Board Walk, Flea Market , Zip Line

Boardwalk
The easiness of stride in the boardwalk made me forget the hot, sticky taxi ride to the ocean, with crude jokes in Spanish about who my boyfriend was: 'the blonde or the dark-haired one, or both?'

There was a mutual chatter between the birds and drifting reverberations from men selling wares, or persuasions to have your picture drawn and look like 'Jenneefer Lopez.' The air was loaded with pleasant scents that recall lost childhood memories, or make you hungry. I loved the walk.
Flea Market
Next was walking through the 'flea market,' a conglomeration of thousands of items pressed into any available nook and cranny found within six preciously guarded feet. We've all been to them 'across the border' or 'in Tijuana,' but there was a special magic, flamboyant as the colors, that crept into my soul.

It started when I began taking pictures of the children and then turning the camera screen toward a display of baby-teeth creeping from lips blistered with herpes, or cracked from the sun. People spoke to me as if I were a native. I sat on the ground and spanish-laughed, guarded with trust.

My conceptions of the Mexican people are changed. Although still realistic, I'm falling more in love with the people than the place. Interestingly, it's not the poverty that moves me toward them, it's their absence of the fear of poverty. Maybe it's the contentedness that pervades the atmosphere, when tourist-derived necessities are absent. It's the sweaty armpits and over-penciled eyebrows, the concrete walls sucking whitewash from the cloudy sky. The natural acceptance of waiting thirty minutes at a bus stop in the sun. It's the living of life, just like we all do: from day to day, boyfriend to boyfriend, or work bonus to holidays. And that's what they do- live.

Zipline
We took an hour bus ride through the 'old village' and up into the jungle for a zip line experience! Our bus was the equivalent of a blue-striped UTA bus, but was driven like an ATV. We went up inclined roads, and scattered dust off a sixty-foot dropoff cliff edge. Here's a video of us traversing a river.

Apparently there are some pretty placid people who go ziplining, because I was told I was one of the more... daring. Despite the guide's protests, I got a running start, leaped from the wooded platform, and zipped upside down without hands across a 200 foot precipice; my feet were on the handlebars. The most exhilarating view was my own shadow flowing across treetops, splayed out like a spider patterning its web: I had to crank my neck to see the usurped sky. The screaming guide was only a faint whisper beside the wind in my hair :). Wonderful!