It was a long drive to get here, but well worth the effort.  Jose, the Canadian proprietor of “Jose’s Camping Cabanas” is a fine host and all around good guy.  He built this place from the ground up, “There’s not a tree here I haven’t planted with my own hands,” he announces proudly.  Six acres of orderly lines of coconut palms, a good forty feet tall, loaded with fruit in varying stages of ripeness, feet painted white like all good Mexican trees.  Between them squat orange trees, and at the back, a stately row of mango trees, old and wise, loaded with pale green and rosy peach pods, warm in the sun.  A sprinkling of banana plants and cashew trees round out the orchard.

We’re right on the Pacific coast of the state of Chiapas, one block of sandy dirt roads from the most pristine beach you can imagine.  The children and I have spent two long afternoons diving through the warm waves and digging our toes into the sand.  Today we saw one other man on the beach.  Yesterday, no one.  It is a good beach for swimming and playing, also for reading and thinking and picking away at a song trying to make it’s way out of my head through my finger tips.  The wind is blowing constantly and I had to shake sand out of the guitar before we walked home.

There’s nothing in this one horse town to speak of.  I discovered that if I walked three quarters of a mile I could get half a kilo of tortillas and some tomatoes and limes for about a buck.  So we’ve done that, two days running.  Add to that a can of black beans an onion and three or four mangoes the boys scavenged from beneath the trees and we’ve had some picturesque lunches.  Today’s crowned with four green coconuts the kids found.  They begged a machete off of Jose’s son and Tony lopped the tops off of them and we sipped them straight out of their shells.  “I wonder what the poor people are doing today?” Tony quipped, quoting our friend Andy who asked that every day when we were in Mexico with them years ago.

Tonight we’re paying for our days of solar excess.  Everyone has a slight sunburn and Hannah has a little fever from not enough water and too much ocean.  We’re headed into town for an early dinner and then she’ll have a cool shower and head to bed.  Tomorrow morning we pack up the show and head south, with a little luck, we’ll sleep in Malacatan, Guatemala, next time the sun goes down.

p.s.  Sorry!  I forgot to take pictures!!