Boca de Lagunillas on Valentine’s Day

In Mexico, Valentine's Day is also celebrated on February 14 but is officially titled El Día del Amor y la Amistad (The Day of Love and Friendship). That means that if you want to celebrate like a Mexican, you shouldn't focus all your attention on your beloved, but rather on your friends and family too.

We celebrated today by taking a little road trip while Sara, our house keeper, cleaned our house.

Once again, we took the interesting dirt road over the mountain and to the market town of Lagunillas. On Mondays, they hold a tianguis, (a traditional open air market/bazaar), on the main road where people can buy fresh fruit and vegetables as well as useful dollar store items. Today, they were also selling lacy red underwear, flowers, chocolate and candy. It is Valentine’s Day. Chris bought me some ‘romantic’ candy. Haha.

Our plan was to continue on to the tiny village of Boca de Lagunillas, that we have seen across the river on our birding walks. People who live in that town and work in Troncones either have to take a long way by road or they can quickly ford the river by walking through it, or driving through it in their trucks, motorcycles or they can wade through the river on their horses. By crossing the river, the drive to Troncones is considerably shorter than the drive over the mountain. Bridges have been built but during the rainy season, they always get washed away when the river doubles or triples in size.

The market was halfway to Boca on the long road so we just found the turnoff and followed the winding paved road to the village. That whole area on the other side of the mountain is all agricultural land. We passed orchards full of mango trees, banana trees and coconut palms. Then there were fields with corn and plants we didn’t recognize, as well as cattle, horses, pigs and chickens.

Boca de Lagunillas is very small village but has a great big new cancha (multipurpose court) with a roof. Canchas are used for basketball games or as a gathering place for town meetings or concerts or community parties. They people who,live here are lucky because they have a paved road. But still, they don’t have wifi, cellular service, a high school or a grocery store. We didn’t see a church but there probably was one. Maybe the cancha is used…

We went through the town and continued on the paved road, which turned into a dirt road, that led us to the beach where a few Slovakian families were surfing.

Returning to Boca, we paid attention to the landscape. There were several huge trees with very big canopies. These shade trees are called parota trees and the wood is used for making live edge furniture. In the too branches of one of these big trees, we spotted an awesome Crested Caracara bird. When you look at the flag of Mexico, you will see a large bird that looks like an eagle holding a snake. This bird really is a Caracara.

We parked the car in the village and walked down to the river where we had earlier seen people fording it. A big surprise! In the past two weeks, a backhoe had gone down into the river and scraped the stones in the river to form a small dam and more importantly a road. Now this will only last until the rainy season and then it will be washed away but for now there is a road and some deeper water for washing or providing water for the animals. A young man explained things to us.

Two young girls were walking home from school with their Valentine goodie bags and they were happy to talk to us too. It was fun talking to kids who weren’t afraid to talk to strangers.

Our landlord had told us about the best place in the area to get a tasty hamburger or wings - Nonos. We had to go back to the market town and found it easily. Unfortunately, the restaurant wasn’t open as the owner was food shopping in Zihuatanejo. That means that we will have to go back there another day. No problems. Check out the restaurant’s sign in the photos. Haha.

We hadn’t had a hamburger for the whole time that we were here so we went to Troncones to a place that we knew served burgers. Wow! They were so big that we could barely open our mouths wide enough to eat them! Not sure if they are as good as Nonos are supposed to be but they were delicious.

We headed home to a clean house, a sunny afternoon and a dip in the pool.

It was a loving day all around. A happy Valentines Day except for …. another visit from the persistent herd of goats!Read more