Cacaluta Turkey Buzzards

Buzzards. Turkey buzzards. Vultures. Our end of Cacaluta was alive with them. When I first stepped out on the beach, a bunch of them stood sentinel on every post by the park sign. Sinister looking things. The colony was down by our end, surrounding a black swamp lake, probably living off whatever the alligators left behind.




Mike swam out to a boat that dropped a couple off on shore and chatted with the pilot in Spanish. The pilot believed the swine flu epidemic was the will of God. He had some apocalyptic notions of retribution for sin. Dead is dead for whatever reason but the boatman took some twisted comfort from believing it was God’s decree.

I took a walk from our end of the beach to the other. It took much longer than I expected. Cacaluta must be quite a bit longer than Zipolite. You can see why developers would imagine this as a kickass place to have deluxe all-inclusive hotels. For now, I like it just the way it is.

A flat round fish with sharp looking fangs and fins had been tossed on to the high sand by a big wave with no hope in hell of getting back. I’m not usually over concerned with the welfare of animals. It gave me a despairing wave of a flipper to show he was still alive. I make it a point not to touch wild animals and I didn’t like the spiky look of his fins so I took my shirt off to scoop him up and drag him into the water. Those teeth latched on to the life line of polyester, delivered all the way across the globe from Korea, and held tight while I picked him up, ran to the water and heaved him almost past the breakers. It looked for a while as if the Pacific was going to toss him right back but he made it.

Around the bend was a dead puffer fish, long past saving. I’d done my good deed of the year. God’s will as the man in the boat would have said.

This second stretch of the beach is the longest and much longer than it looks as there is nothing to give a perspective of size to the rocks at the far end. I walked to the end by the rocks, remembering how, back in 2002, I had attempted to reach Playa Maguey by climbing around the craggy shore. There was the spot where I’d been forced to climb up into the bushes, a deep wet cleft requiring a two foot vertical leap for the next available handhold. The more I thought of it, the more I realized a cracked skull with one fatal slip on the slippery stone was almost a certainty whereas death by snake bite in the bushes was a fractional possibility. I chose the bogeyman over the real danger, fought my way through the bushes and came back out on to the rocks, with only minor cuts and scratches from thorns. Onward.

By luck that day, there were three young guys further ahead collecting oysters from the rocks. My first thought was the hope that they were cool because, if they weren’t, I could be in serious trouble where no one could hear my death struggle over the crash of the waves. They were great. As soon as they realized what I was trying to do, they got all excited and managed to explain by pantomime that the cracked skull I’d avoided so far was just a matter of time if i didn´t turn back. What I didn’t know was that the bends ahead just kept coming. If I had managed to avoid injury, I still would never have made my destination before nightfall. The whole spit of rock was one giant crooked finger that couldn’t be seen all at once.

They were ready to go and I was to go with them. Being much younger and more nimble than I was, they scampered lightly down the wet cleft with a drop. When I headed for my tried and tested bushwhacking route, they didn’t like it and warned me there could be snakes in there. I looked down the face of the cleft. Well, at least this time, there was someone to pull my remains out of the water. It wasn’t a problem. Two of the boys held their clasped hands together for me to step on and they lowered me to safety like an elevator.

Back at the beach, we searched for a hidden trailhead amongst the clumps of alders. One patch of sand with stunted trees looked the same as any other but eventually we found the shirt left behind as a landmark and were on our way through the jungle forest, stopping by a swampy lagoon where the boys pointed out some alligators. I couldn’t actually see them. Those things are almost impossible to spot. They look like rotten logs or part of the mud. When I finally saw them in Chiapas on the Canon Sumidero boat tour, it was like those strange 3D pictures in the 90s where you had to stare at a psychedelic design until, wham, they just leapt out at you. Alligators are like that. I could have sat on one before I even knew I was close. The boys knew what to look for and they could see them. Good enough for me. I was warned against going through there at night as it was especially dangerous then. I couldn’t imagine myself doing anything like that.

The trail took us about 15 minutes. It wasn’t as clearly marked as the one I took last Tuesday and we had to stop and discuss different turning points; another reason I wouldn’t be exploring the wild by moonlight. We came out by the fork in the road between Maguey and Cacaluta and split up. I never saw them again.
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The tide was coming up quite high when I turned back to where I had started. More fish had been pounded on to shore and the buzzards were eating well. They went for the eyes first. The rest would have to ripen a bit more in the sun. There was even a land mammal that must have crawled too close to shore and drowned before being thrown back out. I think it was one of those raccoon/anteater/mutant rat hybrids but it was hard to tell. If there had been a snout, it had been the appetizer or maybe some flat round fish with sharp teeth like the one I’d rescued earlier had got to it first. Just the stripped skull and sun bloated torso remained.




Of course I got my camera. Matt and Mike had already taken off but not before moving all my belongings to a high and dry spot and throwing a bag over my water to keep it reasonably cool.

Everyone was gone, including the four people who showed up with a home made shelter. Just me. Not another soul on this big beautiful beach. Dang. It was eerie. Me and all those buzzards pecking away at the soft spots. If I got too close with the camera, they would back off to let me have the next bite. They weren’t up to fighting for their food except with each other and they seemed to have a definite set of rules amongst themselves about the order.

The tide was high. Some brown scum floated in from somewhere. Maybe the pounding of the water brought it up from the bottom. There was a strong smell of sulphur. I got ready to leave. Two very hopeful buzzards looked down on me from the rocks above, keeping a close eye on the state of my health.

Not a bad day for a Tuesday. It’s good to be alive.

Dang! Youtube disabled my chosen soundtrack for this video over the obvious copyright issue. Somehow I doubt the deceased Karen Carpenter would be too upset about being cheated out of her percentage of nothing. So, do yourselves a favor and play "(They Long to Be) Close to You" by the Carpenters while you watch.

Road to Cacaluta

Tuesday was the first of the pandemic days. I found a message on my phone that morning from the night before. Cacaluta. 8:30. The idea was inspired. The time was a tad ambitious. I had breakfast, packed all my things and was on the road by 10:30ish. It’s not good to wait too long. The sun gets intense.


Cacaluta is quite the beach but we rarely go there because it isn’t the easiest to get to. Once you get to the park gate just down from the fork to Playa Maguey, it’s another 3 km over a rough road through the woods with a fair bit of beach sand to spin your tires on. That’s why most visitors arrive on ATVs or get dropped off by boat.

For me, the toughest part of the trek was the first major hill. I didn’t even try to tackle it. I just got off and walked the bike. It was way too early in the day to grunt my way up a steep mountain and this was the kind of trip that made you wonder if 2.5 litres of water was going to be enough.

I’d heard that Cacaluta was pegged for hotel development. The proof is there. Road improvements have begun. It’s only smooth dirt for now but the road has been doubled in width. Big concrete pipes for drainage are lined up on the side. That doesn’t mean it’s all going to happen overnight. It could be years ahead.

I came close to a serious wrong turn when I saw the sign that reads “Tanque Cacaluta”, pointing to the right.
I almost took it but it didn’t feel right. I came this way back in 2002 by taxi and it didn’t feel the same. Besides, I didn’t know what “tanque” meant. I still don’t. I was heading for Playa Cacaluta; close but not quite the same. My instincts were right. Just down the next hill was the fork was the fork for Maguey and Cacaluta. This was what I remembered. Don’t forget this if you ever pass this way.


The gate isn’t much further ahead.
Fortunately for me, there is a man working there in the shade behind a shack. Saul advised me to hop off the bike and take the trail straight through the woods instead of the 3 km. I was a bit dubious. Sure looked jungley in there. Saul assured me there were no snakes , which I didn’t believe for a second. I almost stepped on my first snake at UMAR last week, right on a red brick walkway. There are snakes in these woods. Whether or not they’re timid skinny yellow things like the one that ran for its life from me or twelve foot Mexican South Pacific rattlesnakes like the one stuffed in attack mode at the ROM in Toronto is all that really matters. I took Saul’s assurance to mean my chances of dying were slim. Much as I prefer 100% guarantees, I took the trail. I can be a fraidy cat but I try not to let it stop me from doing things. I took this pic of Saul before stepping in, possibly the last person I would ever see.


In I went.


If a snake wanted to get me, there was very little I could do about it. There were a lot of coiled and twisted vines, branches and roots in there, many of which looked like huge motionless snakes. This one was my favourite.
I approached it carefully, waiting for any sign of movement.

Besides the rustle of salamanders in the dry leaves and the music of the birds, I heard a larger animal crashing through the brush. Not moose or bear large, maybe something knee-high, probably with claws and teeth.
It was only a ten minute hike, fairly easy going with only the occasional stump or fallen tree to lift the bike over. Just before breaking out of the woods, there’s an old barb wire fence just a few more steps away from a wide open field and a small house. From there, you pass through a mango plantation and rejoin the road that others would have taken from the gate near its end.






I knew my friends were there. I’d passed their scooters back a bit but Cacaluta looked deserted. Way down by the rocks, I finally spotted some very tiny people playing Frisbee. They had set up camp between some rocks for shade.



Cacaluta feels like the end of the earth, especially when no one else is there. These pictures show less than half of its convex spear shape.

Pay Day Will Come

UMAR is empty except for iguanas and security guards at the gate. We’re getting paid and don’t have to go to work. The word came to vacate on Monday afternoon. The students had already left and Mike was entertaining us in the air conditioned comfort of the Auto Accesso lab with a fun game for the classroom. The place was a ghost town within five minutes.

Luckily for me and my students, all of our midterm exams have been completed, except for a very few no-shows who I will be glad to take care of when we get back. Let’s hope their reasons for not arriving weren’t too serious. Now I have all the time in the world to get that marking done. When we all get back, I’ll be ready to print off the results for administration and carry on where we left off.

Tomorrow is pay day and not a minute too soon. Since discovering myself with 400 pesos total last Saturday, outside of my emergency funds, I have been living in austerity. I made the mature decision to pay 300 of that right away on the power bill. If they cut you off, you have to pay a substantial fine to get hooked up again and, besides, you don’t have power for a while and that’s not fun. OK. 100 pesos for a week. Ulp. Well, I have food in the cupboard, power and lots of clean drinking water. That shouldn’t be too hard. There is a welcoming dinner party for Li from China on Thursday, just in time. But a spontaneous dinner and drinks affair came up for someone’s birthday yesterday. I definitely had to bail on that one. One more day.

Today the unexpected happened. I ran out of gas. If I was tough, I would just go without coffee tomorrow morning. But I’m not. Neither am I ready to break down and hit the Canadian funds. I have been working here since January and it’s high time I had some new localized emergency funds put away. I have to live within my means. So I’m bombing up to school to get that coffee machine I bought for the office. I can use it as a kettle until the money arrives in the bank and get the gas tank replaced. Maybe I’ll find some loose pesos on my desk. I’m short exactly one peso for a pack of smokes and I’ve already dug between the couch cushions.

Look what I just found under the cushion of my desk chair. I’m going to invest this in cigarettes.

When I said I had plenty of food, I never imagined myself eating cold chicken soup or cold spaghetti sauce over dry uncooked noodles. I am so close to making it until pay day. I can’t give up now. Aw shoot. I just heard the “awooogh” of the gas truck. Nothing I can do about it.
Off to school again.
Here are two good reasons helmets are such a good idea in Crucecita.


Alright. Normally hidden wildlife is out enjoying the peace and quiet of a deserted campus. These pheasants didn’t even cluck away from me.






It turns out that maintenance staff and some clerical workers have been left behind. They must be classed as essential services. With so little work to do, these ladies went overboard on the cleaning, even arranging the loose papers on my desk in a neat pile with a paper clip. I was so impressed.

Acid Toes

For the past two months I've had an annoying problem with cracked and sore skin between my toes. It comes and goes and even almost disappeared for good after a week at Zipolite during Semana Santa so I'm thinking the problem starts from the heat and my choice of footwear. Zipolite has softer sand than any of the beaches here in Huatulco but more importantly, I'm bare foot most of the time there. Here at school, I'm wearing shoes and they get pretty swampy by the end of the day. I'm making it a point to take them off in the classroom now but I usually forget.

I'm fairly zen with the heat down here. It doesn't really bother me that much but I sweat an incredible amount. Lunch hour is from one o'clock to four. I change from the shirt and tie to shorts, short sleeved shirt and sneakers for the ride back and forth on my bike. The ride back in the afternoon is the hottest. Best to avoid carrying anything on the back for that trip. I don't sweat too much until I reach the school and then, as soon as I drink my my first half liter of water, it all gushes out my pores like a cartoon character shot full of bullet holes. Every inch of me is slick. My clothes are saturated. A quick washdown in the bathroom, a change of clothes and I'm ready to go. For all that, I don't think I even smell that horrendous. A minimum of three cold showers a day goes a long way.

Every time I have one of those full body sweats, I think of all the toxins that must be being purged. Here's hoping that will give me an extra edge of protection against this potential pandemic of swine flu.

I first heard about it from Mike last Friday. I was giving exams last Thursday and Friday and I was suddenly more aware of how many of my students were sniffly with colds. This is not unexpected. Lots of students get sick around exam time. They stay up late trying to catch up on everything at the 11th hour. Their immune systems drop and little flus circulate everywhere. But Friday, after hearing the news from Mike, I noticed every little cough, especially how many of them used their exam papers to cover their big fat wet sneezes.

Once all the exams are finished, the pressure is on to get them all marked and the grades passed in to the head office so I took them all home with me on the weekend. And never touched them. I watched movies and went to the beach instead. Which is fine because that will give all the sneezes of death a chance to dry up and die. And the pressure is off as well. Students have been sent home all over the country. UMAR just got the word today. This could be for a long time. I can take my time. I'm just glad the exams are finished and we can all have a fresh start when we get back. Until further word, teachers and support staff will remain on the job but it's a much safer job for everyone now that the crowds of students aren't around. Here's hoping all of our students return safely, happy and healthy.


I finally made it to one of the prime beaches for seclusion last Sunday, Playa Violin. I've heard good things about it from others before and even went looking for it one day but failed. This time my friends were there ahead of me and their scooters marked the trail. It's a well hidden place that not too many people know about.

The trail is a bit steep and slippery with that fine mountain sand that turns into wrestling mud at the first drop of rain. Definitely inaccessible in the rainy season. There is an official park sign on the shore but no indication of anything by the road. It's one of the beaches that gets most of its traffic from charter tour boats and lucky locals such as ourselves.

When I first arrived, there were only my friends there, splashing and tossing a frisbee, like it was our private beach. We had the place to ourselves for hours. I looked around for some obvious reson for the name of the place, like a musical curve to the shore but there wasn't anything like that. A cave on the left, beyond where it would be wise to swim, gets a big wave now and again and spits it back out harder that it went in. Matt thinks it might make a musical note under certain current and wind conditions. We'll see. This won't be our last trip there.



Not much else to say. We did the expected: swam; snorkeled; maintained our intake of fluids and took lots of underwater pictures. That doesn't mean a ton of those pictures turned out. It's hard to even tell if the camera is turned on sometimes. I kept diving to take a video of these manta rays and people were diving to provide a bit of motion but the camera was set to compact mode and everything came out like an old vhs tape printed from an overexposed print.




Alright. Just got the word. We've all been released from work (with pay) until at least the sixth of May. It seems the Mexican government is taking this health situation very seriously. But don't worry about this kid. I lived through SARS in Toronto and I'll be sweating like crazy every time I get on my bike.
Adios. Good health to all

All Laptops Go to Heaven

Life is rather sweet on the south Pacific coast of Mexico but little inconveniences will come up. My old Toshiba is almost dead. It's on life support for now. I can take it to the beach and run it on battery power and not worry too much about little sand storms or opportunistic thieves for that matter. No more real harm can be done. That poor little dinosaur served me well for three years of hard use in five different countries from Canada to Mexico, to Korea, to Thailand, back to Korea, back to Mexico, on to Guatemala and back again to its final resting place in Huatulco. If it could be fixed, I'd take care of it out of sentimentality but it can't be and it's an impractical idea. I now have a shiny new Hewlett Packard with 320 GB and more gadgets than I'll ever find time to master. There's a webcam so I could potentially talk to someone on the screen like the Jetsons. Jet packs must be just around the corner. I spotted this model at Telmex here in Huatulco for 14,399 pesos, one and a half month's pay. I can only withdraw so much in a day here so I waited almost two weeks to buy it. When I got back to the store, the price had mysteriously risen to 17,899. All prices and specs were still posted on the screens just like the first time except for the one I showed interest in. The saleswoman did s lot of typing on the computer and gave me a sheet with the new price. The smell of rat was strong and I walked away. The only thing left to do was to take a trip to Oaxaca City where I found the same model at the price I remembered. It's a 12 hour trip so there went my weekend. I got into town just nicely after dawn. With about 18,000 pesos in my wallet, I considered taking a cab for the short walk to the zocalo but the first cab driver demanded 100 pesos (it should be 20) and I thought getting into a car with anyone that larcenous would defeat the purpose of playing safe so I ended up walking. Mission accomplished, I had a lot of time to kill before the next bus back. There weren't any day buses for some reason. Oaxaca was beautiful as always. I spotted this intriguing building with my university logo on a plaque. It was locked up pretty tight. I wonder what the connection is. Been meaning to ask someone. I read a book in the park until the sun went down and camped out at the bus station. Strange places, bus stations. I could hardly keep my eyes open. Some drunk guy sitting across me walked over and sat right beside me. I'll never know what he was on about. Played with his cellphone a bit, apparently having problems and then muttered at me in Spanish and showed me a list of women's names. I shrugged. "no habla..." That usually gets me off the hook with dubious pesky strangers but not always. He kept pesking and I kept shrugging. Eventually he left. Another sketchy guy outside stuck his hand out for a handshake he didn't get and tried to convince me we'd met in some place I'd never heard of. I gave him no encouragement. I think I've filled my quota for scammy strangers for a while. So now, I have this great new toy with a gimmicky fingerprint scan, saving me an entire two seconds of typing in a code.