Saturday, March 10, 2007

Crocodiles, bugs and sting rays, Oh my!


T
ENACATITA, Jalisco, Mexico
- Setting up a general interest publication is tricky, especially in moving to a new community in which you have only vacationed, never lived for a length of time.

In all the cities (ok, towns) where I worked as a newspaper editor and writer, it always took awhile to figure out who was who and what was what and what constituted a real story.

But at Tenacatita and in nearby neighbor La Manzanilla (the big city), some stories come to mind even before we get there.

Take the cocodrilos lounging in the mangroves at the north end of the village, for example.

Every once in awhile these things get loose and have to be returned to the swamp refuge they call home. How many German tourists have had a close encounter with a 20-foot croc? Have any of these things ever decided to take a midnight stroll up the main avenida, perhaps headed to Palapa Joe's for a late-night snack of a French tourist. (Germans would be too hard to digest after midnight.)

All tied up
A small croc found wandering

Or bugs?

The no-see-ums on the beaches can be ferocious at sundown. And ferocious is the right word. I always come home from a vacation covered with welts because I forget to use the powerful bug sprays they sell in Mexico. Pouring tequila on the stings helps, followed by some taken orally.

And the sting rays?

Is that Ray in the water?
On patrol for swimmers

Well, I know that they frequent the shallow water at the anchorage where most of the yachts anchor because I once waded out in the middle of school with my amigo Sanders Lamont. Never had a sting ray sting me. Never want one to. But if a tourist gets whacked, well, that's news.

In the meantime, I've been looking at designs for world headquarters for the TBB, some simple, some more elaborate.

Daily Planet Building
One proposed design for the Tenacatita Bay Bugle headquarters

2 comments:

slamont said...

Don Miguel,
Amazing that the headquarters building resembles the place Huey Long was shot in Baton Rouge.
Could this be part of a populist power ploy?

Whatever. Sign me up for a subscription.

shrdlu

Unknown said...

That is a bat nosed ray, not a sting ray. These are also common at certain times of the year around here but don't have a sting and are mid-water and surface fish as opposed to benthic fish like sting rays.