Travel

To Ajijic and beyond!

Ajijic, a small Mexican pueblo on the shores of Lake Chapala, is a charming place that's home to a sizable community of expats from Canada and the US. It's also the place where Efren Gonzalez makes his home and studio. 

Efren is a Mexican painter whose work depicts rich slices of

Mexican rural and small village life. Google the man, look at his paintings, buy one maybe. Definitely art worth savoring and collecting.

Chapala Lake Canoe, Efren Gonzalez, oil on canvas

Bette and Rich are friends of ours from Wisconsin (where it can get brass-monkey emasculatingly cold), who visit us almost every winter. Each year we take them to a different place in Mexico. Last time they were with us, we took them to the Monarch Butterfly Sanctuary in the highlands of Michoacán state. This year we decided to visit Patzcuaro, a  Puebla Magica, and Uruapan, both in Michoacán. On our way to pick them up at the Morelia (capital of Michoacán) airport, Mary and I spent a night in Ajijic, which is about halfway between our La Manzanilla digs and Morelia. 

We didn't have much time to explore the town, but I wanted to visit Efren's studio for sure. Attached to his studio he maintains an art supply store, and having recently dipped my brush into art creation I was eager to visit. It's what I do, a habit ... throughout my life when I get interested in something I accumulate all the paraphernalia that comes with the discipline. Dozens of blank notebooks crowd my bookshelves from when I was writing that one novel (you remember the one, right? Oh, maybe not). So far into the art foray, I have scores of brushes and pencils, sketch pads of various sizes, a little bendable wood figurine for getting poses right, acrylic paints, watercolors, easels, portable easels. The actual work? Well, whenever I'm ready, I have the equipment.

Efren's studio is on a busy side street. Unfortunately, he was just closing up, thereby saving me from dropping pesos on paints, palettes, and what-nots.

Wall of skulls

Mary and I wandered up and down narrow cobbled streets and came upon a hospital of which one wall was decorated entirely of Terracotta skulls engraved with names and dates. On the corner of the building, on a black rectangle, was written a poem by Efren. Translated, the poem reads:

living and dying

Everything that is alive will die, everything good and bad will end, everything that is strong and weak will end. Everything that breathes will have to expire, everything that has fame will be forgotten, everyone who believes himself indispensable will perish. All creators: those who sing, those who dance, those who admire, those who underestimate, those who criticize will cease to exist, and if any of them are lucky, someone will put their name on a wall and they will be remembered a little more, they will be sung, they will be danced, they will be underestimated, criticized and then finally together with the wall they will cease to exist. You will not live forever. Create a work of art for which you are remembered, do it now. You do not have much time. Say what you have to say even if you have to shout to be heard. If you must fight to defend yourself, if you need to ask for forgiveness or forgive to move forward. Eat, sing, love, drink, dance. Live, live.

Little La Manzanilla.

This is the village where Mary and I spend the winters: La Manzanilla, Jalisco, Mexico.


La Manzanilla 5-2015 from Thomas Curial on Vimeo.

How we wound up in La Manz

A few years ago, ten or twelve, I misremember, Mary, her sister (Peggy), her sister's husband (David) and I decided a wintering place would be a swell idea. At the time, we lived in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, a place people don't generally go to escape the rigors of winter. Peg and Dave lived in Sandpoint in northern Idaho, ditto to Milwaukee, except that Schweitzer Basin is just up the road so skiing is an option, plus it rarely gets to 30 below (not counting windchill).

The four of us thought of buying property in New Mexico and building a kind of family compound on it. But Mary, who is a planner and forward thinker,  reminded us that water and the lack thereof would become a big problem for the American Southwest eventually.

We'd been spending a week every January in Zihuatanejo and Ixtapa, Mexico to chase the chill from our bones. Peg and Dave decide one year that, rather than flying directly in Zihuatanejo, they'd fly into Puerta Vallarta and take a bus down from there. Along the way, they stopped to explore several villages and towns.  When they arrived at the Zihuatanejo hotel, they suggested that several of these pueblas might be just the thing for our wintering needs. La Manzanilla was near the top of their list.

The next year, Dave and I were assigned to investigate the possibility of maybe, perhaps, possibly acquiring a lot in La Manzanilla on which to build our compound. We engaged the services of a real estate agent, who chauffeured us around to view available lots and houses for sale. We only had a week to complete our reconnaissance, and on the last day the agent showed us a house (or wreck) at the end of a dirt road. Dave and I smiled insincere 'Oh, how nice' smiles but soldiered on. The agent, sensing our luke-warmness, said: 'But you have to see this!' She leaned a ladder against the house and we climbed onto the roof. Before us lay all of Tenecatita Bay and the Pacific beyond. A whale breached  in the distance. We bought the house.

'You were supposed to investigate, take pictures, report back, not BUY,' said Mary. The deed was done, however, and we had to live with it. On her first visit to the place, Mary would not enter the bathroom, even though I had spent a week the year before cleaning it up. Evidently, massive remodeling was in order, a challenge Mary engages with the relish of a parched nomad at an oasis well.

Now, finally, we are at the tail-end of the renovation work (after forty-two years together, I've learned that with Mary, there will always be projects), this is where we spend our winters:

 

And this is what we get to see almost every evening: