We had our mystery tour yesterday. Our first stop was at the village Ian had heard about and wanted to explore. El Quelite turned out to be a beautiful little town.



A few years ago their town council decided that in order to attract tourists they should clean up the streets and paint all the houses.
The result is very impressive. It is also a little sad. If only all Mexican towns would develop this kind of civic pride. We visited the town square, admired its bandstand, wrought iron benches, stone fountain. Then we strolled the main street, which has raised, covered sidewalks. We stopped to enjoy coffee and muffins at a café that was just a table set up on the sidewalk outside a private home.

Most of the businesses in El Quelite are house-front operations. I recognized the village laundry by the smell of bleach and the fact that I saw a couple of laundry tubs outside. On the suggestion of one of the locals, we had wandered down a side street for a glimpse of the back gardens. People seemed very pleased to see us and eager to show off their charming homes.

We could see a bell tower way up on a hill outside town, so we decided to climb up there for a bird´s eye view. After taking pictures of the town and surrounding countryside, I discovered that the tiny building adjacent to the bell was a shrine.


The local graffiti artists have been at work in the “fingerprints in candle soot” medium, and they mostly write petitions. I didn’t take a picture of the little Virgin of Guadalupe shrine on the side wall, but I should have. People have crammed their business cards and driver’s licenses into the front of the alcove. It detracts from the photogenic quality, but I guess it helps the Virgin to remember all those names. Or maybe there’s a monthly draw. First prize would be lunch at El Meson de los Laureanos . Second prize would be two lunches at El Meson de los Laureanos.

Which is by way of a segue into the story of our visit to that establishment. As we strolled through the town, we came across a very charming restaurant, and we made a note to come back later for lunch. After our climb to the bell tower, we descended the hill and walked back to the restaurant. It really is a beautiful place. The owner has been at pains to create a cozy ambience. A weaver bird’s nest
hangs from one of the trees, and iguanas mate noisily overhead, dislodging leaves, which then rain down on the heads of the diners (I imagine that’s a seasonal treat). We found a table on the patio and settled in. A very pleasant waitress took our orders - beer for the guys and Mysterious Fruit Juice Drink Containing Hibiscus Flowers for me. Appetizers began appearing on the table – tostadas, salsa, pico de gallo, and then the waitress returned with our menus. We opened them to find that there was absolutely nothing that appealed to any of us. We could see dishes arriving at other tables, and everything appeared to be very heavy. Beef and pork, mostly, tripe. It was still early in the day, and we had had a muffin not all that long before. It was a small muffin, but nevertheless none of us felt up to eating a heavy meal. When the waitress arrived with our drinks, we explained to her that we weren’t going to be ordering dinner. I told her that I would have liked something light – involving maybe fish or chicken. She disappeared.

Another dish materialized, little pancake-like things, sizzling hot and greasy, proffered by what proved to be the owner of the restaurant. Mexican pizza, he said it was, free appetizer before our meals arrived. Cheese and pork fat and salsa. Ah, we said, we’re sorry, but we aren’t going to have dinner. It's a bit early for us to have our main meal. Never mind, he said, I won’t charge you – but.

Whereupon he launched into a loud and overtly hostile speech about how we were in Mexico, not in our own country, and we couldn’t expect to just wander into a restaurant and get a hamburger or something, because the whole idea of traveling is to experience new things and if we didn’t want to experience new things then we should just stay home.

This, by the way, is the short version.

Midway through the tirade, our waitress arrived to tell me that she could get me a chicken quesadilla – which would have been absolutely fine by me, and Ian would have liked one as well – but by that time, it was all I could do not to throw my chair at the proprietor. I said no, thank you, but we wouldn’t be eating, and “La cuenta, por favor.” She looked surprised, but went off to get our bill. When she came back I mustered all the Spanish I could manage, and some that I couldn’t, to tell her that I was sure that the food was fine, and she was a lovely lady who had treated us very well, and none of this was her fault, but her boss was an extremely disagreeable man who had shouted at us and made us lose all interest in eating there. We paid the drink bill, left her a sizeable tip and walked out.

All this was a shame, because it tended to overshadow the pleasure that the town had given us. I’m glad I had taken a lot of pictures.
I can look at them and remember that every village has an idiot, and we just happened to find El Quelite’s.

After that adventure, we headed farther north, to La Cruz, in search of a couple of RV parks R had heard about. He wanted to check them out for later reference. We didn’t find them. Unfortunately, we didn’t have our Camping in Mexico book with us. There was something about “turn left and go ten miles on a dirt road” that R had missed on first reading, which is one reason why we didn’t find the camps. The other reason is that the map we were using showed the toll road east of La Cruz, when in fact it is west of La Cruz, so we suffered from extreme bafflement. Of course, if we had known about the dirt road, we would never have gone looking for the parks to start with. We did, however, have a lovely day’s ride. Ian drove the whole way – quite a treat for us.

Home. Tea. Sunset. That was yesterday.

It's 9:05 in the morning. I wrote some stuff last night, to be posted in a hurry this morning. I've got to go down to the RV now and wait for our ride.

LOL – I simply have to record this now, while it’s fresh in my head. It’s five minutes to three in the afternoon of February 7. An hour ago, I packed up my laptop and walked down the little hill to come home, having caught up – finally – on reading my discussion boards. I had trouble getting here, as what appeared to be a caravan of oversized RVs had pulled in, and one of them was attempting to squeeze into the spot two down from ours. I managed to sidle around that one, and he finished his inbacking pretty quickly. Then the driver of the 5^th wheel who wanted to get in across from us and down one spot started backing and turning, backing and turning. I said to a woman standing nearby that watching that sort of operation made me realize just how perfectly satisfactory a 24’ motor home is. She turned out to be the wife of the man trying to back the 5^th wheel in. :>/ Anyway, I came into the Turtle, said good-bye to R, who then left to go surfing (the kind that involves water), and took up my Laundry Watch. I made coffee and went outside to sit in a lounge chair and drink it. I drank it. I moved R’s bicycle out of harm’s way. I poured a second cup of coffee and drank that too. Then I spent a while watching the 5^th wheel back and turn, back and turn, and watching all the men within visual range putting their various two-cents worths in. I read my book. Finally, just before I came in and turned on the laptop to make this report, it seemed that my new neighbours had finally got themselves sorted. No, not quite, it seems. Oh, yes – the engine just stopped. There. One hour and ten minutes. I said to the lady of the house that I certainly hoped they were staying for a while, because if all this were in aid of a one-night stand, she must be ready to scream. Yes, they’ll be here for a while, as will their friends that backed in as I arrived, and the friends who have moved in next door to us (where the Dutch couple was, then the California couple - both VW van campers). This one is a Class A about 35 feet long. Its passenger-side wheels sit right on top of the patio. R just came back from his beach adventure. Tony still has not brought my clothes back.

I remain,

Naked in Mazatlan.

Still Feb. 7, but much later:

Hallelujah! He arrived – well, not Tony himself, but one of his minions, at 4:30 this afternoon. We now have stacks of clean, fragrant, perfectly folded laundry. It cost more than a Laundromat would, were there such a thing as a Laundromat in Mazatlan, but I feel as if I got a bargain at 110 pesos ($11ish). All I had to do was fret about getting my laundry back.

An hour or so later, there was a knock at the door. It was one of the men from the park. Had we sent laundry out? Yes. Had it been returned? Yes. Was it ours? Well, yes. That’s good, he said. We got somebody else’s laundry instead of our own. Oh, dear. I gave him the slip of paper that had come with ours, as it had the laundry’s address on it. Poor man went off, knocking on all the doors in the park, apparently, in search of his clothes. Half an hour after that, there was another knock. This time it was the man’s wife, duplicating his efforts. After that, I abandoned ship, went to watch the sunset, only to find that it had been canceled. The cloud cover was so heavy, the sun wasn’t visible, except where it reflected off clouds off to the north and south – second-hand sunset.

I’m going to post this as soon as my internet time starts in the morning (9 a.m.). Our friend is to pick us up at 9 a.m. – of course – to take us on our mystery tour. Ian has heard wonderful things about this little mining town.

“Where is it?” “ Fifty kilometres north of here.”

“What is it called?” “I can’t remember. It starts with an E.”

“Like El Dorado?” “No. One of those names you can’t pronounce.”

“Okay. Have a look at the map.”

“It’s not there.”

“Okay. Have a look at our other map.”

“No. It’s not there. It’s on my map.”

I did say it was a mystery tour.

Aack! As I was closing up yesterday, I heard another ruckus in the shrubbery, and out came Snickers, my provider's dog, with an iguana dangling from her mouth. She put it on the ground and it didn't move. I shooed Snickers away and watched for a few minutes, but there was no sign of life from the iguana, so I gave up. I don't know whether she killed it or whether it fell out of the tree and was killed by the fall. Whatever. Snickers ate well yesterday.

I didn't take the camera with me to the sunset last night, and I regretted it. There weren't clouds to produce the spectacular display of a few nights ago, but there was a haze that covered every bit of the sky and made the sunset colour spread evenly across the horizon. It was altogether different from any sunset I'd seen here. By the way, one of the neighbours told me that the "green flash" I've been hearing about, that occurs sometimes just as the sun is disappearing, is not an atmospheric phenomenon at all, but something that occurs within the eye itself. He says some people never experience it, others see it all the time. Is that true?

I had an e-mail this morning from our friend Andy, who says he and his wife, April, will be in Puerto Vallarta next week. If that's the case, we may amend our itinerary. We are only 400 kilometres from there. What an exciting development!

I've spent most of the morning hanging around the RV, waiting for Tony to show with the laundry. It's nearly noon, and he hasn't. He was supposed to be here between 9 and 10 o'clock. I've decided that Tony has a fetish for the large, worn, and shapeless garments of sixty-ish Canadian women, and I will never see my clothes again. I'll have to do the rest of this trip on one pair of shorts, one bathing suit, two athletic t-shirts, and some underwear. At least I have underwear. ;>)