Dec 21, 2008

As I wrote earlier I am back in Puerto Vallarta. If you are familiar with PV you know it's a tourist destination, and sometimes I feel that where ever I go there are with a lot of "gringos". But today I got up early and went to a park by the river, its only a block from my apartment. One of my students told me that there were lots of parrots there right now. So I went to see what was happening. It was truly incredible, there were hundreds of parrots flying around the park. It was so noisy with their high pitched squawking. They were flying so close to me it sort of was overwhelming. They were so colorful and amazing fliers. I couldn't believe that I was only one block from my home and that there weren't any other people around. I felt like I was deep in the jungle all alone, just me and the birds. It only lasted about 30 minutes and then the parrots disappeared in the trees and you would never have known they were around. I plan to go back tomorrow as my student told me " they are just going to be here a few days then they go farther south".
I remember being in Zihuatanejo in the 70's and there were parrots everywhere. When I returned in the 90's they were gone. I asked the locals and was told by several that most of them had been shot for food or feathers. So I am happy to report that they didn't kill them all.

Tonight I'm going back to this park to see one of my students in a play, it is called a posada, a story about the birth of Jesus. He was very happy to know that I wanted to see him perform and took great care to explain the play to me. I know already I will love it, just because he's in it.