Mexico

Thurs. Aug. 19th

Now I'm sitting in a bedroom in a beautiful house in the jungle hillside village of Yelapa, a remote fishing town only accessible by boat, just south of Puerto Vallarta. After having arrived in Boca de Tomatlan, the jetting off place to Yelapa, where water taxis are the only transportaton, I find it has grown since my last visit two years ago. The small cove's beach is covered with umbrellas and sun chairs. We are immediately approached by vendors trying to sell us rooms for the night. "Cheaper, cheaper" they say.
We walk waist-deep in water with our bags to follow a man who shows us his "nice, cheap house". Through the muddy trail, under lush woods and flowering bushes, we arrive at a palapa. The concrete structure below supports an open upstairs flat with wooden beams and a thatched plam frond roof. A woman and her child are above, just up the tree house-like stairs. But everything is open and we decide to move onto the road to find another location.
Walking, following a stray dog's nose, we are led up through the hills to an inviting path of algae-covered stone steps, to this house where I'm now renting for the night. The stairs are exhausting! When we reach the top, a nice old woman comes out of her screen door to greet us and quote a price. $25 per night, together. We take it. Our room has tile floors, a dresser and table with a chair, two walls of widnows, one of which is only a screen, no glass. There's a fan and a view of the beautiful bay of Yelapa, fishing boats bobbing and blue ocean water mixing with the brown river that divides the beach from the town. Outside the window are native grasses, flowers, palm trees with unusual-looking orange balls the size of limes. The whistling of birds is drained out by the humming of the fan and the squeal of the cicadas. We walked down those steep and numerous stairs, through the town, across the river and onto the beach. We spend time there until it begins to rain. We again, were drenched by the pour, something of which we're beginning to grow quite accustomed. Our cliff-perched villa with balcony awaits, and the panoramic view of our little fishing village, which in the distance, awaits our private photo session.