La Vida Mexico

without the love of my life. I think I've got a handle on it.  He loved me.  Not enough to stay alive for me but he loved me.  It was like I always thought storybook love should be. We were friends for a year before I dared to tell him that I was crazy about him.  He was surprised and pleased, I think.  We took steps to spend more time together and to get to know each other. He had a hard job, taking pictures of tourists on the various tours his company provided.  He only made money if someone paid for the USB with their pictures on it and a little from the tours' tips.  With the advent of "everybody has a cell phone" it had gotten harder and harder to convince people of his value, maybe even himself.  But he was great at it and he kept trying.  His time was dictated by which tour he was sent on each day and he didn't know what it would be until that morning.  Our times together were often brief and last minute.  A text from him sa...

For the second month in a row we, the Novoas and I, were headed to Rafa's tai kwan do competition in Guadalajara.  It was cancelled, along with the rest of life in Puerto Vallarta, and the world. But we had a rental car and four days planned.  There were no tours for Jorge, no tai kwan do for Rafa.  But there was his mom's house in his hometown, recently restuccoed and waiting for paint. We loaded up and left on Thursday. It is a beautiful little town sprung up from when the ruling landholder's wife insisted their workers each be given some land, in the 1800's.  Consisting of fewer than a hundred homes, a small store, lovely little church and the lovingly tended drop dead gorgeous hacienda where grandchildren own, tend and even rent rooms, it is built along a the Atenguillo River, in a valley.  It is named Ahuacatapec, an indigenous word for avocado because the nearest mountain looks like an avocado half.  (It also looks like a tortuga but they picked avoc...