Q Tips and Sophia

November 2009

If you ever wonder what is there to do on a Monday night in Mazatlan that would be fun, don’t worry the options are unlimited when you have a wife like mine. Sharon and I had spent the better part of ten days helping Leslie move into her new condo in Paraiso II. Leslie brought her friend Linda and left her husband Bruce in Arizona to help with the moving van departure. After enjoying Bruce and Leslie’s exploits on a previous visit, this working ten days and some medical issues of Leslies seemed tame by comparison. But on Monday we drove over to Don Chuy’s who never fails us. On the way home Nunez screamed for me to stop. Too late. I drove past her spontaneous desire.
I hung a u turn at a torno. That would be a legal move even in Mexico. I parked. We bounded across the street despite an angry dog stationed between us and an open aired restaurant with only one favorable quality, a jute box. Not any jute box, but the loudest jute box in Mazatlan. Linda walked up to a table of three twentysomething Mexican men and asked for help in playing musica. Not that the Mexican music was bad. It kicked ass rock and roll style. But when Credence Clearwater arrived, so did Sophia, my favorite alter ego of Sharon’s. It surfaces when she is tired of the matronly elementary school woman who has NOT forgotten what it is like to have FUN. I watched her turn a boring bar in Playa del Carmen into a dirty dancing festival. When we left to go to the next bar, part of the staff took the rest of the evening off to join us.
So once “Rolling on a River” blared, Sophia stood up, no partner in mind and danced towards the jute box. What’s a guy to do? Two women are looking at me, and before they started to kick me, I’m up. This violates my seven and seven rule (7 cocktails and 7 couples before I’ll dance). But I sucked it up and dealt with it. Mexican men wasted no time pursuing Linda and Leslie and the evening took off from there.
We started to dance. This is a bar that is so far off the gringo tourist map that we could be the first to take it over with our enthusiasm. We drank long neck Pacificos and danced. The Mexican men couldn’t get enough of our table. But we did have the only table of women.

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Linda’s and Leslie’s last night in town needed a less active and intense performance. We decided on dinner at Playa Bruja, another open aired restaurant on the best surfing beach for dozens of miles. The four of us walked in…..I like this three date act. A waiter seated us and Leslie whispers all too loudly, “Look at all the Q Tips.” With my perplexed look from this foreign phrase, she enlightened me. “In November in both Scottsdale, Arizona (where she lives) and Mazatlan all the white haired people arrive in droves.” I looked up and had to admit that every man with hair had white hair. After a night with hot blooded Mexican men, these girls had walked into a perfect environment to unwind before their flight out.
Sharon and I spent the next night with twenty people from Paraiso at another restaurant that bordered a trailer park. We walked in to discover more Q Tips than the night before. Shopping the next day I started to notice that every gringo in sight sported white hair. With the warm weather, the Snowbirds (Q Tips) had definitely arrived. The tourist season has begun. In previous trips to Mazatlan we have traveled during Christmas or Spring breaks. Christmas caters to families, hence children and young adults. Spring break brings in another crowd entirely. Sophia can burst onto the scene during these times of the year, but will she surface in Snowbird season? Stay tuned.