Saturday, March 22, 2008

In Mexico, on the Lam With Ken Kesey

New York Times
North America > Mexico > Manzanillo


I am in the ocean, doing nothing, just bobbing. I am facing a golden-sugar beach, a low pink hotel, a thatched palapa baking in the heat. To my left, a long crescent stretch of bay, a cradling arm around a basket of blue. To my right, a stone jetty. Beyond it, a port full of oceangoing tankers and the cliff-hugging city of Manzanillo. Behind me, the limitless Pacific. All around, pelicans loitering in the swells, which lift and gently drop me, my arms out, toes brushing velvet sand.


I said I was doing nothing, but I’m actually trying to summon somebody: Ken Kesey, novelist, psychedelic prophet, leader of the Merry Pranksters, hero of “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.” It was here, on this beach, that he took to the waves as I did, back in 1966. He was a hunted man then, on the run from the F.B.I. and Mexican federales, but even he, a man of great aplomb, found time for thoughtful bobbing.


New York Times article

Friday, March 14, 2008

Quiet before the Storm - Semana Santa

I went into Manzanillo to stock up before the Semana Santa rush gets here and took these quiet pictures of the beach. I also went south of town as far as Campos, past the electric plant and the natural gas storage (Zeta Gas) ... but was disappointed to find you can't enter the toll road headed north to bypass Manzanillo so had head back thru town. There are no toll booths to the north and that is their road. More pictures soon of the waterfront and south.


From Playa Miramar looking towards Santiago


Playa Miramar

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