Iguana Nights 1

                       

                          “He’s got that sort of jungle essence that one can sense.”
                                                   Elizabeth Taylor, on Richard Burton




I crossed the Sea of Cortez to the Land of Cortez on August 20, 1980. Dolphins jumped alongside my frijoles, rice and res beef dinner. I tried to sleep on deck but, between the heat, the fluorescent lights, and the dancing gay Mexican girls, it was not my Destiny. Joel and Manuel, two new friends, tried to help by working us up through the rehydration food chain, from leche to gaseosas to cervezas to Seagrams. I ended up drinking the boat water. It took two hours to get off the ferry the next morning. After brunch in Los Comales market, I set up Diogenes in the Mar Rosa campground on the beach, for two dollars a day. After a siesta I cooked some tomatoes and peppers, and ate them with some leftover tortillas from brunch. It was coming on dark when I took a walk down the beach. An inebriated Oaxacan tried to sell me some marijuana, on the waterline. As if. A little further along, at the Oceano, I got involved in a poker game with Doug, Stuart, and tequila. The two Americans lost. When they began spilling their drinks I suggested an alternate venue. We ended up in a line to get into a nightclub called Rockies, but it didn’t look good. Until three Mexican girls queued up behind us. There was Margarita and Rosa in front, and an apparition so deliciously dark chocolate behind them, I initially didn’t see her.
Over on the other side of Mexico and history, to replace the small pox extermination of the indigenous population, 200,000 African slaves arrived on the docks of Vera Cruz, to work the Yucatan henequen plantations. They were called ‘Los Lobos,’ the wolves. A band with the same name did a classical rendition of the most famous song in Mexico, ‘La Bamba,’ a place in Angola that many of them came from. Africa had sent another colour along for the ride. The first epidemic of yellow fever occurred in 1648. They called it the black vomit. There were over two dozen subsequent outbreaks, one of which drove George Washington out of Philadelphia. One of the last occurred in Mazatlan, in 1883. It killed Angela Peralta, the world famous opera diva, shortly after she arrived in port from Europe. She was known as the ‘Mexican Nightingale’ and, after giving one last aria from the Hotel Iturbide balcony overlooking the Plazuela Machado, she fell into a coma. One of the singers from her company helped complete a hurried wedding ceremony to her paramour, by moving her unconscious head, in nods of assent.
The Africans had long melted into the rest of the cacao, by the time I made out the rest of the Luz Maria. I moved my head in unconscious assent. She was, indeed, the ‘Light of Maria.’ Oriental eyes, long black hair and an elegance that, had I been with Cortez, would never have allowed me to return to Spain. She smiled at the doorman, he bowed, the waves parted, and we were inside.
I asked Luz Maria why she kept referring to Doug as ‘Perrito.’
“Ju say hees name ees ‘Dog’, no?”
I started calling him Perrito. We danced all night.
Luz Maria brought me breakfast in Diogenes next morning. We spent the day swimming, playing chess and guitar, and eating in Los Comales. We spent most of the night in Diogenes. About four in the morning, a horrendous thunderstorm washed a torrent of sand through the tent. I ran her back to her hotel through the downpour and finally fell asleep, after evicting the hive of insects that had sought refuge while I was gone.