The folks who make maps call it Punta Ipala, but that's because they can't pronounce Tehaumixtle.
It's taken ME several days to learn it, so I'm sympathetic. Andi read all about this place in the travel guide that she has been reading for a year now. This book is dog-eared and all marked up with notes and little stickers all over it. She picked this town as one of the places she most wanted to visit because of it's primitive qualities. It isn't anywhere near as pretty as Yelapa. Instead of jungle, T-town is surrounded by brush and cactus that is more like Baja than tropical Mexico. Of course, there are some coconut palms if you look around. Tehuatmixtle is a snug little bay with a few palapas at the windward end. There, just as her book promised, we met the local entrepreneur, Candelario. Candelario was full of stories about the history of the region and promised to take us the next day in his truck to see the ruins of an ancient French factory and the local hot springs. We finished out the day with a little snorkeling among the plentiful tropical fish. The next day, we met Candelario and rode off to explore inland. Most of the places had absolutely unpronounceable Nahuatl names. There were a bunch of little villages where we could see how the locals lived without the influence of tourism. Things went very slowly and people always found time to talk. We saw the remains of the old French wood factory. There wasn't much left, but the cast iron flywheels were in amazingly good shape.
Here is one of the local ladies doing the laundry in the hot springs.
Andi bathed in the hot springs - they were just tiny springs with hot water. Most of the featured events of the tour were pretty tame, but the real treasures were the people we met. Just why we came here in the first place.
And I guess that I am pretty much a city boy because I got to pet this piggy, which was a first for me. The piggy liked it too.
In case you wondered where tequila came from (I know ..... bottles!) - no, it comes from plantations of maguey (sp?) cactus like this.
No comments:
Post a Comment