sayulita, baby

What a tremendous week we had in splendorious Sayulita! Sayulita surpassed all expectations and was the perfect blend of the cobblestones and delicious street food of traditional Mexico and the ease, safety and comfort of a gringoized beach town. We ate way too well, laughed loud, took long siestas, surfed (Jeff), swam (Gil), read a ton and enjoyed the company of some of our closest friends.

The wedding celebration was just gorgeous - decadent and classy and groovy and heartfelt. I danced hard and ended the night with a skinny dip in the Pacific with our lil Missoula posse. By that point, Eliana was happily asleep with Lety, her local babysitter, after, of course, getting crazy and mildly freaked out by her first pinata. Our dear friends Andrew and Julie thought of everything - down to the personalized, eco-savvy tote bags stuffed with personalized beach towels waiting in our room to the "churro man" that arrived late in the evening to assure everyone had something doughy and delicious to soak up their alcohol laden bellies. What perfect and absurdly generous hosts.








As everyone said, babies and beaches go together perfectly.

Eliana (aka, "Sand Monster") loved playing in the sand, rolling in the sand, snacking on the sand, and making friends on (and with!) the sand.

Other highlights include, having some really good times with my girlfriends (and the way they would hold and hang with my chica so I could get my groove on). We're talking lots of tequila, lots of silly moves on the dance floor, some great 80's tunes ("Send Me An Angel", anyone?) and some exciting wave diving on uninhabited stretches of Pacific coast.


Watching the love between two of my dearest amigos, on their first trip alone in five years (or since the births of their two boys).




Eliana's new found love for all things girly, including her baby and blankey and mommy's jewlery bag and fabulous joyeria.

Eliana's other, new found love for "tacos" and learning that the one carb she really seems to enjoy is the tortilla. My pediatrician would be proud! She chowed down on avocados, papayas, the bananas that fell in front of our door, black beans, Oaxacan cheese, and tropical fruit smoothies. She definitely ingested the most sugar of her life at this bar on the beach. We ordered the best damn round of pina coladas I've ever experienced. It was one of those place straight out of a movie. Just a simple wooden frame, a few stools, a stacked bar, and some really, really happy folks. I realized that Eliana was the only one not enjoying a bebida. So homie behind the scenes threw lots of tropical goodness into the blender. You could literally see the sugary juices jolt through her body before she started to boogie. When she came down, she had another one of her long, superb, Mexican naps.
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Another highlight and cause for many smiles throughout the trip came from Eliana's gift of the gab. As we know, Eliana is insanely social. She does not discriminate against anyone and her absurd verbal skills allow her to say, "Hello" and "Bye bye!" (or, "Hola" and "Adios" as the case was in Mexico) until she gets the response she's looking for. Sayulita was a town that loves babies. She was treated like a queen everywhere we went, given plates of free beans and rice, allowed to walk back into the kitchens or restaurants (especially if the restaurant was out of somebody's home), kissed and hugged and loved by all sorts.

Watching her strut on the sand, supremely confident, totally content, was, perhaps, the very most fabulous of the fabulous things, though.



A frustrating part about blogging way too long after the fact, is that you lose the freshness in the images and sensations because they get so muddled in the passing of time. This trip was so tremendous and I just don't feel like I'm capturing the moments as well as I could have at the time. After much searching through my sea of crap (post travel I always get this itch to get rid of all my crap, my car, my house, pack up a backpack, and hit the international road; I'm having a tough time adjusting to the mountain of stuff which seems to represent my life). Anhoo, I just located this piece of paper out of Eliana's diaper bag. It captures more of the poignance of the trip than I seem to be able to relay this evening, here at my computer on a freezing, windy, gray Montana Thursday.

"Now that I am such a cyber-writer, I totally didn't think to bring a journal of any sort on this trip. Luckily I brought a few sheets of paper thinking that Eliana may suddenly take to crayons. While she's still sleeping and Jeff is playing on his surfboard, I can lie here in the sandy sheets, ceiling fan whirring above, palm fronds shiny and green outside our huge windows, and record some of our luxurious time. I have to begin by saying how important and super special it is for us to vacation, just the three of us. I feel like we get in this love groove. It's so easy for us to get lost in the hustle and bustle of our daily lives. We seem to just be savoring one anothers company here. It makes me realize that so many of our little issues stem from the drama and exhaustion of the day to day. Take us away from jobs, housework, obligations, and it's nothing but sweetness, nothing but the moment, the precious present.

That's what travel has always represented for me. It's always served as a meditation on the moment. On the people you encounter. The foods you try and savor. The unusual landscapes, foreign tongues, currency changes. I want to take everything in because it is nothing but fresh. I guess my lesson here is to try to bring that home with me. That focus on detail, on beauty and uniqueness, on bringing my very best self to the table."