we went with our good friends from sayulita, dmitri and heidi. they have two kids - noah and naomi - who are nayou's favourite playmates. its supposed to take two and a half hours to drive up there, but brenda and i got lost a couple of times and it ended up taking closer to four. oops. at least nayou had a good nap! the roads (if you can call them that) into and within san sebastian were pretty gnarly. there have been many times in mexico where i've been so happy that we have a 4x4.
the town itself is really small and quaint. it used to be a mining town back in the day, supporting a population of 20,000, but now it caters to tourists and is about to become a unesco world heritage site. there's not much to do up there - you definitely don't go for adventure - but for us it was nice to escape the heat and kick back in a house where the kids could do their own thing.
check out the key to the house we stayed in. not exactly practical, unless you blinged it up and wore it around your neck.
we had an outing to the river, but our visit was cut short when a local girl told us it was really dirty. apparently you get very sick if you drink the water. oopsy.
so instead we hung out in the main plaza and at our house. once the kids were asleep we polished off a bottle of run between the four of us and it was super awesome. i paid the price for it the next day, but it was great to hang out with brenda and get stupid again. we woke up the kids up a couple of times but they survived the ordeal ok.
we arrived back to a cloudy, muggy day in sayulita. at least it gave me a chance to take some zen photos of the ocean. not that its very original of course.
this one that brenda took of some trees is cool too.
the rhythm of our life here - mainly going back and forth between the beach and our house - tends to blur the days together after a while (in the best way possible). but the smearing of time has happened mainly because the three of us are having a great time. not in the "woo hoo! i'm on a roller coaster!" kind of way, but in a deeper contented kind of way, if that makes any sense. there have been many times when i've been overcome by this deep sense of happiness and gratitude, and i don't think i'll forget many of these moments. like nayou's grin when he swam in the warm waters for the first time, watching a single bird fly across the water at sunset, the beauty and violence of my first tropical storm, and going to sleep watching fireflies. these moments remind me how amazingly lucky we are, and to never stop being grateful for it. hopefully this will be a lesson that i won't forget, wherever i am in the world!
tomorrow we are mixing things up a little bit and going on a road trip! our destination is san sebastian del oeste, a mountain village about three hours drive from sayulita. we're going up with some friends of ours (who have two kids) so it should be a blast!
and here are the photos i know some of you have been waiting for. apologies to those of you who have seen most of these on facebook already. enjoy!
a bigger, longer update is on its way. i promise! oh, and i guess comments are still broken. i have no idea why :(
we gathered up our luggage and were on our way to find a taxi to sayulita when we were accosted by this guy mario. he offered to pay our fare to sayulita in exchange for coming to this resort and listen to a 75 minute presentation about investing there. they would come pick us up at our house, feed us breakfast and lunch and let us hang out at their pool all day long. plus they would give us $100USD. no cost or obligation on our part to buy anything. we just had to show up and listen to their spiel. so we decided to go for it. it was agreed that mario would come get us two days later in the morning. we would spend the day splashing around and then stop by the big supermarket (appropriately called "mega") on our way home to pick up supplies.
perhaps many of you are gearing up for some horror story, but actually the whole thing went pretty much as expected. the resort is very swanky, and nayou loved the pool. the sales pitch was fine although once they realised we weren't going to sign, they had some other people come and try to seal the deal in a bit of a pushy way. but when it was all over we were free to hang out and have fun. although resorts like these are not brenda or my style at all, i have to say that they make total sense for family holidays. young kids don't care about cultural stuff - they just want to splash in a big pool somewhere. this was made painfully obvious to me as we toured the forbidden city and tiananmen square in beijing. the resort has an indoor kids play area, a humungous pool (not to mention being right on the beach), good food, a gym, a spa and nice rooms. everything is just so easy. i don't like the resorts because i feel like you end up coming to a country only for the weather and never get to experience what life is like there - its like you're in a coccoon. but now that i've seen the other side of the coin i've softened my stance a little bit :)
UPDATE: we went back yesterday to the resort to use one of our day passes that they gave us. it turns out that the two day pass they promised up was actually a one day pass. the wording on them was very muddy which i am sure is on purpose. anyway, they gave us a hard time because we had only brought one of the two passes they gave us. apparently we needed both of them to get access to their pool. bastards. the fiery latina brenda kicked up a storm and they eventually relented. and we ended up having a super fun day eating and drinking as much as we wanted to on their tab. we made some new friends, and nayou found himself a lady as well! brenda even found a baby turtle on the beach (who was released later that night by one of the resort guests). so it ended up well, but i would advise against anyone going to these sales pitches. or else make sure you get everything they promise you in writing!
anyway, back to sayulita. coming from living in mega-cities, arriving in sayulita is a bit of a shock. the roads aren't paved, there are dogs and chickens running around everywhere, and the houses are, by western standards, rather ramshackle. many of the comforts we are used to such as being able to drink water from the tap and a reliable postal service are missing. which isn't to say that sayulita is a depressing place - far from it. its just a bit different from what we were used to. on the flipside we have a gorgeous beach minutes from our house, with nice surfable waves. there is a veritable cornucopia (i've always wanted to use that word in a sentence!) of fruit available at ridiculously low prices. mangoes, bananas, pineapples, papayas, watermelon, coconuts, avocados, tomatoes etc etc etc. and best of all i get to enjoy sharing it all with brenda and nayou. its all just trade offs. here are some photos of the town.
once we unpacked our stuff we headed straight to the beach for a much needed splash. i'm happy to report that the water is perfect. its almost too warm on some days, but most of the time you can jump straight in and have loads of fun. the stupid ear-to-ear grin in nayou's face the first time he went in was well worth the trip all the way out here. the little guy just couldn't get enough of the ocean! we ended up at a restaurant called burrito revolution afterwards, and we have been back several times since. simply the best burritos ever. its almost a shame to come to sayulita for a short visit and eat there because no burrito will ever compare again. ever. the people that work there are really nice too and always hook nayou up with a small plate of rice and avocado or mahi mahi. plus there is a small coin-op car that he loves to ride on. so nayou gets to play while we eat :)
our daily schedule in sayulita goes a bit like this:
- 6.30am: wake up. make fruit smoothies. pack up beach stuff
- 8am: walk to beach. find the usual suspects and hang out. maybe go for a surf. nayou likes to play by digging holes in the sand, letting the waves dump water into them and sit in the resulting pool. he calls it a "bano".
- 12pm: walk back to the house for a nap. this is a good time for siesta because its the hottest part of the day. brenda and i usually end up pottering around the house, reading, doing laundry etc. a siesta is tempting, but when non-baby time is at a premium, you have to make the most of what you get! sometimes we put him down at the beach, but usually you're guaranteed a pretty short nap when this happens. so unfortunately we can't do it everyday.
- 2pm: nayou joins the land of the waking. we usually have some lunch and then play on the front porch while the sun is still high.
- 4.30pm: back to the beach. if the tide is low there is a rock pool that is sheltered from the waves that we go to.
- 6.30pm: back to the house. we'll either grab dinner on the way home or cook. guacamole and watermelon are the usual staples around here.
- 8pm: nayou passes out. we clean the kitchen and sweep the floors (you have to do this diligently unless you want an ant colony in your house), and i do my yoga practice. even this late at night its still hot enough that i sweat a lot on the mat.
- 10pm: lights out
many of the shops and restaurants are closed until november, which is when the tourists start to arrive. most of them are americans who live on the west coast who come to escape the winter. according to the locals the population soars for three months and then dies down again. i kind of like the quietness now, but i would be interesting to see what the vibe is with a whole lotta extra people. but the town has all the ameneties you could want - groceries, pharmacies, doctors, internet cafes, restaurants, car rentals. a lot of sites online said that there were no atms in sayulita, but i've spotted at least four since we've been here.
two doors down from our house there is a big open space with a bunch of lumber and random machines. it took us a few days to realise that its a carpenter's workspace. but once we did we went and talked to him to see if he could build nayou a chair. we have a low table on our front porch which is the perfect height for nayou, but nowhere for him to sit. we sketched out the design and he said he could do it for $30usd. deal. i even managed to score a yoga block as well! we are picking it up later today which is exciting. i think he's going to love it!
speaking of our house - what is it like? well, its pretty small. if you've ever been to our house in wellington, well, i think its maybe even a bit smaller than that. its a studio apartment - one big room, with a small bathroom (toilet and shower). we have a huge front porch which is really nice, and a big front yard as well that provides some privacy from the road. the whole place is quite bare bones, but we're enjoying the simple living. we bought a good set of computer speakers to connect to my ipod and that pretty much completed the place. oh, except for an internet connection. which should be happening within the next ten days or so. the more time i spend in the house the more i find myself liking it. its got an especially nice homey feel in the evenings when all the lights are on.
our exploration of the surrounding area has been a bit limited since we don't have a car (although i think we are going to get one). there is a great bus service that connects sayulita and puerto vallarta (and all the towns in between), but it doesn't have any air conditioning which makes it hard to ride with a small child. taxis get expensive very quickly ($50usd one way from sayulita to puerto vallarta). still, we did manage to get into vallarta for one day. my impression of it was: meh. nothing special really. we also made a run to costco, which is just outside the airport. its good to know that we can get bulk stuff when we need to, although their organic section is non-existent. sniff sniff.
well that's about all the writing i have in me for now. there is so much to tell, but typing reams and reams of text was never my forte so i'll just have to let the photos do the talking! i'll leave you with a selection of new words that nayou has picked up over the last couple of weeks. he is talking up a storm these days and learning new words all the time!
- plane: big hunks of metal that take him from one weird place to another
- book: pieces of paper with trains, planes, fish and other animals on it
- pan: bread
- caca/pipi: i don't think i need to explain these
- coco: a coconut
- grande: his favourite adjective. accompanied by big sweeping upward movements of both hands. the other day he went to the toilet to poo and came back to me and said "graaaaaande!". i hope he doesn't do this when he's a teenager.
- pina: a pineapple
- fish: anything that lives in water
- smoothie: fruit smoothies. nayou will suck down a huge cup of it before we even get to have a taste!
- digger: any sort of construction vehicle
- choo choo: a train
- hot/cold: the other two adjectives he knows
- bano: a bath
- playa: it took him all of one day to learn this one!
also i apologise for the weird thumbnail sizes that stretched the photos.... the computer at the internet cafe i am at is using a very old browser and fixing them all is too much of a pain.
japan
- i love japan. everything about the country is so well designed and convenient, from the amazing public transport down to product packaging (although the latter can be very excessive). here's the perfect example of where they go the extra mile: we landed in osaka late at night so we stayed at a hotel in the airport. i took a shower to rinse off all the travel grime and when i stepped out of the tub i noticed that a rectangular portion of the mirror hadn't clouded up - the glass is treated that way so that you are always guaranteed a clear view. awesome.
- japanese food is the best. i feel like we ate non-stop the whole time we were there.
- all of my cousins have doubled in height and are all in high school. nothing marks the passage of time like kids growing up. there is a term in japanese - ojisan - that is used to describe middle aged men, and although i'm not quite there yet, seeing them reminded me that i am definitely no spring chicken anymore!
- things are very inexpensive here. the selection of books, clothes, electronics and all kinds of other stuff is astounding, and they are reasonably priced. the only thing stopping us from going ape was the fact that we already had full suitcases and the daunting task of having to haul anything we bought to beijing, l.a. and mexico.
- brenda and i had our first night out together in over a year. we went to shibuya and had a grand old time. even managed to catch the last train back with seconds to spare! many thanks to the grandparents for that one.
- japanese baths are so much fun! the whole thing about washing yourself before getting in is perfect for nayou because he can play around while we soak. the taste of a cold beer after a japanese bath is something special too.
- green tea ice cream. oh yes. black sesame ice cream. oh hell yes.
- hanging out with my parents and hana was so much fun! nayou really warmed to them quickly too, especially hana. the extra pairs of hands and playmates made the trip so much more enjoyable for us parents.
- most strangers in japan thought nayou was a girl.
beijing
- beijing in mid-august is unbearably hot. seriously. there's not much greenery around either so you have to find refuge in places with air conditioning.
- our hotel was really nice. it had a courtyard for nayou to play in and everything!
- if we got a talent agent for nayou we could be millionaires within a week. everyone absolutely adored him! people crowded around him to take his photo, random people picked him up to show them off to their families and the not so brave clandestinely snapped photos from afar (brenda was good at spotting them). there was a little bit of this in japan, but beijing stepped it up to a whole new level. nayou lapped it all up, waving like royalty and working the camera!
- the pollution in beijing is pretty bad. there is a permanent haze over the city.
- the luxury car of choice is a black audi a6 with tinted windows. i saw a gazillion of them on the streets.
- the chinese people eat a lot of animal parts that western cultures do not. i knew this already but walking past the street vendors who sell bbq skewers was crazy.
- the people in beijing are super duper friendly. this was a pleasant surprise for us given that the chinese people we've met outside of china haven't been this way. not that the chinese ex-pats are unfriendly, but they certainly aren't like they are in beijing. we met loads of lovely people, from the bellboy at our hotel to the nicest group of high school kids in tiananmen square.
- the architecture is amazing. apart from the obvious olympic buildings, the skyscrapers and hotels are all impeccably desgined and are all astoundingly humungous. they like their roads wide and their buildings tall over there. my favourite is the cctv headquartersby rem koolhaas. apparently the locals call it "little shorts".
- the government still censors information. we couldn't access facebook, twitter, blogspot and sometimes google while we were there because of the unrest in the western part of the country.
- i had the best noodles ever in beijing. there is a place called noodle loft. i believe anthony bourdain featured it on his tv show a while ago. its a restaurant where the chefs make the noodles from scratch right in front of you. it was a bit of an adventure tracking the place down (thank god taxis are so cheap there), but it was so worth it. we had thick rice noodles with chili oil, shallots and a touch of soy... it makes me hungry just thinking about it! in general they must be pretty crazy for noodles there because i also saw a lady making noodles from scratch at a noodle place in the food court of a mall! i can't imagine that happening anywhere else. oh, and their dumplings are amazing too. mmm.
- personal space is measured in millimeters.
- queueing in china is interesting. i'm not sure if queueing is even the proper word for what i experienced buying tickets to the forbidden city. unless you consider headbutting, crawling, and pushing as part of "lining up". initially i was letting people through thinking that they were going to meet up with their friends or family. wrong. after a couple of minutes i realised that unless you press yourself up against the person in front of you and move forward by any means possible you will be left behind. the interesting thing is that no-one got pissed off about any of this. everyone jostled around and somehow it was jovial (except for the tourists). i suspect this is something i will never understand. the forbidden city itself is a must-see. back in the day when it was closed off to the chinese, my mum and her friends used to have the place all to themselves to ride their bikes in. (for those of you going "huh?" - beijing is where my parents met)
- our attempts to see the beijing aquarium were foiled when our taxi driver took us to some dinky place under the china cctv tower. we still managed to have fun though!
los angeles
- we stayed at aya's apartment while her and ryan are in europe. it felt good to be in a house again (and a familiar, comfortable one at that). i think the shower at her place is one of my all time favourites!
- nayou and aya's dog (aka "piggy") got off to a rocky start when piggy jumped on him, but by the last day they were inseperable. nayou likes to hold piggy's leash when we're out and about, and he shows piggy off to anyone who will look.
- larchmont ave. is awesome. especially on sundays at the farmers market!
- a 15 hour time different from beijing. what a bitch.
- when you're in l.a., you do a whole lotta driving. can't say that i like that part too much, but it was fun getting behind the wheel after a month or so.
- we love whole foods! it was heaven walking through the aisles, especially after china where we couldn't eat 90% of the food. you folks in america are very spoiled. it felt so good to tuck into a big organic salad after so long!
- things aren't really cheap anymore. i always had it in my head that goods in america are inexpensive, but this trip proved me wrong. once you factor in tax (and usually tip), i often found myself surprised at the prices of things.
- the only celebrity we saw was ron jeremy. i have mixed feelings about this.
- a lot of people thought nayou was a girl. i see a pattern developing here... i wonder why it is? to brenda and myself he is clearly a boy, but people seem to have a hard time with it. i think its because he is a pretty boy, but if you have other theories we'd love to hear them!
