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Village rhythms
Oakland Tribune, Mar 13, 2006 by Jay Solmonson, STAFF WRITER
Ringed by forested hills and laced by rocky shoals, Zihuatanejo Bay offers a beautiful backdrop for the town's beaches. We sauntered onto a pier near one end of the beach and watched tourists as they hopped off launches from their cruise ship anchored in the bay. They scattered in different directions, some toting shopping bags, others cameras and fishing hats, and others golf clubs.
We took a short drive to Playa Ropa, a mile-long crescent of beach. From our oceanside table we dined on fish tacos and watched parasailers drift over the shoreline.
A waitress took a baby alligator out for a stroll. Behind the cafe, the baby alligator's parents and friends lounged in a lagoon. Fortunately, a fence kept the adult alligators from putting us on their luncheon menu.
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The cafe also kept a large tub of baby sea turtles, who appeared ready for their release into the ocean later that night.
That evening we had dinner at home, as we often did. My sister and her husband, who have been vacationing in Troncones for years, invited an old friend for dinner. Former Alaska fisherman Dewey McMillin claims to be the first foreigner to settle in Troncones, and recalls that it was a sleepy little village when he arrived in 1983.
McMillin, now a real estate salesman, said that back then the town had two cars -- his and the town's. Today, most Troncones families have concrete houses and cars, he said.
Most of the locals live inland, having sold their beachfront property to Americans. Some villagers have started businesses and many have jobs in the handful of hotels and restaurants built here in recent years.
A stroll through the streets of town offers an open-air glimpse into the townspeople's lives. Because of the heat, kitchens, dining tables, play areas, wash tubs and hammocks fill dusty backyards.
Standing at a time-worn intersection, I could look down one street and watch children give rides to each other in a rusty wheelbarrow. A turn in the opposite direction caught more giggling children scampering home barefoot, carrying tortillas they bought from a neighborhood tortilla factory.
Up the cross street, two chickens and a rooster zipped across the street in front of two grunting pigs.
And down the street a grandmother in a worn dress limped slowly up the rise in the road using a machete as a cane.
On our last full day in Mexico, after some morning bodysurfing, my friend and I drove back to Ixtapa for a round of golf at Club de Golf Palma Real, a Robert Trent Jones Jr. layout built in the early 1970s.
The course is carved through dense jungle palms with views of the Pacific. Water hazards were rumored to include alligators. A story for gullible gringos, we figured. We also ignored the sign that read: "Caution Alligators." Surely a tourist photo op.
Neither could we believe the story that McMillin had told after a long happy hour -- about a groundskeeper named Lefty who lost a tug- of-war with a reptile.
So we weren't paying attention on the fifth hole, a 348-yard shot hard by a dark lagoon, when we pursued my friend's ball into the long grass at the edge of the water. When he jumped out of our cart to grab a club, neither of us saw the 6-foot alligator sunning itself 10 feet away.
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