Christmas Eve on the island of Mexcaltitan in the State of Nayarit; what an experience! Evidence is beginning to indicate that this is the island where the Aztecs originated and from which, in1116, they started their 200year migration to Tenochtitlan. Needless to say, we all know how that ended. In the little local museum on the island, they have a codex detailing the story of that migration; allow yourself a couple of hours if you're going to try to follow the history depicted there, it's quite interesting but takes patience. Part of the uniqueness of this place, is the absence of traffic, no vehicles, no way for them to get there, and no way they could be utilized if they could get there. The roads were built for foot traffic during the dry season and boat traffic during the rainy season. The island floods at that time, thus they like to call themselves the "Venice" of Mexico, although, I must say that Venice has a bit more art, architecture and culture than Mexcaltitan, but then, who's com-paring?There's a Catholic church in the village on the plaza, just as there should be in a proper Mexican town. The church seats under a hundred people, so Christmas Eve they held services one right after the other until everyone was able to get in to attend their Christmas Mass. Since Mexico has a scarcity of priests, we wondered about the availability of priests in such a remote little village, but that night there were three priests serving mass!! There was a crèche on the altar, and during the mass, a doll representing the Baby Jesus was carried in and installed in the crib; naturally, this had to be undone and redone for each mass, accompanied by the worst childrens' choir that I've ever ex-perienced. But, never mind, the whole thing was so interesting that I would not have missed it for anything, mournful singing and all.
Mexcaltitan is an island among fresh-water estuaries; so consequently, it's a veritable bird san-ctuary. We were only there overnight, but I imagine if one stayed for a few days, you would see all sorts of birds. As it was, we saw: herons, egrets, corm-orants, jays, buzzards, various species of gulls, frigate birds, boat-billed herons (I think), what I thought were wood ibises but may have been jabirus, which I've never heard of, but are found in that area, naturally, thousands of boat-tailed grackles, ducks of all kinds, and so many other birds that I can't remember them all. If you're interested in bird life, that's the place to go for a few days. Because there are thousands of acres of mango groves,
both red and white, the fish life is as prolific as the bird life, and in fact, supports the bird pop-ulation for the most part. Personally, I can vouch for the crab life since I had a few of them for dinner done in a tomato sauce, just slightly picante, they were fresh out of the water and delicious.
The afternoon of Christmas Eve, someone butchered two young pigs right next door to my hotel room while I was trying to catch a nap. As you can well imagine, the squealing was horrific. I watched them clean and cut up the meat from the window of my room. Obviously, someone had roast pork for Christmas dinner, in fact, quite a few someones. Speaking of the hotel, we could find no information about accommodations on the island until we actually arrived there; in fact, were told in Tepic that there was no hotel (they were almost right). Thus, we packed our belongings onto the launch, which took us from the mainland without knowing if there would be a place to stay or not. Upon landing, we hired a couple of local boys who carried our bags and guided us to the "hotel". Finding no one in evidence, we wandered out back and roused the owner/manager out of a hammock to rent us two rooms for the night. If you're looking for an actual definition of "laid back",
I think we found it.
