Sayulita & Tequila

Sayulita & Tequila, Mexico (2006)

After the stress of finishing the dissertation and graduation, and before moving to England, a bunch of friends and I went to Sayulita, Mexico (near Puerto Vallarta) for a week of relaxation, partying and celebration in the marriage for 2 of our friends. We had great Mexican food (yummy fish tacos), enormous margaritas, and tons of high-quality tequila. We even took a side trip to the nearby town of Tequila, where tequila originated.

The cozy beach town of Sayulita.

Roaming band of non-villagers.

Town square.

Mmm, fish tacos.

Donde esta la cerveza.

El Choco Banana was gooood.

Carmel mid-eat of the choco banana.

Los Arcos.

Los Arcos up close.

Mexican sand.

Don Pedros.

Food at the don’s.

There’s gold in this heeere sand!!

Town of Sayulita.

Typical scene—drinks and food on the beach.

The guacamole was so good. I’ll talk about the enormous margaritas in just a sec.

Ok so yeah, the margaritas were enormous. And cheap. And what we had for breakfast.

The margaritas were bigger than our heads.

Cheers!

Did I mention that the margaritas were huge?

Josh sips the margarita daintily.

Done with breakfast.

Hills of Sayulita

Casablanca.

Casablanca pool.

Janine, Lucy and Christina.

We basically drank tequila continuously.

Late night game of cards.

Chillin (and drinking tequila) at another cool house.

Night out in town.

Our kitchen window looks like a painting.

Me and Carmela Casablancas

Welcome to Tequila!

Tequila!

Fields of blue agave at La Cofradia distillery, makers of Casa Noble tequila.

The blue agave plant grows for 7 years, then is harvested. If you wait too long, then a giant stalk shoots out of the plant, reallocating all the sugars and all the time is wasted.

They strip the leaves from the plant revealing a pineapple-looking fruit filled with sweet juice that we got to taste.

They cook out the juice and ferment it.

Giant vats of fermenting tequila

Next, they distill out the water and methanol (which will blind you). The resulting pure tequila is 55% alcohol, which is what I'm drinking here. Because they can't sell such potent stuff, they add back in some of the water to bring it down to 45% alcohol.

Barrels of tequila.

Some of the bottles from La Cofradia, makers of Casa Noble.

Casa Noble!

Happy tourists.

Margaritas in Tequila.

Tequila signature pinched glasses.

Rehearsal dinner, including the Jotas. The Jotas was our name for Janine, Jill and Johanna. This gave us amusement to no end, and still does to this day. Jota, being the Spanish word for “J”. But, it sounds much worse at first. So we were like, hey Jota, and they would be insulted at first and then realize it. And then to differentiate the Jotas, we gave them sub-names of Jota Grande (big Jota, or Johanna), Jota Loca (crazy Jota, or Jill), and Jotita (little Jota, or Janine). Then there was the “Triple Crown,” but I’m not going to go into that here. One evening, as we were leaving a house party late at night, we were all drunk and waiting for Janine so we disturbed the whole town by screaming “Jotita” over and over again. Finally, someone told us that Jotita doesn’t mean what we thought it meant, but that it actually means lesbian. More amusement and riotous laughter followed. And then Jota Grande told us that recently the city of San Francisco granted Janine and Jill domestic partnership for having been roommates for so long. So that amused us even more.