Sunday, October 27, 2013
A deep day on Playa Zipolite, Mexico
A deep day on Playa Zipolite, Mexico
We had read that one of the much debated translations of Zipolite was “beach of the dead”. Sadly, today we found out why.
We awoke to the calming sound of waves breaking just out the open doors of our cabana. As morning arrives the mosquito net surrounding our bed adds a gentle glow to the beachscape beyond. Jen has already climbed out twice to snap photos of a breathtaking sunrise, one which tried hard to outdo even the sunset from last night. We move slowly, enjoying the tranquil nature of our surroundings. First coffee, then breakfast looking over the hammock. This is a life we could get used to.
We awoke to the calming sound of waves breaking just out the open doors of our cabana. As morning arrives the mosquito net surrounding our bed adds a gentle glow to the beachscape beyond. Jen has already climbed out twice to snap photos of a breathtaking sunrise, one which tried hard to outdo even the sunset from last night. We move slowly, enjoying the tranquil nature of our surroundings. First coffee, then breakfast looking over the hammock. This is a life we could get used to.
As the temperature follows the rising sun we eventually wander to the water where we’ve been watching a few locals doing tricks on their boogie boards. The waves that crash out front seem to range anywhere from gentle 1’-2’ rollers to thundering overhead monsters and these kids on their boards seemed dwarfed in comparison to the wall of water towering behind them.
I wade out to try and snap a few photos of the 100s of hungry pelicans sitting just past the break and we chuckle as the laziest of pelicans doesn’t take off fast enough to fly over the wave and instead finds himself surfing clumsily in to shore. I try to float along with the crashing waves to get a photo just at the moment when the wave starts to break and the pelicans dart overtop…waiting until the last possible second to momentarily leave their meal ticket.
I play for maybe half an hour before heading back in to jen and karma who have been standing guard in the shallow water- Karma is convinced she’s the lifeguard of every beach we visit. As i try to show Jen a photo of our surfing pelican, clothingless guys come running up from the point and shouting for help. Apparently two guys have been pulled into the riptide and then pushed into a churning hole between the rocks and the point. I hand jen the camera and run into into the water to help (in hindsight, not taking enough time to discuss my plans with jen nor to set her mind at ease). I swim out into the current and try to find a place to get near the closest guy without getting sucked in and becoming part of the problem, but the rip proves too difficult. A local with fins and a boogie board is making faster progress towards him and i abort mission, swim with the rip out to sea before swimming parallel to safety and crash with the waves back into shore.
The boogie boarder eventually does the same with guy in tow and we pull him in to shore where an actual lifeguard is arriving from the far end of the beach. The lifeguard directs others to the point (and to the guys companion), then goes back to work on trying to resuscitate. Sadly, they work on him forever and cant successfully bring him back. A tranquil day and happy vacation ruined, and the lives of whoever he has touched immediately have gaping hole that he used to fill. We never met this man, but our hearts pour out to his companion and to everyone who knew him.
We have since come to learn that this is a tragic but frighteningly frequent occurrence here. On our walk last night we saw the speed at which the water was gathering at this end of the beach and discussed the force with which that water must be returning to sea, but we certainly didn’t expect this type of outcome hours later. Zipolite apparently has always had very dangerous riptides and currents the length of the beach. Deaths here used to be extremely high but with the changing of the beach landscape and the creation/training of a lifeguard crew a decade ago the number of deaths has plummeted. Rescues it seems are still a daily occurrence, and as we set out to walk down the beach later in the day men, women and children are laughing and playing in the massive waves rather than sitting frightened on shore. It’s only near sunset that we notice the flags alerting swimmers to the danger level. Todays flag was flying red.
While we sit quietly in our cabana and later wander out to tour the beach and town, our minds keep coming back to this morning’s fateful event. A good reminder for us on so many levels. One of safety and security clearly, but more one of respect and of being thankful. A reminder that life is an excruciatingly fleeting event that is almost completely out of our control. Every day and every minute is a precious gift. There are warnings about just about every thing that a person could choose to do and each choice can end good or bad. If we spend our time worrying about the worst possible outcome we would likely would never leave home, open a window or turn the lights on. We certainly wouldn’t be driving on any highway, out traveling the world or playing in the waves (on this or any other beach). Those who warn most loudly not to are often those who haven’t done it out of their own fears.
I live and play with a constant and healthy respect for the ocean. I am so aware that this thing that we find so beautiful can become powerful and deadly in a moment, and will always remember coming close to losing my own life in a current off another beach. At moments in the water today i had pauses of fear. Fear for my own safety, that i had may have made a bad choice by entering the water or that (as it turned out) i was too late or couldn’t help. Looking back, my current fears are simply not taking advantage of every moment to love and live life fully.
It seems about the only thing we do have control over is how we choose to spend the days/moments that we do have. To breathe in deeply the air around us, to love/respect/cherish those dear to us, and to strive to live our dreams while there’s time. Tomorrow i’ll be more thankful for the opportunity to walk down the beach, to be walking with those that i love and to be given the chance to go back in the water to play with the pelicans.
Día de los Muertos-Day of the Dead - Blog post by Tina Winterlik © 2012
http://adventurezinmexico.blogspot.com/2012/10/dia-de-los-muertos-day-of-dead.html
Friday, October 26, 2012
Día de los Muertos-Day of the Dead
Blog post by Tina Winterlik © 2012
tina_winterlik@yahoo.com
http://tinawinterlik.blogspot.com
http://twitter.com/#!/zipolita @zipolita
http://gplus.to/zipolita Google+
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day_of_the_Dead
Day of the Dead (Spanish: Día de los Muertos) is a Mexican holiday celebrated throughout Mexico and around the world in other cultures. The holiday focuses on gatherings of family and friends to pray for and remember friends and family members who have died. It is particularly celebrated in Mexico, where it is a national holiday, and all banks are closed. The celebration takes place on November 1, in connection with theCatholic holidays of All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day (November 2). Traditions connected with the holiday include building private altars honoring the deceased using sugar skulls, marigolds, and the favorite foods and beverages of the departed and visiting graves with these as gifts. They also leave possessions of the deceased.
La Calavera Catrina («The Elegant Skull») is a 1910 zinc etching byMexican printmaker José Guadalupe Posada. The image has since become a staple of Mexican imagery, and often is incorporated into artistic manifestations of the Day of the Dead in November, such asaltars and calavera costumes. The etching was part of his series ofcalaveras, which were humorous images of contemporary figures depicted as skeletons, which often were accompanied by a poem.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Calavera_Catrina
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Mexico's soda companies fear junk-food tax
Mexico's soda companies fear junk-food tax
By Joshua Partlow,
OAXACA, Mexico — Sweet tangerine sodas and strawberry kiddy drinks have been good for the Guzman family.Over 60 years and three generations, their Gugar soda company has offered them hard-won prosperity in one of the poorest states in Mexico. It’s allowed the youngest to study at the University of California at Berkeley and vacation in Las Vegas, and enshrined the eldest in a bronze bust with a nameplate that reads: “Creator of entrepreneurs.”
But for Mexico, the vast appetite for sodas, chips, snacks, sweets — all manner of what they call here “comida chatarra,” or junk food — has helped inflate an overweight nation to obesity levels rivaled only by those lumpen gringos to the north.
These two forces have now collided in a sumo-style conflict that is testing the power of Enrique Peña Nieto, Mexico’s svelte new president. With his proposed tax hikes on sugary drinks and snacks, Peña Nieto has angered an industry led by junk-food barons with global reach and political muscle. Four of Mexico’s 15 biggest public companies, as ranked by Forbes — including No. 2, Femsa, which makes and distributes Coca-Cola and owns the ubiquitous Oxxo convenience stores that stock it — sell the drinks and snacks that could be made more expensive by the taxes.
America’s largest baking company is actually now Mexican: Grupo Bimbo, the Mexican food empire, owns well-known brands in the United States, such as Sara Lee, Entenmann’s, Boboli and Thomas’ English Muffins, and has about 25,000 employees north of the border. Mexico has the highest per-capita soda consumption in the world, and among the highest rates of diabetes, according to academic studies and industry consultants.
“Mexico is the world champion of consuming sugary beverages,” said Juan Rivera Dommarco, head of the government’s Center of Investigation in Nutrition and Health, which supports the tax increase. More than two-thirds of Mexican adults are overweight, he said.
The lower house of Mexico’s National Congress passed the president’s tax increase this month, ratcheting up the pressure for junk-food companies. The Senate is expected to vote in coming days.
The junk-food taxes — 1 peso per liter, or the equivalent of 8 cents, on sugary drinks, and 5 percent on high-calorie snacks — are part of a larger fiscal reform package by Peña Nieto’s government intended to boost revenue. The portion related to soda taxes is intended to raise some $950 million annually. But the larger mission “is to try to change people’s behavior,” said Christopher Wilson, an associate at the Mexico Institute at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington. “The goal should be to make Mexico a healthier country.”
On the president’s side in this struggle is Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire who is mayor of New York. He has tried, and so far failed, to ban oversize sodas in his own city. Bloomberg Philanthropies has spent million to lobby in favor of the Mexican soda tax and fund research organizations to study issues related to obesity.
Dueling full-page newspaper ads are now daily fare. Stirring up some nationalist fervor, the main soft-drink industry group in Mexico has been paying for red, white, and blue ads trumpeting “No to the Bloomberg Tax!” and saying the mayor is behind a campaign to “demonize sugary drinks.”
“Señor Bloomberg has apparently found in Mexico more fertile terrain than in his own city,” the group’s director general, Emilio Herrera Arce, said in an interview. “His millions could have been better spent.”
“The pressure is very great,” said Alejandro Calvillo, director of the nonprofit group Power of the Consumer, which has received Bloomberg Philanthropies donations and has been pushing for a 2-peso-per-liter tax on soda. “The soft-drink industry isn’t only trying to stop this because of the impact on the market” but to avoid international precedent, he said. “These are huge, global companies.”
The Guzman family soda company, headquartered on the outskirts of this cobblestone colonial jewel, is neither huge nor a global power. Since Jesus Guzman Aguirre began selling Moctezuma Beer under these green mountains in 1954, the company has grown slowly and added new beverages. Their fruity drink for children, Friko, took off in the city, and they later became the first bottled water producer in the state.
As the company passed to six of Guzman’s sons, including Mario Guzman Gardeazabal, they opened new soda plants in neighboring southern states. They now have about 2,000 employees and 400 delivery trucks. Their fizzy Gugar soda, in flavors such as tamarind, grapefruit and tangerine, is cheaper than brand-name sodas and caters to the area’s poorer residents.
In the company’s plant, as pineapple sodas whirred by on conveyor belts, the face of the third generation, 29-year-old Juan Pablo Guzman, Mario’s son, walked into a side storeroom and pointed at piles of 200-pound white sacks of sugar. “This is what the tax is all about,” he said.
Juan Pablo and his relatives feel their medium-size regional company will bear an unfair proportion of the tax burden if the law passes. Gugar sodas tend to be cheaper than other major brands, so the peso-per-liter tax would hit the Guzmans’ products disproportionately hard.
The Guzmans are expecting a 30 to 40 percent drop in demand for their sodas. The three daily shifts that produce different flavors — each with its own batch of employees — will contract to one or two. Delivery routes will constrict. Other companies, and possibly their own, will close.
“We’re going to have to fire people,” Mario said.
There are better ways, to raise tax revenue, the Guzmans insist, even on soda: a tax as a percentage of the price, a tax proportional to sugar content. “We are at a big disadvantage,” Juan Pablo said.
Mexico can offer an endless array of problems for a small business, and Gugar has known many of them. Oaxaca’s rugged mountains and bad roads have hindered deliveries. The company built a factory in the violent southern state of Michoacán two years ago but hasn’t been able to produce soda there because drug-traffickers are demanding protection payments. In Oaxaca’s historic town square, thousands of impoverished banner-waving teachers are camping out and blocking roads to protest the government’s education reform, and schools haven’t been open in two months.
“Oaxaca’s a very poor place,” Juan Pablo said. “In whatever category you look at, we’re always at the bottom.”
But the business has provided well for the family. Mario wears Izod dress shirts and rimless glasses. Juan Pablo drives a Brazilian-made Volkswagen CrossFox and texts his wife on his iPhone 5. The couple love watching “Homeland” and have been planning a trip to the World Cup soccer showcase next year in Rio de Janeiro.
“To achieve what we did, you have to work nights, weekends and holidays,” Mario said.
At the moment, the specter of the soda tax has halted all their plans, including an attempt to export Friko, the children’s drink, to Los Angeles — their first foray into the United States.
“All our investment, all our work, is at risk,” Juan Pablo said.
“We are very concerned about this,” his father added. “This isn’t the work of a few years, it’s the work of three generations.”
Gabriela Martinez in Mexico City contributed to this report.
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