I never tire of sounds of Zihuatanejo. It’s music to my ears. There are the sounds one would expect in a beach side community, like the crashing waves which on a very still night I can hear from my back porch although I am a good block away. There is the sound of music coming from the neighbors back yard or the restaurant across the street, but my favorite sounds are the songs of the street vendors. Each of these have there own song. The loudest is the propane truck that announces his presence in your neighborhood with a horn that plays “the charge sound followed by “gaaaaz”.
First thing in morning one hears the call of the bolillo man calling “boy-lee-yos” with a basket on his head filled with just baked, warm, crusty buns from the oven of the bakery 1/2 block away. I put a few pesos in my bag, lower it down on a string from the back porch. He takes the pesos and puts a fresh bollio in my bag and I pull it up. This is so much more efficient than looking for my shoes, purse and mask and keys to go down stairs out on to the street and hope he hasn’t moved on. It save both he and I time and is more, fun and more Mexican.
The knife sharpener is another of my favorite mini merchants. He pushes his sharpening wheel through town to the tune of a high pitched penny whistle. Fruit carts of every size and shape are pushed others are powered by bicycle. The coconut man cry’s out “cocooo, cocooo” and then with his machete he will wack out that coco nut, put a straw in it and you have a delicious drink. The candy man is strangely quiet as he moves from one location to another pushing an enormous wooden wheelbarrow filled with the most beautiful array of candy. Ice cream carts have the sound of a tricycle bell, or a clown horn depending on what type of ice cream. I still prefer the home made ice cream that you get from the big metal tubs. They usually sell 3 types from their divided tub, vanilla, lemon, and coconut, all really yummy.
Come evening you hear the hamburger carts getting pushed across rough streets to their corner locations where folks say you can get the best ever hamburgers. And listen for the steam whistle of the “comote” man selling his hot roasted sweet potatos with a sweetened canned milk drizzled over them, one of my favorite dinners. So much of life here is just as it has always been from the earliest times, the fishermen selling their catch on the beach and carts being pushed through the streets.
And yes there are still tiny children selling trinkets to the tourists at the bars and restaurants while mama watches from a distance, frequently with this years baby wrapped up in her shawl.
Still having trouble getting pictures placed where I want them, and some just won’t up load. This iPad is quite the learning process. Signing off KO
Zihuatanejo is dressing up for Carnival. Zihua’s Carnival never coincides with traditional Carnival dates, it has a mind of it’s own and occasionally it just doesn’t show up and then it pops up again at the whim of whom ever is currently in power.
Festival in Ixtapa. It was poorly attended and I wasn’t impressed by the band, but there was a girl singer who I would have liked to heard a lot more from her, but she only did a couple of songs, she was really good.
para sail boats. I was fascinated by this game of Moki that friends were playing. The sand was too hot for me to want to join in, but it was really quite interesting. Signing off KO
bumps and pot holes the size of a Volkswagen. Some are paved, many are not. I was surprised to see there are a large contingent of small buses/vans called combi’s that service all the hillsides until you get to the parts that are stairs only.
on the hill the more exclusive and expensive the housing. Not so in Zihuatanejo, the higher on the hill the poorer you are with tickey tacky patched together wood and tarp and wire fencing shelters. We came to the area that was hit by a devastating fire a year or so ago, that wiped out 40-100 of these very rudimentary shelters that were home to these folks. They had very little and still lost it all. Some are just now rebuilding, but once again very rustic post and pole wood structure, some require a ladder to access their homes from the street as it is so steep. But the view is to die for, absolutely stunning. On 
I also tour the fabric stores with the same type of mentality as the fabrics here are beautiful and the selection immense. The difference between the fabric stores and galleries is I can shop the fabric stores as the prices are extremely low compared to home prices. What I find odd is that you can buy anything you need for sewing except a pattern, not a pattern to be found. The bottom fabric will be my new curtains. Signing off KO
Zihuatanejo 