Posts Tagged: Mexico
La Manzanilla, Mexico: Baby needs new shoes
Jackie rings the bell.
In La Manzanilla, Mexico, and its surrounding villages, shoes can be hard to come by.
Especially if you’re poor. And you’re a kid.
So Lucero Castelazo, who now runs her late mother’s place, Casa Maria en La Manzanilla, also carries on Maria’s charitable spirit, collecting and distributing shoes for kids who need them. She gets money from friends and buys discounted shoes from companies in her hometown of Leon, a shoe-manufacturing mecca. Then she hauls them in her white van to La Manzanilla.
When we visited for Christmas, we were lucky enough to be included in a couple of the distribution runs.
La Manzanilla: Crocs, cameras and cormorants
Primi piloting the boat while Tom spots birds.
At the end of the main road in La Manzanilla, after the farmacia and the paleta shop and the sidewalk stand of charcoal-roasted chicken and the stacks of beach toys and the tiny bodegas and the place with the coldest cerveza, you come to a chain link fence marking the edge of the crocodile preserve.
La Manzanilla, Mexico: The warmth of sun and friends
The view toward the ocean at Casa Maria en La Manzanilla.
I love Mexico. LOVE IT. The sun, heat and white-sand beaches take me back to Hawaii, where I grew up. The art is amazing, and the food makes me swoon in delight. I go whenever I get the chance.
I hadn’t been since we started our full-time adventure in The Epic Van more than three years ago and was in dire need of a fix. So, we decided to get out of The Epic Van, take a vacation from our endless vacation, and spend last Christmas with the Castelazo family in La Manzanilla, Mexico, a small fishing village on the Pacific coast south of Puerto Vallarta. We celebrated the holidays early with family and friends in Scottsdale, left The Epic Van in mom’s driveway, and jumped on a plane.