Living Without Borders

In Manzanillo with Ken Kesey

March 22nd, 2008

Be sure to read Lawrence Downes’ piece in the travel section of the New York Times (from which comes the illustration above. My favorite paragraph:

But Manzanillo then was jungle outpost, a nowhere port town on a two-lane road from Guadalajara. It was a place where a gringo — even a famous novelist gringo accompanied by family and friends, an abundant supply of drugs and an International Harvester school bus covered in Day-Glo paint and blaring music from a sophisticated loudspeaker system — could reasonably expect to hide out for a while.

Interest in Manzanillo remains extremely high. People interested in homes in Mazatlan and Puerto Vallarta often mention Manzanillo also, along with better known Pacific Coast locations like Acapulco. But Downes’ access to novelist Robert Stone’s memories makes his article extra special and worth the 3 full pages.

“In the moments after dawn, before the sun had reached the peaks of the sierra, the slopes and valleys of the rain forest would explode in green light, erupting inside a silence that seemed barely to contain it. When the sun’s rays spilled over the ridge, they discovered dozens of silvery waterspouts and dissolved them into smokey rainbows. …

“All of us, stoned or otherwise, caught in the vortex of dawn, would freeze in our tracks and stand to, squinting in the pain of the light, sweating, grinning.

“We called that light Prime Green; it was primal, primary, primo.”

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Entry Filed under: Living in Mexico, Guadalajara, Mazatlán, Comparing Cultures, News from Mexico