Turtle Sanctuary

It was a hot August afternoon, and we were thinking about sitting on the beach at Sayulita. But, it was the final week of summer vacation and Sayulita was bursting at the seams with people who made the 5-hour drive from Guadalajara to enjoy time in the ocean and gorgeous sunsets. Sayulita was more complicated by the storms that washed out the streets and revealed that they were built on a foundation of construction trash, ranging from cement blocks to tetanus-inducing chunks of rusty metal.  

A few years ago, Sayulita was a tranquil fishing, surfer town. In a few years more, Sayulita will probably be a series of one-way flagstone streets with neat sidewalks, and a pedestrian only central plaza / beach area. But, that’s all in the works. Right now, Sayulita has a boom town feeling, and that same scramble for commercialization. If you have land, you can develop it. If you don’t and you are an American or a Canadian, you can add to your portfolio and expect a healthy rate of return. At least that’s what websites promise.  Perhaps they are right. Undoubtedly, they are right.

We are in the land of endangered sea turtles. They live here on the Pacific coast of Mexico, and the government of Mexico has put great effort into protecting them, and setting up incubator programs to protect the eggs and then release the hatchlings into the ocean. 

In the meantime, we decided to drive 20 minutes north to Lo de Marcos, a little village town with wider streets and a large plaza. The beach is wide and clean, although it does not seem very good for surfing, and there do seem to be some rather scary offshore currents.  I’m not sure if those aspects will limit growth in the future. It is hard to say. All the attempts to evaluate real estate investment potential starts making my head spin. I’ve spent much time planning, proposing, and making offers on property, without any real results. Now, I just have the dull feeling one gets when looking at the Dow hit 23,000 and you were afraid to get in at 15,000 because you thought it was overpriced.  

What is really endangered here in this gorgeous stretch of beach. Clearly it’s more than the turtles, and it’s also more than a quieter way of life. I think that what is endangered in this gorgeous stretch of land is the world of dreams and fantasy. If dreams are too painful, we try to put them out of our mind. If fantasies no longer motivate, but just remind one of the impossible, then we eliminate our own ability to generate fantasies.

Endangered.

What puts us at risk is what give us true joy and the push to become better people and to have a better world. If the world does not endanger this, we turn around and annihilate precisely those things that make us most valuable, those things that make life most precious.

A small dog is digging in the sand underneath a table at the seaside restaurant. Another dog flops down under our table and falls into a deep sleep. I wonder how much dog poo is in the sand we’re walking in.  There are some questions you just shouldn’t ask.