Thursday, December 28, 2023

Sayulita Roads


  

We made it through the mad dash of Wine Goddess crowds, seas of Amazon boxes and a particularly drunken Santa visit on Christmas Eve and made it to our yearly trip to Mexico.

 

After over a decade of trips, we acutely feel the old, beautiful town fight against the march of progress. 

 

Every year we stay at a different place, each more charming than the last. It takes me a few days to adjust to screenless windows and the remote chance a lizard will crawl into my shoe, but in no time, I become a native. Well, as much of a native as a blindingly white man in Birkenstock sandals can be.

 

One of the great delights I have is renting and piloting a golf cart around town. It’s the only way to descend the rutted and washed out dirt roads that lead to most rental houses. These decrepit and squeaky machines hold barely enough charge to accelerate to 5mph, which I think it by design. It keeps the streets safe from the army of Dads four tequila shots in.

 

My favorite part is giving Luca his yearly hand at the wheel. This morning, our neighbor Chris (the Murphy-Greens are now part of the tradition) and I took Luca out to the outskirts of town and I slid over. 

 

Luca approaches golf cart driving with equal parts exhilaration and terror. He shrieks when he hits the gas. He shrieks when he gets too close to an oncoming car. He shrieks when street dogs approach. I can’t tell if he loves it or hates it. I assume both.

 

Chris and I act like drunken teenagers in a stolen Mustang. “Faster! Faster! 20 points for hitting a cat!” We cackle and slap Luca on the back when he makes a mistake. 

 

Eventually, the stress gets to be too much and Luca will hand the reins back over to me. And I’ll set my sights on my second favorite part of the golf cart: Picking up European hitchhikers.

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