silly.
MORE TO COME
There’ll be many more such impressions to come, each a sensory thread further lashing my heart and soul to this precious place. Stay tuned as I pull on a few of those too…
