Both Moving and Being Here

I’ve been seriously distracted from the beauties around me for the past couple of days as we have received an offer on our house on Croydon Rd. This is an event for which I have been hoping and longing, lo these many months. Initial reaction: fantastic, excellent, and hooray! Soon afterward: so many various complications re price, date of closing, this and that stipulation and requirement. OMG: will it all come to pass? Don’t get agitated: be cool, be cool, and let the process take its path. Even now as I write, it goes on about me and in the ether between here and Toronto: emails, documents, conference calls, signings and scannings, real estate agent (one), and lawyers.

The second distraction follows from the first: where shall we live? Kijiji, Craigslist, mls.ca. To rent or to buy? What is available? If we rent, are the owners willing to hold until the middle of March? Two weeks from when we arrive in Toronto until moving!! What to do with all that stuff? So much to consider, and all from a distance of a few thousand miles. So very distracting but so very exciting at the same time. It will be wonderful to get all of this settled and to be able to slide back into my current primary occupation of enjoying Vallarta.

On another note: my husband is much more of a gourmand than I. I have my favourites but my tastes don’t tend to stray, as do his, far afield from the basic Ontario-raised diet of meat, fish, potatoes, and veggies. I have come to enjoy sushi, Italian cuisine, and the odd fajita; Mark, on the other hand, enjoys nothing more than to sample all of the foods of any land wherein we travel – and Mexican food is one of his favourites. When we eat out here in Vallarta, as we often do, we are perforce confronted with compromise. It looks something like this: I don’t care too much where we eat so long as it is on the beach, is not desperately expensive, and, I can get something approximating my regular diet. Mark doesn’t care whether or not the place is on the beach; he doesn’t mind if it’s expensive; and, the more exotic its offerings, the better.

We ate last night at a modest little place literally right on the beach. Our white plastic table and chairs rested on the sand about thirty or forty feet from the surf. There are restaurants of various degrees of hauteur strung along the length of the malecon. Those directly on the beach are huddled at the extreme northern and southern ends, however. The southern ones tend to be either plebeian: lots of beer and rollicking good music and fun, or, of a more fine dining nature. The food is pretty good and the ambiance is lovely, but unfortunately the experience is continually interrupted by roving bands of mariachi musicians keen to play a romantic piece for you, by little kids and their moms with boxes of gum, and, by ladies or gentlemen laden with clothing, or blankets, or silver, all wanting your attention and custom. Sometimes the waiter is keen to practice his English with you or to let you know of the various tours that he can set up for you, or even, give you a chance to hear about a great new time-share offer! One begins to feel a little callous after saying, “No, gratias,” so many times.

At the extreme northern end there are only two restaurants on the beach. Neither looks especially promising, BUT, they share both the beach itself AND a fair amount of isolation from the traffic in commerce located to the south. This is the spot where the boats that are used for fishing come to rest at the end of the day. A bevy of young lads – anywhere from ten to fifteen – can be found playing soccer at the edge of the water as the day dwindles and the light begins to fail. From our table we can watch kids playing in the water, the soccer pandemonium, a couple of local feral cats disporting themselves in the sand, AND, most brilliantly, the sun as it sets over the Pacific, lighting the overhead cloud formations in shades of light pink, gradually melding into deeper and deeper stripes of rustic gold. It’s a place of deep beauty and pleasure. And, the food wasn’t at all bad. We shall return.