Friends and the Curious,

The week has flown by and it has been about 3 days since I last wrote. Some of the time, of course, was recovering from Polley's endless Birthday celebration, while the remainder of the time was spent struggling to maintain our routine. Somedays it is more difficult than it looks.

The weather has been lovely for the most part. Nights have warmed a bit, but the last couple of days we have had some sort of strange haze that seems to hang about the bay and back on the hills. Nothing to really spoil things, but it takes a bit of the shine off the place.

However, yesterday was a bit different. As we have told people when they ask about our time here and what we do, we often answer that rather than being tourists rushing about to do this and see that, our goal is to try and find the rhythm of the place and live as the residents of the place live. That means things like attending the markets, strolling through galleries, sitting by the beach and reading, taking the bus to Wal-Mart! Ideally we like to get absorbed into the community. To be a regular. A couple of years ago that worked beautifully in Lecce, Italy. After 4 years here, there is a sense of that as well as we talk a bit with the laundry lady, Malena, speak to the woman who lives down the hill from us, Lupe, and, of course, our endless raft of waiters and bartenders with whom we spend a great deal of time, for sociological purposes, of course.

Yesterday, I had was invited to walk with Rafael, a waiter at La Fuente del Puente. He sees me walking rapidly past the restaurant each morning as I head up the hill. We also discovered that we were the same age and we gave him a nice bottle of tequila for his birthday which fell just 3 days before Polley. Out of all this chatting, he extended an invitation to me to accompany him to some family property up in the mountain jungles just south of Puerto Vallarta. So yesterday, about 4:30 pm we took off.

We traveled by bus about 3 miles south and go off at a stop. We turned immediately east on foot to begin our 30 minute hike straight up the side of a mountain. The first 3/4 of a mile is accessible by car, but after that it is a narrow path that is not much wider than your shoe. It is over very rocky terrain and back and forth across a small creek, jumping nimbly from stone to stone. I caught this picture of Rafael leading the way about halfway to our destination.

After that brief photo-op, we hit the trail once again. As I say, it was a hard 30 minutes before we arrived at his little jungle paradise. It is property that has been in the family for some years and I am not sure how much it serves to provide food. There are dozens of mango trees and avocado trees. I got this photo of his small pineapple plantation

While I say there are fruits and vegetables there, I think a great deal of joy for Rafael is that he has a place that is quiet and lets him get away from all the noise of downtown PV. He has a small, very primitive cabin there.

It has s mall table, a place to cook over an fire and a small bed always convenient for a siesta. It also allows him to have a certain number of tools that he can keep there

AS I say, it is very primitive. There is no electricity and no running water. All the watering plants must be done by hauling water up the steep hill in buckets. Rafael, a rail-thin, but very strong man, made two trips while I sat and rested for the return trip

After about 30 minutes in the peaceful paradise, we turned and made our way back to the road. We caught a bus back to the city (seeing a whale burst out of water in the bay) and went our separate directions, headed for home. I felt that the goal of being absorbed into the daily life of PV had taken a real step forward and it is these private personal moments that make it all worthwhile and will be ones, regardless of photos, that I will never forget.