...was the slogan for this year's Zihuatanejo GuitarFest (www.zihuafest.info). We sailed to Zihuatanejo to attend GuitarFest, an annual music festival featuring talented guitar musicians from all over the world, who play all genres of music. Each evening, selected musicians played a concert on a small stage on the beach near where SCOOTS was anchored, so without even having to take our dinghy ashore, we were treated to wonderful guitar music as we sat in our cockpit after dark.

The tides and weather conspired this year to give the GuitarFest organizers some headaches: one night the swells were up and as the tide came in, waves repeatedly swept up onto the beach, under the audience's chairs, threatening to undermine the stage supports. A quickly-dug moat around the vulnerable supports saved the day. The next two nights, the town was deluged with unseasonable rains, causing a mad scramble to find a partially-covered replacement venue for the concerts.

We finally saw some of the artists play, on the last night of the festival, when they participated in a free concert at La concha, a combination basketball court and bandshell next to the beach. This eclectic mix of artists and music included...
--Hogan and Moss, a pair of Southern pickers playing what they describe as "scorch folk" and I what I would call hillbilly music;
--Eric's favorite, Asif Sinan, a young man from Pakistan who played a very interesting "contemporary fusion of jazz, Indian classical and Sufi," and who did an amazing job of making his guitar sound like a sitar;
--the Crow Eaters, a chatty pair of guys from San Francisco, who played a combination of "folk, country, rock and jazz";
--AxeMonkey and Mary Zoo, a unlikely pair of women - one in black leather, the other in a flowing hippy dress - who combined their talents to create some fresh new takes on familiar rock songs;
--Duo Agogo, a couple of engaging young guys from Australia who played "Brazilian choro music";
and - my favorite - a duet performed by Cuban guitarist Magela Oquendo Romero, a young woman, and Josue Tacoronte Otero, a young man. They played a beautiful, slow, classical guitar piece, at the same time, on the same guitar! Josue stood behind Magela, who was seated, and reached around her to play his part of the song on her guitar. It was muy romantico.

I liked the town of Zihuatanejo, at least the part that I saw, which is to say, was within walking distance.

As with many Mexican tourist towns, once you get far enough away from the beach to be out of Gringo Land, you can get a feel for the real town. The glitzy tourist shops offering henna tattoos, bawdy t-shirts, and overpriced beach wear, are replaced by unpretentious tacquerias, tiendas, and pollo rosterias, and some shops selling crafts made by local artisans.

We shopped at the local mercado, and bought produce from some of the street vendors, whose offerings were much fresher than those at the local supermarket. Eric and I also walked a few miles through the less touristy part of town one day, checking out the wares at some of the small ferreterias (hardware stores), and searching for some authentic Mexican food. Which we did eventually find...three handmade tacos and two drinks each for a total of about 80 pesos, or about 5 American dollars.

We had dinner one night at a little restaurant near a tree whose common name is the "shaving brush tree." By day, the tree was pretty nondescript, with a few scraggly leaves here and there, and some buds on the end of its branches. As the sun set, however, the tree was transformed: from about a dozen buds, bright pink and white flowers emerged, their hundreds of bristly petals spreading in a six-inch starburst array. A little while later, a small bat fluttered by, intent on feeding on the flowers' nectar, and returning the favor by pollinating the flowers.


Flower of the Shaving Brush Tree (Pseudobombax ellipticum)

Though the town of Zihuatanejo was pretty clean, the bay was another story. All the waste from the streets, the estuary, and the fish market ended up in the bay; the morning after the rains, the bay was awash with a staggering amount of every kind of trash imaginable. This constant influx of trash and biomass produces an environment that nurtures the growth of marine life on every submerged surface, including SCOOTS' hull, anchor chain, and - based on the unpleasant odor - the saltwater inlet hose for our toilet. We had SCOOTS' hull cleaned, but her anchor locker - despite Eric's hosing down of the anchor chain as he brought it in - smells like low tide, and we're still in the process of trying to rid our inlet hose of that horrible odor.