Here's the lovely Sheilagh leaning against one of the big guns that supposedly defended San Blas from some invading force. The story of the fort seems to be one of having been taken over by rebels from the Spanish, then retaken by the Spanish, then being abandoned by the Spanish to be taken over again by the rebels. In the recapture of the fort by the Spanish, a priest by the name of Mercado jumped to his death off the bluff rather than be taken. He now has a statue on top. In those days the clergy got intimately involved in politics, particularly on the side of the rebels. This is after the Spanish brought the clergy in to take the lead in converting (and subjugating) the indians. I guess the clergy developed the leadership skills, but objected to the aim of the Spanish.
A little old man came up to us on top of the fort with two bags of pamphlets and engaged us in conversation in his limited English and our limited Spanish. It turns out that he is now retired from his position as museum manager, and that in his younger days he wrote a brief history of San Blas, which was what the pamphlets were all about. Recently he had someone help him translate the original Spanish into English, and he was beaming with pride at being able to offer a bilingual history of San Blas to us at the low, low cost of 40 pesos ($4). Now that price for a pamphlet is quite steep, but we were impressed with his dedication to his "history" and his effort to support himself, so we now have a signed copy of his "book" and a picture of him and me together. The English translation leaves a lot to be desired, but the experience was priceless. 
At the top of the fort we noticed a baseball game being played down below and decided to stop by. The field and stands were in okay condition, the players were in their 20's, 30's, and 40's representing rival towns, and the crowd seemed dedicated to watching the proceedings most intently. We noticed that the teams shared batting helmets, bats, catcher paraphernalia, jerseys, etc. At these games the beer is served in half-sized bottles, possibly to limit the intake. However, we noticed rows of empty bottles at the feet of many of the fans.
On the 12th, we went into town for some shopping, picking up shrimp and oysters, along with a variety of vegetables, before grabbing several tacos for lunch at a local spot named the "Wala Wala" Restaurant - you can try to escape the hometown, but it follows you everywhere. If it were written as "Walla Walla," where I spent my boyhood, it would be pronounced "Waya Waya;" so this is as close as one can get to the spelling and pronunciation in Mexico - here's a picture.After a return to the boat for a nap, I decided it was time to experiment with my new kayak in the surf. It was necessary to paddle down and out of the estuary to get into the ocean waves off Stoner’s Beach. Next time I’ll check the tide tables before going out, because the tide was coming in as I was going out, and my headway was minimal. I paddled over to the side of the estuary where the current wasn’t so strong and managed to make it out of, and around, the mouth of the estuary and into the ocean.
I paddled carefully toward the beach looking over my shoulder for the right-sized wave for my first efforts at kayak surfing. I realized I had to get through the larger waves to get to the small ones I wanted to practice with, but the waves had other ideas. I tried a three-foot wave almost immediately (I was looking for one-foot waves to start) and was quickly upended, as the bow of the kayak insisted on turning back into the wave. I had tied the painter of the kayak to my ankle, the paddle to my wrist, and I had a hat-with-a-neckband and sunglasses-with-a-sport-band to hold them both on. The dumped kayak began pulling me into the beach with the wave pushing it, the paddle was encumbering my efforts to get up, the glasses stayed with me, but were coated with salt water, and my hat took off on its own. I managed to grab the hat, recover the kayak, get the paddle untwisted, and shook much of the water off my glasses, just as the next wave hit and I had to hang onto everything as it pushed me to the beach.
I had just spent 30 minutes paddling the kayak against the tide and was not feeling particularly energetic after being dumped so unceremoniously; so I jumped back into the kayak and paddled back out against the waves to get back in the estuary and use the incoming tide to save my strength. At the time I thought it better to follow the dictum: “He who fights and runs away, lives to fight another day,” rather than the one that states: “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.”
The next day I checked the tide tables and found that I could ride the outgoing tide at 10AM, do some practicing on the beach, and let the tide bring me back in at 1PM. Sheilagh took the dinghy into town and walked to the beach to get pictures and join me for lunch. This day the waves were a bit smaller – way too small for the two or three surfers waiting for better waves before going out. In the meantime I had done some thinking and realized that my kayak needed to be moving faster when the wave hit, and I had to employ some method for keeping the bow straight ahead instead of turning. Sure enough, I caught a small wave at a faster speed and rode it into the beach, before it dumped me in front of the surfers as I failed in my attempts to keep the bow straight at the end. I easily dumped the water out of the kayak and got back out into the waves. I tried a number of ways to use the paddle to keep the bow straight and had some success, but only on smaller waves. Here's a long distance view of one of my minor successes - you can see I'm not challenging the big breakers.
I paddled carefully toward the beach looking over my shoulder for the right-sized wave for my first efforts at kayak surfing. I realized I had to get through the larger waves to get to the small ones I wanted to practice with, but the waves had other ideas. I tried a three-foot wave almost immediately (I was looking for one-foot waves to start) and was quickly upended, as the bow of the kayak insisted on turning back into the wave. I had tied the painter of the kayak to my ankle, the paddle to my wrist, and I had a hat-with-a-neckband and sunglasses-with-a-sport-band to hold them both on. The dumped kayak began pulling me into the beach with the wave pushing it, the paddle was encumbering my efforts to get up, the glasses stayed with me, but were coated with salt water, and my hat took off on its own. I managed to grab the hat, recover the kayak, get the paddle untwisted, and shook much of the water off my glasses, just as the next wave hit and I had to hang onto everything as it pushed me to the beach.
I had just spent 30 minutes paddling the kayak against the tide and was not feeling particularly energetic after being dumped so unceremoniously; so I jumped back into the kayak and paddled back out against the waves to get back in the estuary and use the incoming tide to save my strength. At the time I thought it better to follow the dictum: “He who fights and runs away, lives to fight another day,” rather than the one that states: “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.”
The next day I checked the tide tables and found that I could ride the outgoing tide at 10AM, do some practicing on the beach, and let the tide bring me back in at 1PM. Sheilagh took the dinghy into town and walked to the beach to get pictures and join me for lunch. This day the waves were a bit smaller – way too small for the two or three surfers waiting for better waves before going out. In the meantime I had done some thinking and realized that my kayak needed to be moving faster when the wave hit, and I had to employ some method for keeping the bow straight ahead instead of turning. Sure enough, I caught a small wave at a faster speed and rode it into the beach, before it dumped me in front of the surfers as I failed in my attempts to keep the bow straight at the end. I easily dumped the water out of the kayak and got back out into the waves. I tried a number of ways to use the paddle to keep the bow straight and had some success, but only on smaller waves. Here's a long distance view of one of my minor successes - you can see I'm not challenging the big breakers.
The next attempt was to get on my knees, further forward on the kayak, and see if redistributing my weight would help. It turns out that this position raised my center of gravity, so my dunking was even more dramatic. I tried a few more waves and feel like I am on the way to success, but I have a lot more pratfalls to perform before I reach the perfection I seek. I finally pulled the kayak up onto the beach and joined Sheilagh for some lunch at the local palapa. What I hadn’t counted on was the increased size of the waves after lunch when the tide began coming in. The surfers were now active, and I had some heart-stopping moments as I paddled directly up into a couple of breaking waves to get back to the outside so I could paddle back down the estuary. I wish Sheilagh had stayed around for a shot of me rocketing up and over a breaking wave, just narrowly avoiding being thrown backward into the wave. I can see that this sport is going to take a lot of practice.That evening we went into town to help celebrate the feast day of Our Lady of Fatima (or was it Our Lady of Lourdes?). We sat at an outdoor café on the main square and had dinner as we watched the goings-on. It appeared that the pious people in town were in the local church celebrating Mass from about 7PM to 8:30PM with a lot of singing. The rest of the town was milling about in the main square waiting for the services to be over. A couple of men had put up an erector-set-like tower in the main square with fireworks attached, and that seemed to be the focus of attention. The younger kids gradually appeared with large flat pieces of cardboard that they would hold over their heads. After the church services the crowd became quite large, covering the entire square. As we were just finishing up our dinner, we saw some of the crowd start running our way as sparks and fireworks appeared to be following them. A young man was running through the crowd carrying what appeared to be a cow made of sticks covered with fireworks that began shooting off all around. This is what had prompted the group on our side of the square to seek shelter.
The stick cow made several tours through the square, igniting bottle rockets and sparklers that leaped into the fast dispersing crowd in front of it. When all the fireworks on that contraption had exploded, someone ignited a set of pinwheels on the tower in the middle of the square, which gave off sparks as they spun around and eventually released rockets into the crowd as the stick cow had done. Now it became clear that the kids were using the cardboard pieces as shields as they ran under the tower, allowing the sparks to fall all around them. One of the rockets into the crowd caught a young man under his arm and burned a hole in his shirt, not to mention his skin, but he now had bragging rights.
The people were shrieking and laughing as all this was going on, with only a few babies crying out for some respite from the noise and confusion. There were mothers and fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers, young lovers, teenagers, and kids of all ages. There were no attempts by scolding parents to keep the kids under control and no one seemed to mind that there was bedlam everywhere. The only missing element was the phalanx of attorneys who would have been present and offering their services if this had gone on in the States.
There were eventually some eight pairs of pinwheels that caused havoc in the crowd, putting everyone on edge who had any brains. Okay, if we’d had brains, we’d have gotten out of there, but we kept ourselves huddled behind some locals who unknowingly served as our shields. We had no idea ahead of time that this is how one celebrates a feast commemorating the visit of the Virgin Mary. We had expected a sedate procession from the church and around the main square with a statue of the Virgin supported on a platform of some sort – we saw no likenesses of Mary anywhere. We still can’t figure out how potentially damaging firecrackers have anything to do with celebrating a feast day for the mother of Christ.
When we returned to the beach to get our dinghy that was being watched over by Pépe (20 pesos a day for his family to keep an eye on it), we learned that Pépe had taken his very pregnant wife to the hospital to have the baby that was very ready to be born when we had arrived. His father had taken over the watch on our boat, and he reported that a baby boy had been born an hour earlier, and he was awaiting our return for our dinghy before joining them. We thanked him for his keeping watch for us, paid him a bonus, and urged him to get to the hospital himself. We were very impressed with how responsible Pépe and his family were for such a small amount of payment per day.
We left for Isla Isabela the next morning and will report on that in the next blog. More later . . .
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