Letter from the Editor

Welcome to the big month of December and Welcome to Another Day in Paradise.

Intrepid travelers, we arrive here from all corners. By plane, by bus, by car, we make this pilgrim’s journey every year. Braving long roads and long layovers and the more than occasional exorbitant fare, and yet we come.

We are persistent and pugnacious, dogged and determined, trusty and tenacious. We’d walk five miles through the snow to get to Zihuatanejo, uphill both ways. You’d think we all arrived by camel train, judging by the battle scars and the battle stories and the fiercely defended territories of our no longer secret, secret-spot. I know I feel like a camel driver every time I cross the Sierra Madres more then twice in one day, and that line of taxis from the airport this time of year, it does resemble a caravan, doncha think? Or am I just over-ly romanticizing everything once again?

We are undefinable, we are a community in transit that disperses and reassembles every year, each time getting bigger, like a blooming scrape of something on a glass microscope slide or a kaleidoscopic flower from a junior high school science film. Is it a mass exodus or does it just feel that way?

Over 20 million foreigners visit Mexico every year, almost ½ a million come to Ixtapa-Zihuatanejo alone (–we’ll not exactly alone they usually come in pairs; 2s, 3s, small familiar groups). And there are many who are prophesizing yet larger numbers still in the coming years, they say the big generation up there will be sending even more retirees down here…any day now. And for those of us that like the idea of bigger, better, more, (money, market, taxes, tourism, economy) that is good-ly news. But for those of us already feeling a bit skittish in the din, twitchy in the traffic, jumpy in the hubbub…perhaps you’d better dig in your trenches and put on your battle gear, cause p.s. the crowds are here.

Umm-hmm,