Against medical advice, Paul (El Guapo) and I made a run to Vicente’s in Dolores Hidalgo for a mess o’ carnitas. I’ll atone for that later: two extra sessions with my trainer.

On our way out of town, I saw a man selling piggy banks by the side of the highway. I can’t explain why the image was so arresting, but I mentioned it to Paul as we continued down the road. As my photography mentor, he started up with the same old lecture about forever losing images once they’ve been passed by. Rather than endure the whole thing, I turned around and went back with my small Olympus point-and-shoot.

I captured Paul as he was teaching modern merchandising methods to the proprietor. Better the potter than me.

Something about so many piggy banks all lined up resonated. Although I had no intention of buying one, I examined them more closely.

Photo: Paul Latoures

They’re crudely made, cranked out in batches. I’ve seen higher quality flower pots. The eyes are marbles stuck into the low-fired clay. Clearly they’re not art. So why are they so appealing?

Paul asked how much they cost. “Diez pesos, Señor.” About 75¢. What the hell. I bought two.

Paul bought twenty and distributed them in clusters around the entryway to my house. Piggy banks as garden decor.

I guess creative people do stuff like that.

Walk into any Safeway supermarket or Rodeo Drive boutique and ask to use the bathroom.

Right. Not a chance. The US of A is bathroom-unfriendly. A sign at a hot dog joint on Venice Beach says “Restrooms For Customers Only.” What a pinched, miserly attitude. I wouldn’t want to be the customer of a business like that. If they’re stingy on the output, they’re probably stingy with the input, too.

Mexico with bad water and lots of children has a more generous approach. I love it that here I don’t have to worry about the next pit stop. There’s always one nearby, and all are welcome to use it. I ask shopkeepers “¿Hay baños?” Usually the answer is “Si. ¿Como no?”

For some reason, many parking garages have public restrooms. And you don’t have to park your car to park your butt. Mexicans understand: When ya gotta go, ya gotta go.

Public restrooms may not always be as clean as advertised, but there are times when that doesn’t really matter. You can walk through Mexico City’s Centro Historico and there’ll be signs inviting you to use the facilities, however shabby. Try just finding a public lavatory in Manhattan, even a grimy one.

There are so many nice things about this country.

On returning from India, I was surprised to find that all the Guanajuato State placas (license plates) had been changed to rather stylish blue-and-white ones. The background of the new design features the image of Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, a leader of Mexico’s independence movement, adding a historical, patriotic note.

I never had any love for the old plates. The pumpkin and plum color scheme could have been chosen only by a bureaucrat. The design was bluntly functional. In my view, they were truly ugly.

This wholesale change in plates must have been for reasons other than esthetics. If a different look had been the only goal, new ones could have been phased in over time.

A lot of people were being inconvenienced by the new policy. Within a narrow time window, every vehicle owner would have to trek to the state fiscal building to trade in their old plates. If a government is going to do something like this to its constituency, it had better have a good reason.

The number of license plates involved is astonishing. In front of the fiscal office, workers load thousands of obsolete plates into a stakebed truck. Made of aluminum, they’re destined for the recycler.

Each plate had been sheared in two before being taken from the fiscal office, this to prevent theft and re-use. Old ones are valuable because authorities cite parking violations by impounding plates. A few people get around paying fines by putting stolen plates on their cars. A guy double-parks, the cops remove the plates, the driver installs another pair and goes on with his business, unperturbed.

Why did the state replace all the plates? A friend told me that it’s the government’s way of bringing all car owners back into the fold. Some people don’t bother to renew registrations. Their fees pile up unpaid for years. Others don’t redeem plates that were removed for parking violations. A couple of years ago while paying a parking ticket, I peered into the depths of a back room in the police station where I saw hundreds of plates stacked vertically on shelves—the accumulation of many years.

Obviously a large number of registration fees went uncollected. No effective mechanism existed enabling police to compel registration. Dealing with those without license plates, trasitos had but two options: tow cars to the impound yard or ignore them. San Miguel police have only one tow truck, and nowhere near enough officers or hours in the day or space in the impound lot to handle all the violators. They sensibly chose option number two and looked away.

So an effective solution appears to be to press the reset button. By the end of the year, all cars must bear the distinctive new plates. Car owners have to show up at the fiscal office to obtain them, and they have to turn in their old plates. You can imagine the wailing and gnashing of teeth. Scofflaws now must pay years of back fines and penalties. Failure to comply will be obvious to all.

We understand why the plates were changed. Only one more question remains: How was the pale blue and white color scheme chosen? Was it the suggestion of a design consultant? Was a design panel appointed? Surely it is mere coincidence that the colors chosen happen to be those of the ruling political party, Partido Acción Nacional.

Vicente here has got a problem, and he’s dealing with it in a time-honored fashion: by taking it to the streets.

Pinned to his chest are two tin crosses and what appears to be a milagro—a charm in the form of a body part that needs healing—suggesting that his problem is a medical one. A Panniculus (an apron of fat) rests on his thighs, revealing morbid obesity.

Vicente’s sign tells us he needs money for medicine and that God will repay anyone who helps. To bolster his case, he argues that he can’t work because a taco vendor named Florencio Lopez won’t give him a job, and besides, told him that he’s going to kill him.

I don’t know. Someone may give him a handout. But Vicente’s problems—obesity, unemployment, death threats—seem larger than those a few coins will solve.

It seems unlikely that taking to the streets would work. People who carry signs may not have firm grasps on reality. They seem a little kooky.

Recently I read the economic meltdown in the States has led at least two people to carry sandwich board signs. Paul Nawrocki, a former executive for a toy company, walks the streets of Manhattan with a sign that reads, “Almost Homeless.” He hands out resumés and has attracted a fair amount of attention from the media. But apparently not from employers.

AP Photo by Bebeto Matthews

Here, he listens to a man known only as Wayne, who points him in the direction of a job "handing out flyers" near Bryant Park. Patently not an executive position. I can’t imagine Paul will land one by wearing a sandwich board, and he sure as hell isn’t going to with the assistance of Wayne.

Both of them seem a little kooky to me.

But at least one man has used a sandwich board as a springboard to employment. Unemployed banker Joshua Persky wore a sign reading “MIT grad for hire.” Publicity garnered from walking the streets of Manhattan drew readers to a blog he publishes about his experiences, that ultimately netted him interviews and a job.

Zihuatenejo and Playa de las Gatas may seem overdeveloped for some. In that case, a half hour drive north on the coast highway takes you to the tiny community of Troncones. The beach there is open to the ocean, not protected by harbors as are Puerto Vallarta and Zihuatenejo. Undifferentiable from 95% of Mexico's west coast, no one has had any particular reason to settle here. Until now.

Popular resort areas no longer offer building space. Today, developers and second home seekers build frenetically in places like booming Sayulita. Those who seek quiet seaside idylls, and who are willing to live with little in the way of markets, restaurants and clubs, look to places like Troncones.

Nearby, crude palapas offer basic (really basic) dining and shelter from the sun. Many other beaches are essentially uninhabited. A gallon of gas gets you solitude if that's what you're seeking.

But if you want a civilized strand devoted to pampering vacationers, you'll be disappointed. At Troncones, you have to share your space with foraging hogs.

Nor are the waters as safe as in established resorts. Open sea produces rough surf, rip tides and undertow. Recently sharks attacked three people, prompting authorities to post warnings. I ignored them.

In the area, small businesses are thinly strung out along Highway 200. At one, Clint stocks up on locally grown mangoes.

Panhandlers are rare in the countryside; they're more likely to inhabit the cities. I was surprised to find one working a tope on the highway. Drivers must slow for the speed bump or lose their suspensions, providing him opportunities to solicit donations.

Troncones has a couple of restaurants. They're pretty rough. A sign in one, directing patrons left or right to the appropriate restroom, says it all. The burro suggests dissipation, discouraging to a high minded person such as myself. Well, all right. A reformed low-minded person.

Cleaning implements imply attention to matters of sanitation, perhaps at the expense of atmosphere. El Burro Borracho makes a good breakfast, though: eggs, frijoles, panela cheese, avocado, fresh tortillas, fresh orange juice and coffee. Under five bucks.

Just north of the village, a former plantation has been subdivided into lots, many of them beachfront. No homes have been constructed yet, but they won't be far behind. Lots are priced around $250,000. Believe it or not, that's low. The first phase is sold out.

Solitude never lasts.

If you live in San Miguel de Allende, you're basically living in the midwest. People in the state of Guanajuato are politically and religiously conservative, and they work in agriculture or industry. Think Michigan. More important to a retired California boy, there's no ocean. When my yen for that salt water tang becomes irresistible, I make the long trek to the beach.

The nearest beaches are nearly a day's drive away. I can drive to Puerto Vallarta in seven or eight hours. Zihuatenejo takes longer. Tolls and gas make driving expensive: I spent about $200 US round trip between San Miguel and Manzanillo. Potholes and topes batter the car. In some parts of the country, police attempt extortion, threatening to impound my car for some manufactured infraction. Dealing with them is unpleasant.

I like the alternative: Mexico has a bus system that will take you anywhere cheaply. I always take the first class ETN bus to Mexico City, avoiding the corrupt traffic cops drawn like flies to my Texas plates. (I have been stopped every time I have driven in the State of Mexico.)

Getting to Zihuatenejo by bus is easy. You take the 10 PM Flecha Amarilla bus from San Miguel to Celaya and transfer there to the midnight Primera Plus bus for Ixtapa/Zihuatenejo. Climb aboard, deploy the footrest, recline the first-class seat for sleeping, and wake up at 7:30 AM surrounded by sand and palm trees. You get a good night's sleep and gain an extra day of relaxation instead of spending it driving.

The image shows the interior of a Primera Plus bus: four deeply upholstered seats across and television monitors where airline-type (i. e., puerile) movies play. The more luxurious ETN buses seat three across and the movie sound track is piped through headphones so you don't have to listen to it.

One feature needs pointing out. Check out the red light shining above the door in front. That light mysteriously flickers on and off. I asked what it's for. Well, it's a safety feature required by law in all highway buses. Whenever the driver exceeds the mandated speed limit of 95 kilometers per hour, the light comes on. This is so that frightened or outraged passengers can report the driver to the authorities.

Only a committee could have come up with such a scheme. Drivers are not intimidated at all: the light is on almost constantly. Nobody bothers to report speeders anyway. We know that an illuminated red light assures us we'll all arrive just a little sooner.

Farther down the Mexican West Coast from Manzanillo lie the resort towns of Ixtapa and Zihuatenejo. Ixtapa presents a theme park prospect, a sort of poor man's Cancún. I'll leave the place to those who want four-day party weekends, the way I did forty years ago.

Today I still love going to the beach. I don't lie around tanning anymore, and I drank my last coco loco many years ago. But I like the sound of waves, the smell of salt water and the feel of warm water on my body. And I like someone bringing me fish tacos and a coke right to the umbrella I'm sitting beneath.

For that kind of relaxation, Playa Los Gatos, on the southern side of the harbor at Zihuatenejo fills the bill.

No road leads to Playa Los Gatos. To get there, you hire a boat for the short, inexpensive ride from the pier at Zihuatenejo.

Blinding white sand (limestone?) leaves the surf milky blue. A score of palapa restaurants crowd every inch of the strand. Settping from your boat onto the mole, a shill grabs you by the hand and steers you to the place that employs him. As near as I can tell, the selection, quality and prices of each are identical, so aggressive salesmanship brings in the customers.

Every place is fronted with umbrellas casting unbroken shade from one end of the beach to the other. The first twenty meters inland from the water's edge is devoted to cosseting visitors. I lounged for awhile, then I looked past the tourist zone to see how the restaurant owners live.

During daytime, families spend their days on the beach along with the rest of us. They take their meals in their restaurants and for relaxation, swing in hammocks. Unlike us, they wear street clothes, not bathing suits, because the water is always there for them—no big deal.

At night they sleep in shacks hidden in the jungle.

Their homes are little more elaborate than campsites, but they're kept immaculate. They hang hand-washed laundry out to dry. They sweep the sand clean. The environment is exactly right for living: no heat, no air conditioning needed.

And as in nearly all Mexican homes, the beach dwellers make altars venerating the Virgin.

I can't see how palapa restaurant owners make enough to live on. When I was there, they competed for the business of only a handful of customers. Many appeared to make no sales that day. Two weeks at Christmas, one week at Easter—everybody does well then. The rest of the year, I imagine they barely scrape by.

But life is pleasant here. Plenty of fish are free for the taking; boys fish off the mole with hand lines. A small yellowfin tuna and a kilo of tortillas will feed a family of four. Beach people have no income taxes, no traffic jams, no performance reviews. Nobody works too hard. They appear to be content and happy.

Driving southeast from Manzanillo on MEX 200 beyond the brickmaking pueblo of Cuyutlán, we come to the southernmost significant city in the state of Colima: Técoman.

Why are we here? Well, Paul (El Guapo) had heard that the greatest surfing destination in the entire world had been recently discovered on the coast near Técoman.

Paul is prone to hyperbole. For which reason I was disinclined to drive there, but we try to accommodate each other's objectives when we travel together. I wanted to see the salt museum, Paul wanted to see the world's greatest surfing spot. Tit for tat.

We found the surfing beach.

It was not the world's greatest surfing spot. The surf was unremarkable. Nearby restaurants and lodgings looked sad and decayed. A lonely surfer dude tried to spare change me. Looked like the excursion was a bust, but not to Paul's discredit. We venture into new situations together. Occasionally we strike gold; more often we strike out.

We found little else to recommend Técoman. The city sports a hideous sculpture at the entrance to town. All Mexican cities are required to erect these monuments. I think it's a law.

Técoman's is bigger than most.

Our fruitless foray onto the beach left us hungry and in the traveler's dilemma: Where can we find a good restaurant? We asked a trio of teenage girls outside a drugstore. Mamá came out as we were talking to them, took one look at our disreputable-looking selves, shooed the girls inside and gave us directions to a slum on the far side of town. Undoubtedly she was hoping that we would get lost and not trouble her daughters ever again.

Working our way back to the center of town, I spotted a red awning bearing the word carnitas. All right! You just can't go wrong with carnitas. To borrow the old joke about pizza. Carnitas is like sex; when it's good, it's very, very good, and when it's bad—it's still pretty good.

Red plastic Coca-Cola tablecloths, white molded plastic Coca-Cola chairs, takeout customers clustered around the owner while he chopped and packaged their orders: we knew this place was going to be good.

Paul meditates on the essence of pork.

Carnitas is that savory Mexican dish: pig boiled in lard. The meat is cooked way beyond well done. Cartilage develops a soft texture, excess fat is rendered away, flavors concentrate. It's incredibly delicious.

Carnitas is cooked in large tubs. After cooking, the rendered fat looks like used crankcase oil. Best not to look.

But I could see that the owner scrubs his cookware to a high shine every day. For a carnitas joint, this place was scrupulously clean.

I ordered a half-kilo for the two of us. You can get whatever part of the pig you want: loin, shoulder, belly, intestines. I ordered my favorite: ribs.

(In Guanajuato I once saw an entire boiled pig lying on a marble counter, with price tags stuck into its various parts. In that shop, some parts of the hog cost more than others.)

Our meal came with homemade salsa and pickled vegetables. Carnitas are usually eaten by putting some on a freshly made tortilla (with your fingers) and adding salsa and vegetables.

And of course you'll want to salt them. Carnitas need salt; in my opinion plenty of it. And the salt served in this place was that wonderful Espuma del Mar salt we'd seen being hand-harvested at the Cuyutlán lagoon.

What a find! The meal was delicious. These carnitas were every bit as good as Vicente's in Dolores Hidalgo. (Vicente's is the gold standard.)

The place had no name. Just a marquee announcing carnitas. Not to worry about finding it though: just drive southeast on MEX 200 libre to the center of Técoman and look for the red awning on a corner on the right. You can't miss it.

So our excursion wasn't a bust after all, and that's the way it often goes when traveling the narrow roads. You may not find what you're looking for, but often you find something else just as good.

—§—

The next day, we went to the Port of Manzanillo, an exciting place full of container ships, cranes and freight trains. I wanted to collect material for a post on the facility. While I waited in our illegally parked car under the gaze of an unamused security guard, unshaven Paul marched into the office of the harbormaster in his rumpled shorts, half-buttoned shirt and huaraches to ask permission to enter the port and maybe even get a tour.

The harbormaster took one look at him and said:

1. You may not enter the port facilities for any reason.
2. If you take pictures of the port from outside the perimeter fence, you will be arrested.
3. Go away.

Well all right then.

Paul spent the last afternoon in Manzanillo relaxing on the beach in front of our house.

Goo Goo G'joob.

When I retired, I wanted to take car trips all over the United States. As a child, I remember how different Texas was from New Jersey. But fifty years later, the Interstate Highway System was built our and our country had become homogenized. Most places looked pretty much like every other.

There are many wonderful places in the United States: Glacier National Park, Tucson, New York, Washington. But in between all those places, there's only limited-access freeways and chain restaurants.

Mexico is building its equivalent of the interstates, the cuotas, and they benefit the country just as much as ours did. But there's lots of backcountry here, and I find myself following the lure of the small roads just the way I wanted to years ago.

Two highways hug the coast of the State of Colima. Both are called Mexico 200. That's the way it's done here: two routes, one number. Easy to get confused.

The toll road, the cuota, is about as interesting as I-80 near Iowa City. The two-lane coastal highway has far more going for it. Called the libre (no tolls), drivers must watch out for topes (speed bumps) and highballing dobles remolques (tandem semis). But for their trouble, they get a close look at rural Mexico.

Along the libre, no Arbys or Day's Inns dull the mind. Every business establishment is unique. Here's one that offers homemade beverages (ponche), coconut candies (alfajor obleas) and hand-harvested sea salt. Not available north of the border.

Professionally produced signage is an exception to the usual amateur efforts hawking comida corrida or cerveza bien frio. No one can say this graphic designer is afraid of color.

Thirty miles southeast of Manzanillo lies the pueblo of Cuyutlán. People make ladrillas (bricks) there.

Mexicans use bricks the way we use Douglas fir studs up north. They're a universal building material. Given the demand, you'd think some businessman would manufacture them in a huge automated factory. Maybe someone does. But in my travels I've seen only small ladrilleras employing handfuls of people, maybe no more than the members of a single family.

Bricks are made the old-fashioned way—via backbreaking labor: Take some wet clay and pack it into wooden molds with your hands, one brick at a time.

After they've dried in the sun, the brickmaker stacks the bricks in porous pyramids that resemble precolumbian ruins. Openings at the bottoms of the temple-like stacks are fire doors for admitting fuel during firing. The doors employ the ancient Mayan korbeled arch, with cantilevered lintels instead of keystones.

As firing begins, a worker mixes mud for chinking gaps in order to regulate combustion and retain heat. Finger marks in the mud give evidence he works without trowel or other tools.

Another worker (this one in need of a belt) adds fuel—coconut husks. Many large plantations hereabouts provide a ready source of free energy.

When the fire is burning at the proper intensity, the firedoor is closed with more stacked bricks.

The stack cooks for about 24 hours, then allowed to cool. Finished bricks are loaded onto heavy flatbed trucks and taken to a busy intersection where the drivers await customers, often homeowners who are building their houses one wall at a time as construction money becomes available. Sometimes houses take many years to build. I see families living roofless inside four brick walls, a blue tarpaulin keeping off the rain. I remind myself: these people are homeowners.

As a privileged gringo who doesn't have to stick his hands in wet mud all day, the idea of using coconut-husk fired handmade bricks in my house gives me a romantic, back-to-basics feel. I'd proudly point out the primitive construction methods to my north-of-the-border visitors; show them how much more organic my house is than their vinyl-sided ranchers. Well, I wouldn't do that, but I'd be tempted.

But I'm aware brickmakers eke out livings just above the poverty level. They'd be better off economically with a salaried job working in an automated Cemex cinderblock plant. Then they could afford to drive new pickup trucks up the cuota to Manzanillo and shop at Wal-Mart. And get a burger at McDonalds.

Agricultural activity in Coastal Mexico astounds in scale and diversity: millions of acres planted to tropical fruits. Staple crops such as maize and milo grow primarily in the Bahio—the central highlands—as do vegetables such as broccoli and jicama. Here near Manzanillo farmers grow guavas, papayas, mangos and limas dulces—sweet limes—among many other fruits both common and exotic.

And they grow coconuts. My, how they grow coconuts.

You see piles of them at fruit stands in every pueblo; green coconuts sold for their milk. For a few pesos, the shopkeeper whacks at the end of a green coconut with a heavy knife and sticks a straw in it. Drink up. Upscale stands offer coconuts bien frio—well chilled.

The vendors I met had all their fingers—remarkable considering they secure nuts with one hand and lop the ends off with overhand swings of their machetes.

Coconut plantations are elegant and serene. Orderly rows of tall palms stretch off into the distance, quietly absorbing the tropical sun and converting it into large fruits. Many orchards recently have been interplanted with limas dulces to increase productivity, as in the image below.

Workers load trucks and trailers with husked coconuts. They burn the husks, a dubious practice in my opinion. I would think that returning them to the soil would increase fertility.

These coconuts are destined to be processed into copra; dried coconut meat that eventually will be pressed to extract the oil.

(As a kid, I dreamt about hiring onto a tramp steamer engaged in the South Pacific copra trade. It sounded exotic, but probably was just gritty hard work.)

Hazards on Colima highways include crawling tractors pulling trailers full of coconuts. Behind them, impatient drivers place their lives in las manos del Dios, passing on curves and hills.

Fieldworkers travel to and from plantations on stakebed trucks, hopefully avoiding encounters with cars passing slow tractors. Note the rear springs of this truck are fully bottomed out, rendering it barely maneuverable.

The guy second from the right gave me a friendly salute as I shot this image. I love how friendly people are here.

A truck full of limas dulces awaits a driver. Rosario, my housekeeper, makes an agua fresca (a fresh fruit drink) from them during the brief season they're in the mercados.

Tropical fruit plants look otherworldly to me. Apple trees seem staid and frumpy in comparison. Papayas (left) are sensual—perhaps a forbidden fruit. Mangoes hang unaccountably from long stems. Why does the plant invest so much energy in stem-growing?

Driving through California as a young man, I was fascinated by endless orchards along US 99, and huge vegetable fields in the Salinas Valley. In the '60s, California produced well over half the fresh produce in the entire United States. Today, food production in Mexico is at least as intense. Representing only 4% of the economy, it employs a fifth of the workforce, not including subsistence farmers.

U. S. immigration restrictions now create shortages of farmworkers. American growers respond by shifting production south of the border. Somehow I haven't heard howls from those usually concerned about outsourcing of American jobs. But that's probably because nobody wants to work in the fields anyway.

Mexico may become America's breadbasket.