A VISION OF UTOPIA
(Page 4 of 4)
January/February 1972
By Mark Lediard
Admission to this Utopia is easy. Mexico welcomes you free for six months at a time; exit and re-entry twice a year is pro-forma but unavoidable. As with all foreign travel, some knowledge of the language and respect for the culture will largely determine the quality of your reception by the people.
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Getting it together their way was a splendid personal bridge between our family and the townspeople. When you're laughed at for handling the machete like a klutz, accept it. You probably are a klutz . . . and being one will help offset the Great White Hunter image that rural Mexicans will have of you when you arrive.
Consider cutting your hair. The fishing villages are police and federale-free, but the marijuana capital of the Western World is in the mountains beyond the lagoon, and U.S. sponsored anti-hippie propoganda is intense in that area.
Be careful about nudity. Sexual mores are as primitive as the technology, and outraged fishermen are not above vigilante raids. There's land enough to live however you please in complete privacy, and there's no percentage in blowing villagers' minds. Communes are run out of Mexico more for nudity than for any other offense.
Meeting the locals more than halfway is worth it. For a minimum of caution, trouble and cost, you'll get an opportunity to live a truly natural life . . . to synch up with the sun and moon and sea . . . to clean out your body, and to let yourself flow with nature. From Zihuantanejo south to Pie de la Cuesta are dozens of virtually unknown villages sandwiched between the Pacific and five lagoons. Most of the villages are still accessible only by water . . . but a new coastal highway—already in the works—will soon change all that.
If you have six months, little money but a desire to get close to the land at least once before all the good places are gone . . . give Paradise a try.
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