Beach Life

The beach at La Manzanilla is a destination for gringos in the winter and for Mexicans in the summer.  This is not an upscale resort and the gringo visitors mostly come for a respite from their busy lives. They want to relax, to slow down, to experience their vision of a sleepy tropical village on the Pacific Ocean. One gringa travel writer wrote about returning to “…this dusty little Mexican fishing village, a hushed-up spot that's still off the clock and, for a while yet, off the tourist track…to settle back in my beachside chair and stare for hours at the mini-curl of surf, ice cubes melting in my Cuba Libre, skin glowing, mind blank, system on zero” (link).

Fishermen leaving the beach at La Manzanilla

We were in La Manzanilla during the summer after most of the gringos had returned to the U.S. or Canada. The character of the town changed noticeably. Mexicans come to the beach to play in the water, to eat and drink and have a good time with their friends and multi-generational families. Buses from inland cities pull into town early on Saturdays and Sundays emptying out the beach goers. The driver of one old bus was sleeping on a mattress in the luggage area under the passenger compartment.

Bus on a side street in La Manzanilla

The beach-goers grab their supplies – towels, coolers with food and beer, blow-up floats for the kids – from the bowels of the buses, pick up last minute items at the local tienda and head for the beach. Some spend the day; some stay overnight in the local hotels and make a weekend out of it. As the number of beach goers increases, so does the number of peddlers walking among the crowd. Some come long distances to sell their goods.

Beach at La Manzanilla

If you spend any time at a popular beach in Mexico, you’ll see a steady stream of peddlers, or street vendors (vendedores ambulantes), selling jewelry, hammocks, hats and clothing, wood carvings, ice cream, fruit, barbecued shrimp and raw oysters, pastries, fruit drinks from gourds and plastic bottles, sketches, toys and just about anything an enterprising Mexican can package, carry and market to the beach crowd.

Peddlers selling inflatable toys, clothes and fruit

Restaurants at the beach erect umbrellas over plastic tables and chairs that invite people to camp there for the day. The kids play in the waves with inflatable toys, build sand castles, bury their siblings, and run and laugh and splash in a display of never-ending energy. Young (and not so young) lovers cling to each other laughing as the waves break over them again and again. Adults bob in the surf and play with the kids. They eat the meals they've brought from home or food they've ordered, and drink sodas and beers in the shade of the umbrellas for hours on end accumulating piles of debris.

Selling coconuts in a beach restaurant

Pedro’s was our favorite place to have lunch and hang out and watch the beach crowd on weekends. Pedro, who spent time in the U.S. and speaks English, started his restaurant in a taco truck, the kind you see in Los Angeles. It was the first taco truck in La Manzanilla. He went on to open a restaurant on the beach that is popular with gringos and Mexicans (link).

Selling hammocks at Pedro's restaurant

Beaded jewelry

More beaded jewelry

Rande bought a wooden spoon from this peddler a couple days before I took this photo. He said he was from the state of Michoacán 200 kms (120 mi) to the south.

Wooden spoons

The peddlers ignored the sign “vendedores prohibidos” (vendors prohibited) at the entrance to the restaurant and walked among the tables selling their goods.

Earrings and shells

Fruit drinks

Fruit

We were in Pedro’s late one afternoon when the families were packing to catch their buses back to their inland cities. One extended family of eight who had been there all day left enough trash to fill a medium-sized garbage bag. After picking everything up, our waiter turned to us, patted his elbow and said “codo” (cheapskate) – they hadn’t left him a tip. 

Shells

Hats

Mangos are a popular beach treat; they're carved like a flower and impaled on a stick. (The kid on the mat is eating a mango.) You can't do that with a ripe mango, so they use hard mangos and cover them with sugar. This woman is also selling cooked shrimp on a skewer.

Mangos and shrimp on skewers

This young woman selling a carved, wooden crucifix and religious statues looked wistfully at kids playing in the water.

Religious statues

This little girl was following a peddler selling small toys.

Toys

In coastal Mexico, oysters (ostiones) and clams (almejas) are collected in large numbers by divers and served fresh in beach restaurants. To keep the bivalves fresh, they are packed in mesh bags deposited in shallow water and marked with a buoy. This young man is retrieving a bag of oysters marked with a green soda bottle from shallow water beyond the waves.

Retrieving a bag of oysters from the ocean

The waitress from walks along the beach asking people if they want to buy fresh oysters. When someone accepts, she goes back to the table under an umbrella where the oysters are shucked and arranged on a plate. Here she's delivering a plate of oysters to a customer down the beach.

Delivering fresh oysters

A day at the beach in the heat of the summer can be relaxing, but the sun, the waves and the cervezas take their toll – you can wind up face down, covered with sand on a child's inflatable toy after a day of too much fun.

When the beach was deserted, Pedro’s was our favorite place to pass the time with cervezas and guacamole while we watched the waves and clouds after long walks.

Pedro's restaurant on a stormy day