THE LAYERS OF LIFE IN SAYULITA

A Small Mexican Beach Town is Heaven... Or Is It?

by DANIELLA CHUDLER, special guest writer

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There’s a joke my dad used to tell about a successful business man who meets a fisherman sitting on a dock drinking a beer by his boat. The business man encourages the fisherman to start selling his fish. The fisherman responds by asking him why. “Well, so that you can buy more boats and start selling even more fish,” came the reply of the business man. The fisherman asks why he should do that. “So that you can start employing other men and sell even more fish.” The fisherman, again, asks why he should sell his fish. “If you start growing your business, eventually, you can start saving money,” the business man told him. Again, the fisherman asks him about the value in the business man’s suggestions. “Well, so that one day you can retire, buy a boat, and drink beer and fish all day.”

I understood the point of the story from the first time my dad told it to me. The themes about ambition, simplicity and work always stood out to me. I always thought about the fisherman and the business man -- the irony that the fisherman already had everything that the business man was working for. Not until this May did I actually witness such lifestyles and gain a new understanding of the story.

This last May I spent the entire month in Mexico. I stayed in a little beach town in Nayarit called Sayulita. Like most places today, the city has reached a crossroads between progression and modernization, or maintaining old traditions. I heard conversations about rising costs, increasing numbers of Americans buying property and continuing modernization. The oldest ATM machine has only been around for two years. People there still remember the days when horses provided the only means of transportation.

The lifestyle here contrasts significantly in regards to the general lifestyle in the United States, at least the lifestyle I am accustomed to in Southern California. Time does not direct people. Businesses have unpredictable hours, opening and closing at the owner’s choosing. This can be most frustrating when you plan on eating dinner at Ivan’s taco place down the street, only to discover that he did not feel like opening that night. Days seem longer with the lack of schedules. Life just moves at a slower pace in Sayulita.

Visitors call this place a dream. Locals call this place life. Most people can easily see the beauty in such a lifestyle. Not many people would turn down a life on the beach with friendly and warm people. Most would never want to leave, except, maybe, the people that live here.

One day, my family and I decided to venture out of town for the day. We rented a car and drove through different towns. Our stops were usually directed at food. At one particular food stop, we pulled over on the side of a road to eat at a restaurant we found. Under a straw roof sat several red tables and chairs, an open stone oven, a couple local customers, and the basic necessities to maintain a restaurant including the owner himself who does the cooking. The restaurant would not have benefited from walls. With them, we would have been deprived of the view one has while sitting on a cliff overlooking the ocean. The food tasted fantastic, the people around us were fun and caring and nothing could beat the natural environment around which surrounded everyone.

At one point during the meal, my cousin said that the owners lives in heaven. At first, his life may seem so. The man lives on a piece of land with a view that most people can only dream about. He does not have the same stress and worries that others have who try to get away from it all by vacationing in Mexico. People say they would trade their lives with him, maybe they actually would without going back on their word. Despite the beautiful qualities of his life, the man may also live with an ugliness he only wishes he could get away from. Perhaps he prays for the day he and his wife can move out of their hut and live in a house with more sanitary conditions. Although on the surface he appears to have an idealized existence, life is not as easy as it would seem around Sayulita.

I still think about the story of the fisherman and the business man. Only now, I do not only see the idea of the working man whose ambition causes him to lose sight of what he actually wants and may already have. I do not just see the wrong in the business man’s way of life. Rather, I have learned to see other aspects of the fisherman’s life. His life may seem easy and beautiful at first glance, especially when he stands on the beach. I used to be one of those people that envied the poor fisherman who lived the good life until I began to speak to the people around me. They told me about worries and far away dreams they have for themselves and their family -- thoughts driven from a lack of having basic needs met. Basic necessities such as a consistent diet, good education and clean water are things that back home are taken for granted, but are a luxury for much of the world outside of America.

People travel to other countries and return with photographs that they carry around for memories and stories. As they pass through foreign lands, they say to themselves that they witnessed life as it should be. Sometimes, people forget that their souvenirs are another person’s life. That person’s life is a traveler’s paradise. The reality of poor living, health, and opportunity often becomes overlooked. There are always experiences to be had, allowing growth and understanding of the world when people travel. I only hope that when people return to look at their photographs, they see the life lived by the fisherman apart from the shore. People need to realize that oftentimes those happy faces we see while travelling are only half the story and that there’s always more beneath the surface.