THE GHOST OF SEMANA SANTA

The Marina Before Dawn

April 6, 2011

Semana Santa arrived and La Cruz was still a ghost town. There were no carnival rides surrounding the plaza or church ladies selling food. The tropical drink cart was nowhere to be seen. Alcohol sales had been prohibited. Roadblocks had been put up to keep vacationers away from the coast and it seemed to be working.

Sunrise Over the Bay

Malecon at Daybreak

Daylight savings time had finally come to Mexico, so it was pleasantly dark and cool for my morning walk around the marina. I walked the half mile from my house to the marina and then did two laps from the tip of one breakwater to the end of the other, for a total of nearly 4.5 miles, before heading home. It was nice not to have to rush down to the marina to catch the dawn. My first lap was actually completed in the dark.

I was craving real bread, so decided to try to make a sourdough starter. I looked up the directions online and put the ingredients together. All it required was flour and water. The yeast would come from the flour and the air.

Security Gate After Application of Paint

Security Gate Before

Later that day, I reinstalled all the chicken wire and fabric on the gates. Then I started painting the security gate on the front door. It was quite rusty and needed painting badly. It went a lot faster than the fence, having a much simpler pattern with fewer curlicues.

April 7, 2020

Neighborhood with Moon

Tuesday morning, I got adventurous and ran up the new highway that led to Punta Mita. I had never gone that way before. It was very dark and hard to see where I was putting my feet. While it was a new road and mostly smooth, they were laying some sort of cable and had dug a trench along the shoulder. I had to watch out for piles of rocks and tree branches that leaped out of nowhere. Fortunately, there wasn't much traffic, so I didn't worry about getting flattened. The shoulder was wide. I ran about 5 km until I came to the turnoff for Destiladeras and then turned back. The sun was coming up over the bay as I ran back down the hill. It seemed strange to see the condo buildings at Alamar from the back side, since I had been looking at the front for seven years.

Alamar from the Back Side

Countryside Along the Highway

Sourdough Starter

My sourdough starter had found its yeast and was starting to bubble. I fed it more flour and water and left it to stew.

I had decided that, if I was going to be stuck in my La Cruz house, it was time to get comfortable. I really needed a comfortable chair. Our couch was just a futon and the back sloped off at an awkward angle. We had no armchairs. I had looked for chairs online, but most of them were either not available for delivery to our area or came from China and were backordered at least until May. The best I could find was a large beanbag chair filled with shredded memory foam.

The Beanbag Upon Arrival

The box arrived on Tuesday. I let it sit outside in the sun for a couple of hours before bringing it in. It took a while for the chair to fluff up. It came packed in a giant plastic bag. I used that to clean up all the leaves in front of the house. It was so huge that I could barely hump it down the street to the trash collection point.

Yardwork done, I made chile rellenos for dinner. I dearly love chile rellenos, it is always a pain to roast and peel them. I have given up on ever being able to beat egg whites without an electric mixer, so my chiles are always a bit ugly. Enchilada sauce is not available in Mexico, so I had to make my own. While blenders will not beat egg whites, they do a bang up job of pureeing tomatoes and onions. The enchilada sauce turned out fine.

Roasting Chiles

Full Moon Over the Marina

I was having a pretty good day until I heard that John Prine had died from COVID-19. His was the first death that mattered to me, personally, and I took it hard. There was a beautiful, full moon that seemed to be shining just for him. I stayed up late, writing a song for him. It helped a little, but I was still sad for his loss and the loss of everything else that had evaporated when this pandemic struck.

April 8 - 10, 2020

Wednesday began with another lovely walk in the marina. The full moon was still up and made the lighting even more dramatic than usual. I went a little later so that I could stop by the grocery store on my way home to buy bananas and mineral water. It was always bananas that sent me to the store, whether I was in California or Nayarit. I put on a mask before entering the store and the cashier was wearing one, too. The other customers were not.

Birds Were Out Walking, Too

Mural Depicting the Couple Who Live There

I spent a large part of the day practicing and recording the song I had written the night before. I didn't get it perfect, but I wanted to post it while the fact of John Prine's death was still raw. From all the posts on Facebook, it seemed like a lot of people were grieving.

Marina Lights

Thursday was a lost day. Having finished painting the security gate, I decided to take a break from painting. I couldn't make myself get up to run. I did almost nothing except eat, sleep, and watch Cheko's livestream in the evening.

Extreme Low Tide in the Marina

I started Friday with another walk in the marina. The tide was exceptionally low. A couple of guys were launching a small boat from the beach. I walked back through the town to enjoy the new murals that had been painted while I was in Zihuatanejo.

Marina Palms at Dawn

Launching a Boat from the Beach

Mural on the La Cruz Inn

The citizens of La Cruz had taken it upon themselves to set up a roadblock to keep holiday revelers out of town. Everything was very, very quiet.

April 11 – 12, 2020

Deserted Highway to Bucerias

Saturday morning, I ran to Bucerias and back. Alcohol sales had been prohibited and the beer store was shuttered. I had been in Chiapas during the rioting that followed the deregulation of gasoline and I had seen Oxxos looted and closed, but I had ever seen a Modelorama closed. It was eerie.

Sunrise Over Bucerias

Shuttered Beer Store

I had intended to take the weekend off from painting, but by Saturday afternoon I was washing the window bars in preparation for painting them.

Sunday was quiet. I celebrated by painting the window bars on the front of the house. I was glad that Semana Santa was officially over without our ever having been inundated with tourists. We did have one incident over the holiday. Two wealthy women from Guadalajara who had tested positive for COVID-19 arrived at their fancy condo near Destiladeras. Authorities got wind of this and quarantined the entire complex (220 residents and employees) for fourteen days. The irresponsible parties that caused the whole situation ended up escaping by helicopter. Authorities in Nayarit were powerless to do anything about it. I was just glad they had taken their virus and gone back to Jalisco. I felt bad for everyone trapped in the quarantine who didn't have a helicopter at their disposal.