Christmas in Aqua Verde

Dec 24 – That Jimmy Buffet song comes to mind – ‘it’s Christmas in the Caribbean…’ but really this in nothing like the Caribbean. No palm trees, and the water is a bit chilly – 67 degrees F.

But it is Christmas Eve and it is sunny and lovely. We spent the morning making and decorating a paper Christmas tree, complete with paper candles and snowflake decorations. Fynn had fun and at 2 is just starting to piece together the holiday. She was busy flipping through her Christmas book and pointing out the Christmas tree and stockings hung on the the pages, just like what we had. We told her that Santa would find us here and bring her a Christmas present. I don’t think she understood that yet but she would by tomorrow

 Mid morning we tok Otto to the southerly beach where the town is and headed to the small Tiedas. Aqua Verde has perhaps 30 families living in the valley, where they fish and tend to their goats. There is even a small scale dairy where we purchased a 1/4 kg of goat cheese for 30 pesos. The first tienda was run beside the family home, and consisted of mostly bare shelves and some produce. We purchased our goods, including fresh tortillas, from a young girl while her 4 year old sister watching wide eyed.  Fynn passed out chips to the family kids, who seemed happy for the snack. We then headed to the other tienda, which had just stocked up in town, so we could fill our bags with more produce and enjoy a cold drink. How such a small town can support two stores is beyond us. Here the family was preparing for a Christmas Eve feast and the whole town would be coming over for dancing and drinking and feasting. The matron of the home invited the group of us (about 10 at this point, all anchored in the bay), to come for dinner and dancing. Dancing at 9 she said, dinner at 10. With the little asleep at home this was an impossible invitation for us, but the other headed over to soak up the local culture.

Back home in Whistler, I knew my family was enjoying a German dinner of sausages and sauerkraut, so I did my best here and pulled my Oma’s recipe for potato salad. Not quite the same, but neither is Christmas in Mexico. I played Santa, leaving the toys and gifts under our tree, then snuggled into bed for the night.