Many years ago, when I was the Chef at Sala in the Virginia Highlands neighborhood of Atlanta. I had a bartender who worked for me named Rafael Barragán. We called him Sapo (frog). Because his weathered face and mushy features in his 60’s, gave him this undeniable resemblance to said creature.
He grew up on Isla Mujeres. He was undoubtedly part of the early coastal movement towards what is now a billion-dollar Mexican tourist Industry. Sapo would often speak of a place that was the sheer definition of paradise. A sparsely populated tiny island with a few small hotels and a central zócalo (town square). He told of his time serving beverages and food to the fortunate tourist who found their way to the sleepy island. Days and mornings spent laying on the beach and afternoons and evenings slinging beers and cocktails.
Sapo story lingered on
He would conjure up dreamy images of a mashup between the town centers of old spaghetti westerns with the backdrop of palm trees and bikinis. It sounded amazing. So why then was this old-timer from Isla Mujeres slinging margaritas at the best Mexican restaurant in Atlanta? (We were voted that twice by Creative Loading!). Well, You have to go no further than the islands’ namesake, woman Island. To hear him tell it, he was bewitched by an American woman who used to spend apparently a lot of time there. Eventually, they married, and he immigrated to Atlanta. The last time I saw old Sapo, he was divorced and living in his ex-wife’s basement apartment. Still slinging drinks in the bars of Atlanta. The stories he told have lingered all this time. It was my destiny to one day walk the old town lazy streets of the dreamy island.
It would be Maggie’s first trip to her maternally ancestral land and her first passport stamp. She seemed very nonchalant about the whole endeavor, but the excitement began to build as time grew close. I rented an apartment in the old neighborhood of Gloria in the center of the island. I wanted to give her a true locals experience. We would have to get to the island by just about every mode of transportation possible—boats, Trains, planes, and automobiles. Not in that order. After a train, two planes, a couple of taxis, and a boat ride, we finally made it to the island. We had trouble finding the house as no street numbers were used. Thank goodness I speak decent Spanish.
The Journey
Mangoes Cafe.
A little Exploring in some of the cliff side caves on the eastern seaside of the island
Playa Norte, North Beach
The view from our apartment
I’ve experienced this elsewhere in Mexico and other parts of the world. Once you get out of tourist regions, you have to find your destination by a house “name” or by asking people you run into. Often if you are really far out, streets are marked by identifiers. Typically animals. Or some other universal identifier for people who can’t read or read in that language. (though it’s usually the former). So, for instance, the houses on the corners may have “gargoyles” of different animals. Or the street corners have posts with small statuettes on the top.
You look for the third house on the left of the dolphin going from elephant to monkey. That is really a thing. It amazes me that people get mail. But if I remember from my visits to the villages of central Mexico years ago, one doesn’t receive mail in this part of the world one retrieves it. Usually, from what we would know as a P.O. Box kind of system. I digress. We found the cozy little apartment, dropped our gear, and hit the streets and the beach.
