It’s great to have
Peter McAfee SM visiting on his way back to New Zealand. Pete’s been the
formator and superior in the Marist formation house in Brazil for the last two
years. Prior to that he was novice master here in Mexico, at the ex-hacienda La
Jordana.
The Marist Formation House here in Toluca has opened. There are five of us in the community - Fr Juan Carlos, the Mexican Marist who is in charge of formation, me as socius and three new seminarians who will study Philosophy at Toluca Diocesan Seminary. More on this in my next post.
I was able to take a
couple of days off last week, so we went off to Acapulco. We caught a bus from
the terminal at 1.00am. Fortunately it was a luxury service – extra comfy seats
and no stops – so we arrived into a grey drizzly Acapulco at 7.30am having had
a couple of hours sleep. Pete woke me up saying we’d just travelled down
Ngauranga Gorge (the entrance into Wellington).
Acapulco has some
similarities to Wellington – it’s a circular bay surrounded by hills. Unlike
Wellington it has golden sand beaches framed by high-rise hotels and condominiums.
It’s also warm – it was over 30 degrees Celsius. The bay is also heavily
polluted.
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| Some of the food was a bit krap! |
After breakfast –
pancakes – in a café called “The Parish”, we caught a taxi to Pie de la Cuesta
(The Foot of the Hill) over the hill from Acapulco. Pie de la Cuesta is an
ocean beach. And obligingly the sun came out. We spent the next couple of days
lazing on the beach. The rooms we stayed in were basic, but adequate – bed,
toilet, fan. There was a pool, but the water looked just a bit dodgy, so we
swam in the ocean. All this for NZ$28 a night – food and drinks extra! We ate
on the beach – grilled whole fish, rice and tortillas and salsa.
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| It's not all tough on the mission - the wine isn't Mission either! You may recognize the chap in the background. |
The first day we took
refuge from the sun at a table under a palm leaf shelter. No other customers. Eventually
an elderly gent shuffled out and offered us a drink. We ordered beers – Coronas
(which I’ve never had served with lemon slices here!) 30 pesos each ($2.80) – a
bit steep for Mexico. He explained we were also renting the shade! The second beer –
some time later – cost 25 pesos. We must have paid for the shade. In the
afternoon same shelter, same old gent – two Coronas: $40 pesos! I questioned it
– it was for the shelter. I pointed out that we’d been there in the morning –
the only customers all day. No price change. I said we were going to stay a
couple of days and wouldn’t be back if he charged us that. No price change…
The next day we
discovered the hotel we were staying in had its own shelter and chairs. So we
sat there – right next to the old fella’s shelter.
On Thursday we headed
back into Acapulco and stayed at the Hotel California. A strange place – again
basic but adequate. It’s run by an American and seems to attract elderly
American men. Some looked like ex-Army. I guess they live better there than in
the States. It was certainly cheap enough - $11.30 the night for our rooms.
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| La Quebrada - the cliff the divers jump off. The lights at the top are the shrine to Guadalupe |
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| Can you make out the divers? |
In the evening we
wandered up the hill to where the famous divers perform. It was quite a show.
Five or six young men parade through the crowd, climb a 35 metre cliff in front
of the viewing area. There they say a brief prayer at a shrine of Our Lady of
Guadalupe and then one by one dive off. It’s quite dramatic – the setting of
craggy cliffs overlooking the ocean, the sea crashing up very narrow inlet, the
evident danger and the youth of the divers (between 12 and 25 years old). It’s
very Mexican – grace and danger with a splash of machismo.
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