Travels with Nikki

When we humans travel internationally, we investigate health hazards, documentation requirements, security precautions, currency exchange rates, climate variances and dietary differences; and all that just for an extended weekend. If our travel happens to include the family pet, then planning becomes a tad more complicated.

When Diana and I relocated to Yelapa two years ago, our plans included transporting our three year old English Shepherd, Nikki. I researched the requirements. Our carrier of choice, Alaska Airlines, offered extensive information regarding the importation of domestic animals into Mexico. The checklist was complete and concise. I followed it with engineered exactitude. It required the following: the procuring of an approved travel crate, current vaccinations including rabies, a veterinarian’s signed statement on letterhead as to the animal’s overall health and a photo copy of the practitioner’s actual state license. The airlines required confirmed passage twenty-four hours before departure and a fee. In the case of Alaska Airlines, we were alerted that Nikki would be traveling in a pressure/climate controlled environment. We deposited her two hours prior to departure and reclaimed her in Puerto Vallarta within thirty minutes of our arrival.

At some point within the next few weeks, Nikki and I will travel to San Diego to link up with Diana, and assist in welcoming the first grandchild (a daughter). Once again, I began my research into required documentation for Nikki’s return to the USA. A quick online visit to Alaska Airlines merely identified a link to the CDC regarding importation of animals into the USA. After plowing through countless pages on their mega site, I located a reference to individual state’s Veterinary Services Department. Next stop, state of California VSD; the only documentation referenced was the requirement for a rabies vaccination within the prior twelve months. An email sent to confirm this single issue resulted in a response which referred me in turn to the CDC website. Arg! 

Yesterday morning, Nikki and I were off on an early morning panga to PV, a walk down the Malecon, a taxi to Pitillal to the veterinarian--two shots, a return taxi to Los Muertos Pier and a return panga to Yelapa. We opened the door to Casa Azul at 12:21 pm, roughly five hours after our departure.  Health Certificate in hand evidencing current rabies vaccination, we are now armed for imminent departure.

Traveling is stressful; with a pet--doubly so. Allow plenty of time to do your homework regarding the requirements both outbound and inbound. If you are going for a brief stay, consider leaving bowzer/fluffy at home with a sitter or in a kennel. Maybe they would like a break too. Give it some thought!!!     

Commercial Break

Mention Nikki’s name and get one hour free**Some restrictions apply (e.g. you have to rent it for two hours first) Still not a bad deal. All paddles have been treated with a new lightening repellent spray. I have not had a single client struck by lightning since introducing this product. You’re in good hands with Memo. Call 322 146 5064. Happy paddling.

The Sun and I

Each summer visitors head to Mexico to enjoy the beautiful beaches, the warm water and, of course, the cold beer. Each summer a significant percentage of visitors manage to ruin the balance of their well-deserved vacations based upon what they do in the first few hours. Allow me to illustrate. John/Mary Smith arrive in PV (Puerto Vallarta) late morning. They departed the gloom of somewhere to enjoy all that Vallarta has to offer. Following a shuttle to their beachfront hotel, they check in; sprint into their swim suits and head for the pool. There they will lounge for the next few hours. Their sunny afternoon will be punctuated with intermittent swim-up excursions to the pool bar and time spent cradled in the pool side furniture. Circa 5 p.m. they contemplate returning to their room to shower and plan their first night out. As they re-enter the lobby, they are aware that the air conditioned environment fails to comfort them. They remove their dark glasses and stare at each other in horror. You have observed this scenario, right? Perhaps even participated in it, perhaps? The next few days, for this couple, will vividly demonstrate the adage of literally what a couple of ounces of prevention could have cured.

SPF (sun protective factor) and UVA/UVB (ultra violet A/B rays) are forces to be reckoned with. In preparation for writing this piece, I visited several technical websites. Here are their summarized recommendations. Acquire sunglasses which afford 99-100% UVA/UVB protection. Purchase sunscreen (the term sunblock is not allowed in the USA) with an SPF 30+. The container should include the phrase “Broad Spectrum.” This means that protection is afforded against both types of ultra-violet rays. 

Use these guidelines when applying sunscreen:

1.  Apply initial coating 30 minute before exposure.

2.  Re-apply 30 minutes after initial exposure.

3.  Re-apply after swimming, sweating or wiping

4.  Re-apply every two hours that you are exposed

Our visitors to Yelapa could benefit dramatically from adhering to the process identified above. Bear in mind that the UV rating changes throughout the day. If you arrive at the beach mid-morning when it is cool, the UV rating is likely to be around 4 (Moderate Risk). As mid-day arrives that reading approaches 11 (Extreme Risk); levels of 13 are not uncommon. Avoid the agony of being ill prepared. Enough said.  

    

The following table was prepared by the EPA.

UV index	Description	Media graphic color	Recommended protection
0–2	Low danger from the sun's UV rays for the average person	Green	Wear sunglasses on bright days; use sunscreen if there is snow on the ground, which reflects UV radiation, or if you have particularly fair skin.
3–5	Moderate risk of harm from unprotected sun exposure	Yellow	Take precautions, such as covering up, if you will be outside. Stay in shade near midday when the sun is strongest.
6–7	High risk of harm from unprotected sun exposure	Orange	Wear sunglasses and use SPF 30+ sunscreen, cover the body with sun protective clothing and a wide-brim hat, and reduce time in the sun from three hours before to three hours after solar noon.
8–10	Very high risk of harm from unprotected sun exposure	Red	Wear SPF 30+ sunscreen, a shirt, sunglasses, and a hat. Do not stay out in the sun for too long.
11+	Extreme risk of harm from unprotected sun exposure	Violet	Take all precautions, including: wear sunglasses and use SPF 30+ sunscreen, cover the body with a long-sleeve shirt and trousers, wear a very broad hat, and avoid the sun from three hours before until three hours after solar noon.

Commercial Break

Last week’s special continues: rent two kayaks for three hours at 100p each/hour and gain the use of a third kayak for the same period absolutely free. To check availability and schedule, call Memo @ 322 146 5064 (cell). Happy paddling.             

Country cousin/City cousin

Yelapa opens its piers, beaches and palapa doors to visitors year round. The surge occurs between November and April; the weather is perfect, the skies are clear and total tropical immersion is just a margarita away. As summer takes root in May, the surge diminishes to a trickle not unlike the town waterfall, and locals settle in for what we ironically call “the dry” season. The May/June time frame offers a dramatic reminder that our tourist-based economy, like our environment, is fragile. All but a handful of restaurants batten their hatches and the village retreats to survival mode.

July ushers in the winding down of the academic year. Several graduations require planning. Countless family parties demand organizing, purchasing and scheduling. The last activity, scheduling, is the most rigorous as it would be unforgivable to schedule your event at the same moment as another. No doubt, somewhere on a living room wall in Yelapa is a pert diagram which tracks all such happenings. By the Friday punctuating mid-July, the party pandemonium ceases. Parents and god-parents sigh in relief.

Mexican parents’ vacations, like those elsewhere in the world, are determined/defined by their children’s holidays from school. For the ensuing six weeks, the bulk of our visitors will be Mexican families. Their stay involves but a few days or a weekend and back they trek. They populate the main beach, drink beer from imported coolers and spend relatively little money. A trickle continues from across the border, or even the border beyond, but they are few.

There is yet another genre of visitor who ventures to Yelapa. Allow me to digress. It is a fact that each one of the four founding family elders was born into a family which bore between nine and eleven siblings. That generation replicated the family size into which they had grown. The following generation tended to downsize by roughly fifty percent but remained sizable none the less. Now, where is all this Mexican genealogical math going? It is intended to enhance your understanding of the feeling of community existent in our village. Without stretching too far, one quickly extrapolates that virtually everyone is related, even distantly, to everyone else. As family members departed Yelapa for the allure of the big city or just to flee, they continued to procreate. The resulting point of all this is that those family members, along with their broods, return throughout the summer. The children are easy to spot as they are attired in bright new shirts, shorts, and shoes. I call them “the city cousins.” They speak more rapidly, and appear uncomfortable at the lack of street lights or designated crossing zones. There is a discernible absence of their previously ever-accompanying parent. Approaching motos (quads) startle them and cause them to run away. Their hosts, the local kin, “country cousins” are initially entertained by these foreign antics but will over time share the requisite survival skills. Hornos and barbeques dormant for months are scoured and reactivated. A plethora of cooking aromas arise throughout the village. It is a time for celebrating the family. Perhaps the following Monday or sometime mid-week, the visiting parents all manage to slip away silently and unceremoniously. You see where this is headed, right? 

All the progeny stay for another two weeks or so. Let me convey the scope. I live at ground zero for the largest family clan in Yelapa. As I write, there are at least five “country cousins” engaged with a like number of “city cousins.” The game of choice appears to be chase. They chase the chickens in the yard across the path. They chase the garobos which venture out of the numerous rock piles. They chase a pair of squirrels which dart overhead from branch to branch. When nothing else moves, and generally as a last resort, they chase each other. All the while squealing with joy, shadowed by barking dogs and accented by nervous chickens cackling and roosters crowing. It is a cacophony which repeats itself perhaps in a hundred village households each day. It assaults my definition of tranquility. But alas, I remain, on occasion, a stranger in what is, on occasion, a strange land.   

Commercial Break

Call Memo for this week’s special 322 146 5064 (cell). May I suggest you call earlier versus later? If I have to walk down to the playita in the middle of the day, the special tends to get less special. You know what I mean? Happy paddling.           

Fortune

Nearly two years ago, my wife, Diana, and I were enjoying dinner at our then favorite restaurant El Cerrito. The owner, a close personal friend, supervised four waiters who were driven to provide excellent service. One clearly stood above the rest. He didn’t depart with your order, he sped; he didn’t leisurely ascend and descend the four steps leading away from the dining patio, he appeared to vault in both directions. He discussed in detail our dining options, the ingredients and method of preparation. We returned to his station frequently. When El Cerrito closed unexpectedly in mid-March, Ray Vazquez walked a hundred meters down the street, leased the vacant space at Shambhala and was up and running in less than two weeks. The rest is culinary history.

In the intervening months, we consumed countless margaritas, innumerable delicacies yet even more importantly we garnered the friendship of the family (Ray, Alexa, Violeta). We now discern the furrowed brow which proclaims that the moment is not appropriate to joke with Ray, we shared the pain of Violeta’s extended undiagnosed intestinal disorder that debilitated her without notice, and lastly we were seduced by the innocent glow of young girl whose eyes exuded pride and admiration for her hard working parents. Into this inner circle we now enter.

In a demonstration of this mutual trust, the family offered and I accepted the role of padrino (godparent) for the occasion of Alexa’s sixth grade graduation. This simply required that I stand with her during the ceremony. Unbeknown to me, was that this also involved being invited and accepting the invitation to be Alexa’s partner for the first waltz following her graduation. Clearly, this is intended to be a demonstration of her newly gained maturity. Now there is always something fanciful about a Straus waltz yet here was one being played, via DJ, in a small rural village in Mexico and I was being asked to dance with a special young lady. We dipped, twirled and at just the right moment came to rest. The experience was capped with a hug; a memory for the balance of my years.

       

Nearly a week has passed. Villagers stop me and comment on my newly gained status. The family, which operates one of the markets, engaged Ray and me in some light-hearted banter when the two of us independently appeared on the premises simultaneously. Tonight, the Vazquez family and I will enjoy a celebrative dinner together; Diana will be spoken of and missed by all. For a man whose circle of friends tends to look more like a triangle, this is a big deal. There are a number of parallel stories here in Yelapa where “outsiders” have become insiders through the mutual grace and trust which evolved between them and a local family. I count us, Diana and me, among those fortunate few (los afortunados). 

   

Commercial Break

Fleet reduction sale! In preparation for upgrading and expanding my rentals in November, I have liquidated older doubles and now offer three of the latest, up to date single kayaks on the island. Here’s this week’s DEAL: rent two kayaks for half a day and bring along a friend for the same period free. That’s nine hours of kayaking and all you pay for is six. You can’t beat that!!! Call me to check availability and schedule @ 322 146 5064 (cell). Happy paddling. memo