You'll Love a ... Yelapa

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Photo By Clint J. Farr A walk in the river's canyon in Yelapa

(I'd like to blame my editor for the title, but it's mine)

Puerto Vallarta, Jal.- On the plane to Mexico, I imagined how I would use my latent and well-hidden athleticism to fend off cartel gangsters trying to nap my kids. This "knowledge" of Mexico is based on hours of "Breaking Bad" and a few minutes on Homeland Security's travel advisory page.

Homeland Security's travel advisory page actually paints a worse picture of Mexico than "Breaking Bad." Wherever you go, you are going to die, violently. The travel pages for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are not much better. According to the CDC, if the cartels don't get you, dysentery will.

A bloated colon of insecurities, I wondered if our first trip to Mexico was our last trip anywhere. I was not reassured by the first hour in Mexico. A harrowing taxi ride to Boca, south of Puerto Vallarta, resembled a car chase, except nobody was chasing us. The water taxi from Boca to Yelapa skirted the coastline just outside and atop massive breakers from 25 foot swells. No one wore life vests. None were apparent. Once on the dock, I plucked the kids out of the boat with each rise of a wave.
Mexico has a different relationship with risk than the U.S.

Children and luggage accounted for, a Senor Gato gathered our bags into a wheelbarrow and pushed them to our casa three-quarters mile up the local river. It occurred to me, as I followed the elderly man, I should be carrying my own bags. He's old. I'm able-bodied. It felt bad. It felt vaguely colonial.
Senor Gato didn't seem to care one way or the other. He was gracious and patient with our questions. Senor Gato was our first experience with what would become an overriding Yelapian theme: kindness.

To a person, the locals were friendly. It is a decided contrast to other destinations like Hawaii where the locals tire of tourists. Even here in Juneau, as a fishing guide once told me, by the end of summer you can "run all out of friendly." But in Yelapa, your business is appreciated; as long as you're not a jerk.
I think this is due in large part to the locals being in charge. In Yelapa, all shops, restaurants, houses, and lodging are locally owned. Yelapa is a protected area for its first people, the Comunidad Indigena. From what the locals told me, a foreigner can live in Yelapa, but have to lease their place from a local. You can't live there if the locals don't like you.

The distinct lack of large boxy hotels in Yelapa also no doubt stems from local ownership. There's no land for the big chains to buy. After all, Yelapa is not undiscovered country. Bob Dylan hung out there in the 70s. The beach makes top ten lists in travel magazines. I'm sure the Hyatt would love to build some monstrous gray monolith on the beachfront, but can't.

Which brings me to the next obvious point. Yelapa is not for people looking for a safe and sterile travel experience. Yelapa is about mules, stray dogs, chickens, and their gifts to the world. It's about your kids stepping barefoot in those gifts. Electricity has only been around for 10 years so no surprise when Yelapa's dark trails might surprise you. These things build character and your immune system.

Yelapa is organic. Not organic in a hippy way, but in a don't-have-enough-money-to-buy-pesticides sort of way. Lack of pesticides means there are bugs; many bite. My irrational fear of cartels was quickly replaced by a much more rational fear of scorpions.

But again, the roughness is more than made up with Yelapa's friendly hosts and amazing sights.

Our first day, we splayed out on the beach like a hide nailed to the shed. When sufficiently toasted, we came home to find the door handle to our casa locked. We had specifically been instructed to lock only the deadbolt, but somehow the door handle was locked and we had no key.

Tired, hungry, thirsty and sun burned, we needed to get to the bed, fruit, water and shade inside. I tried to sacrifice my Costco card to trip the latch, but no luck.
A crowd started to form.

Neighbors came out to help. They called Geraldo, Jelapa's fixer. He is like Wolf in "Pulp Fiction." Geraldo, I was assured, would figure it out. And he did. I won't say exactly how, but it was genius and simple. Some even clapped. I tried to pay Geraldo with a Pacifico cerveza. "Gracias!" I croaked like a drunk John Wayne to a Tijuana barkeep. But, as fixers do, Geraldo had disappeared.

Just so you know, my ignorance of Spanish does not reflect on my family. My wife and daughters have been taking Spanish for years. I, on the other hand, have no time for things like knowledge. This is probably why I made our 6-year-old daughter sound precociously man-hungry. "Tiene hombre" does not mean "She is hungry," it means "She has a man." And just in case you were wondering, "A ella le gustan los caballertos," does not mean "the girl likes horses." It means "the girl likes gentlemen."
I think most folks knew what we meant, through the titters.

The Yelapian children were delighted and confused with my girls. They were mystified why they couldn't swim. "They turn blue in Juneau's ice cold public pools" is obviously beyond my Spanish, so I'd shrug.

A grandmother and her granddaughter, Osmara, guided us upriver for one of our better adventures. We were in search of the langoustine, a large crayfish that ply the local river. Osmara bounded up the trail and back to check on us. She was eight, in cutoffs, a t-shirt, and barefoot. She waited as her guests took their sandals off at every water crossing. She jumped into the river wearing her clothes and treaded water while her guests put on their bathing suits. Osmara had no concern for the thorns, ants, sand fleas, snakes, spiders, scorpions, jaguars, rocks, rapids, or quickly darkening skies. She helped my girls with an emphatic sign language, held their hands over the lip of the rock wall, and was sweet; so very sweet.

I am happy childhoods like this still exist.

My girls were bit by mosquitoes, ants, fleas, and stung by at least one jellyfish. We were a lumpy, splotchy, peeling mess by our last day, but happy. Perhaps the extra risk heightened our sense of joy. Perhaps it was a vitamin D high; a melatonin euphoria. But for a brief moment on our last day, we considered ditching all our Juneau obligations. We could stay longer; one more swim, one more bowl of ceviche, one more walk with Osmara. We could stay longer...we could never leave.
Alas.

As we left (carrying our own bags), the girls sounded like exotic birds chirping "gracias" to everyone on the trail. I imagine to the locals, visitors say "thank you" a lot. Yes, in part, that's because it's the only word we know in Spanish. I just hope the locals also realize we mean it.
Adios Yelapa, go with God.

• Clint J. Farr can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
Yelapa rescources:
Yelapa connexion- www.yelapaconnexion.com
Air B n B - www.airbnb.com. Type in "yelapa".
Yelapa English-Spanish Institute - www.talkadventures.com/spanish/index.html