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Hidden in the middle of the sierra, at close to 5,000 ft above sea level, lies the mining town of San Sebastián; over a hundred years ago Puerto Las Peñas (as Puerto Vallarta was known back then) was just an accessory providing a stopover for the salt needed for the processes of the now mostly exhausted mines of San Sebastián and El Cuale.
In San Sebastián you get carried away by centuries-old evocations, not only by the adobe (thick, raw-clay bricks) and the tejamanil (wooden-tile ceilings) of its buildings, but also by its traditions and customs, so intimately interwoven among its inhabitants.
One example is the raicilla (a tequila-like liquor native to the area) made by Félix Dueñas.
I have bought his raicilla not for its name, but because I know his uncle, Don Cristino, who has ben selling spirits for the past 50 years on a corner facing into the main square. Don Cristino is eighty years old and says that in 1947 he sold groceries and clothes too, but he eventually stuck with just beverages. He is always willing to let you try the raicilla so you know you are taking the right stuff.
Further up the arches that face the plaza we found Silvia. Her store sells all kinds of local handcrafts but we are looking for the guava roll. We will be buying enough of this sweet so it will last us until our next visit. She makes it, and although she is only 13, she makes as good a guava roll as her aunt Luisa; I am sure when Silvia has daughters they will make one just as good.
Talking about children, Rafael is the twentieth of the 21 children of Don Francisco Sánchez and Doña María Alvarado. Rafael and his wife Rosa are the fifth generation carrying on with the tradition of planting, sowing, drying and roasting organic coffee. It is organic because no chemicals are involved in its production; pests are kept at bay with just garlic, onion and chile.  You cannot miss the Sanchez’ store right at the entrance of San Sebastián. There is always freshly brewed coffee so you can try it while you decide what you will take with you: ground or whole bean, the sweets made from milk, fruit rolls, pinole -a nutritious mixture of ground corn, cinnamon and piloncillo (a 3-4 inch cone made out of raw sugar). From the terrace where their products are usually displayed you can see growing coffee plants as well as other fruit trees that give the coffee trees their needed shade. You can also see a patio where the coffee is dried and a well-maintained roasting machine.
As we are again strolling downtown a “gringa” invites us to come visit her property. So we decide to include it in our itinerary. As we arrive she is working hard, she has guests for the weekend and wants he hacienda to be in top shape. Now I find out her name is Debra, she is Canadian and is converting a 170 year-old mining hacienda into a very beautiful little hotel named “La Galera”, She is starting with four charming rooms. There are several small hotels such as El Pabellón, Real de San Sebastián and Hacienda Jalisco. These places offer lots of San Sebastián flavor making your stay a more comprehensive, interesting and relaxed experience.
Later on we went up “La Bufa” mountain, it is a gorgeous scenery towards the chapel of “El Real”. The road, partly dirt and partly cobblestone is surrounded by forest, You can see the clouds descending, they start to engulf every character of this wonderful natural stage drawing the curtain on another day in San Sebastián.
That night we ate tacos at “El Portalito”, a hole-in-the-wall by the basketball court where Luz and Martín make good steak, marinated chicken and pork tacos. From here we could dominate the whole plaza and we became part of the townsfolk.
The Hotel del Puente is a 400 year-old house, managed by 19 year-old Sergio Trujillo. The house has been his family’s forever, it has nine rooms, the corner was rented to a pharmacy in which I see row after row of empty shelves; my imagination takes flight and I see how the shelves could be filled with porcelain pots containing old remedies and herbs of a 100 year-old apothecary. Then Sergio tells me the pharmacy had only been there for ten years and before that it lay abandoned for many, many years.
And all those age-old shelves then?
I don’t know, I think it was probably the company store.
This makes sense; this house must have belonged to the owners of the mine. Now I can see the shelves full of staples, rice, beans, corn, piloncillo, etc. Corn was kept above the tejamanil ceiling, from there it was brought down by means of a wide pipe descending to what is now the hotel’s main entrance. That area was also used as a shelter and a place from which to repel the attacks of bandits.
Every door, every corner, every roof-ledge, every cardinal point took us on an imaginative journey creating centuries-old moments where time seems to stand still, or even, return.
This morning I leave my hotel room open, its original key weighing two-pounds in its lock. In what used to be the pharmacy I talk to Sergio, I glimpse the river murmuring under the bridge, I walk a few steps and I pass by Doña Conchita’s museum-house, I venture into the City Hall and talk to the girl I passed at the basketball court, another one, beautiful and kind, also offers her advice, I remember seeing her while I talked to Sergio; then I move on to the tourism office with Imelda and see a poster made by Tanja promoting local tours. Tanja and I came here together eight or ten years ago, bringing her parents along.
Was that our first visit?
No, I remember Rafael Munguía brought me to San Sebastián on a tiny, two-passenger plane about twenty years ago. When he came back to fetch me he flew over San Sebastián once to let me know I needed to get ready to fly back.
Now Tanja lives in La Ermita, not far from San Sebastián.
How many things can one find in just two blocks? Two blocks that seem to be a continuation of my room, still open; my laptop lodging these intermittent doses of presences and remembrances from this intimacy within and without and from the warped, slipperiness of time around this place.
The Comedor Lupita is not old, though built in the style of San Sebastián, there we ate delicious Mexican delicacies, one thing is ageless though, the Mexican hospitality ingrained in Bertha’s heart. Bertha is Lupita’s mother, she will see to it you will not go away hungry.
After a tasty Mexican breakfast we were ready to enjoy the two-hour nature treat where the breeze kept whispering among the trees a legendary intimacy between San Sebastián and Puerto Vallarta.
Eduardo Rincón Gallardo
E-mail: toureps@prodigy.net.mx
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