Real connections between people in Sayulita
Flip-flops on the cobblestones are a mistake. I made it for my first month and I paid for it. The stones are uneven, and in the rainy season, from June to October, they get slick near the plaza. Wear closed shoes or sandals with a strap and a real sole. You will walk more than you expect, because golf carts are slow and taxis are for the long ride. Keep the flip-flops for the sand.
On a Friday evening on Playa de los Muertos I told a joke in my broken Spanish to a group of fishermen, certain nothing good would come of it. One of them laughed. Properly, wheezing, holding on to the boat. I do not know whether the joke worked or my accent did. He said, again. I said it again. He laughed harder. We have done this on six Fridays now. I have not learned any new jokes. He has not asked for any.
You rode down Calle Delfines at eight in the morning on a beach cruiser with a surfboard under your arm, and a rooster ran out of a doorway and chased you for twenty meters. You did not fall. You did not look back. I was on the corner with a smoothie, applauding with my whole face. At the beach you stopped, turned around, bowed to the rooster, who had followed you, and walked into the sea. The rooster stayed. It is there most mornings. I think he is waiting.
On a Friday at 4pm I was on a bench in San Pancho practising the same four chords when a man sat down and politely told me I was one note off. He took the ukulele, fixed it in three seconds, and gave it back. We have played together every Friday since. I am still bad, but now I am bad in tune, and I have a friend who says my playing sounds like a short walk. He is right. It sounds like a short walk to a place you have already been.
I arrived in June, so the first thing I learned was mosquitoes, and the second was that golf carts are the traffic. Not a few of them. All of it. On the cobblestones near the main plaza I stood on a corner for a full minute waiting for a gap, and a cart went by with a family, a cooler and three surfboards on the back. Nobody honked, nobody hurried. By the end of the week I had stopped looking for a crosswalk and started listening for the little electric hum, which is the real signal. Somebody will tell you this is obvious. It was not to me.
The sun was heavy on the path to Carricitos that afternoon. A man in a golf cart stopped, said, get in, and drove me the last kilometer at a walking pace so I could look at the water. He dropped me at the sand, refused money, and told me there was a spot behind the rocks with less wind. There was. I sat there for two hours. I did not see him again. I think about the cart's speed. It was the exact speed of a kindness.
I lost my glasses somewhere on the sand at Playa de los Muertos on a Wednesday morning and could not see well enough to look for them. A woman picking up shells found them in about two minutes, wiped them on her shirt and put them in my hand. She asked if the world looked better now. I said yes, and it was the nicest question anyone had asked me in weeks. Her shells were in a bucket. I wanted to give her something. I gave her a nod.
You were carrying a green surfboard across the plaza in Sayulita at noon on Sunday, and every time someone said hola you answered in a different language. I counted four. I was on the curb with a coconut, making a game of it. On the fifth hello you looked straight at me and said, bonjour. I said, hola. You laughed and kept walking, the board over your shoulder, still tallying, I think. I would like to know the sixth language. I have been practising my own.
