A Boat in Our Backyard

“There is a boat in our backyard!”. Those are the first words I heard yesterday morning (3 February - San Blas Day). The boat was actually on the beach and we had to either walk up our road or climb the stairs to the roof to see it. It was one of the shrimp boats; easily 90 feet long and not at all used to being out of water. It was tethered to two other shrimp boats that were waiting for high tide to pull it back out to sea.

The night before we had a terrific storm.. “Wait a minute”, some of you might be thinking. Hadn’t Carlo and Joy said there was very little to no rain in San Blas between November and April? And indeed we had said that many times. We had also heard, “It NEVER rains on San Blas Day” from the local population. It turns out this year proved both those statements wrong.

The storm was a fantastic! We saw radar pictures on the Internet the next morning and the clouds appeared to cover an area the size of Texas. Our electricity went out during the night and we spent a short time wondering if this was our last night ever. The wind took items out of our yard and our neighbors’ yard and rearranged them as it saw fit. Several of the Ramada’s  (open air restaurants) down on the beach were customized as pieces of roofing were tossed around to land wherever the storm decided to place them. Downtown was Flooded! When we drove to town the next morning we found some streets to be impassable.

However, it was San Blas day and we weren’t going to let a little thing like flooded streets and pouring rain stop us from meeting friends at La Boya (a local drinking spot on the river). So, we picked up Val and Ray (two Canadian friends) and headed to La Boya. I thought there would be no one else there (after all, who besides us would be this crazy to  brave the elements just to toast in the blessing of the fleet). When we got to La Boya the place was packed! There were Mexicans and Gringos awaiting San Blas to pass down the river and to the ocean and onto Piedra Blanca (the white rock) for the blessing.

Only this year no one wanted to get on the barcas (smaller boats) to accompany San Blas into the white caps the stood between us and the blessing. The larger boats still went out and one could see the blessing from the shoreline but, this was the most unusual San Blas day in the memory of anyone I talked with (including people that had celebrated here for over 40 years). I can only hope the blessing works well this year as we’re not off to a very good start.

Carlo Gagliano