Photo by Geoff Carter
By Geoff Carter
Not so long ago, we lived a completely rational, science-based society. Some of us still think that way. Granted, there have always been crackpots, conspiracy theorists, and cult members (and yes, there seem to be a lot more than there used to be), but there is still a foundation of reason underlying our society. Law, science, medicine, the arts, engineering, computers, and cellphones are products of this sort of applied knowledge and logic.
And yet, on certain levels, reason will take a back seat to intuition, hunches, or premonition. This happens to everybody at one time or another. Who hasn’t experienced déjà vu or had the hairs on the back of their neck stand up for no reason? Who hasn’t had a bad feeling about a place or a situation? Who hasn’t gotten spooked going by a graveyard at night? As rational and reasonable as we might be, there is a layer of the unknown, or unknowable, that exists in this world.
During a recent trip to Mexico, certain occurrences gave rise to suspicions that we were—maybe—in a realm beyond reason. Our trip into Puerto Vallarta was unexpectedly and beautifully smooth. The flights were on time, our connecting gate was next door to our arrival gate, and customs took all of twenty minutes. It was beautiful.
Besides a few glitches with technology after we arrived, everything was great. Our condo was beautiful, the weather was fine, and Puerto Vallarta—in my humble opinion—is one of the greatest resort towns in the world. We got in on the tail end of the rainy season, and so during the first two weeks—almost like clockwork—thunderstorms came roaring over the hills behind us every evening. Sometimes the water that flowed down the cobblestone streets was ankle or shin deep. No problem. We were used to that. Everyone down here is.
Then one evening during the second week of our visit, my wife and I were strolling down the Malecon (the beachfront thoroughfare) and crossing the bridge going over the Rio Cuale when an older guy beckoned me over to the rail, saying that I had to see something. There, on the riverbank just below us, a five-foot crocodile lay on the bank. When the beast saw us looking at him, he opened his mouth wide and hissed. This was unusual; it’s rare to see one. The guy explained that sometimes during the heavy rains, crocs will get pushed downriver by the strong currents. This was a sound rational explanation. It made sense, but it was odd—a little weird.
Photo by Kris Carter
Then, two nights later, my wife Kris was awakened by a barking dog. She went to the window and saw a pack of about nine black dogs moving in formation down Constitucion, our street. We asked around, and apparently these guys all belong to a family of wild dogs. They hunt together at night, snatching up stray cats, rats, or small dogs, and sleeping under cars in the heat of the day. Beached crocodiles and wild dogs running the streets.
I was reminded of the scene in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar when strange auguries—like an owl appearing in daylight or a wild lion loose in the Capitol boded ill for Caesar. Bad omens. Crocodiles in the heart of the city? Wild dogs roaming the streets at night?
We were at our condo’s rooftop pool a few days later when the staff suddenly appeared and began collecting the cushions and the deck chairs. They told us a big storm was coming. Living in a tropical paradise as we were, we hadn’t been paying attention to the outside world, so we turned on weather.com and sure enough, we found out that Hurricane Lidia had us in her crosshairs. She was forecast to be a category two by the time she hit.
Lidia arrived on October 10th as a category four, striking the coast with one hundred and forty mile an hour winds. Trees were uprooted, some roofs torn off, and two people died. We did suffer prolonged power outages as well as no running water for about forty-eight hours, but we considered ourselves lucky. But then, two nights later, a torrential downpour hit Puerto Vallarta. Knee-deep water flowed down our street. Across town, the waters were so deep, cars floated down the streets as passengers attempted to crawl out their windows. After Lidia had hit us, the water had nowhere to go.
Hurricane Norma hit Cabo San Lucas on October 21st, and Otis, the deadliest of the three, struck Acapulco on October 25th as a category five. Because Vallarta is sheltered in a bay behind a range of hills, we were well-protected from the wind and storm surge. Cabo and Acapulco were not quite so lucky. This could hardly be termed unusual. After all, it is hurricane season. But three within two weeks, one a category four and the other a category five? Crocodiles, wild dogs, and hurricanes. Coincidence?
And then—we had forgotten a solar eclipse would be happening on October 14th. It would not be a total eclipse at our location, but it would still affect us. Mayans and Aztecs considered eclipses as momentous events, nothing less than a message from the gods. One legend said that dark gods were attempting to eat the sun, and that if they succeeded, the world would end. This could only be warded off with human blood sacrifices. Okay.
We know today that an eclipse is nothing more than one heavenly body passing in front of another, yet in Mexico, the land of the Aztecs and the Mayans, it wasn’t so easy to dismiss this event, this ancient harbinger of evil, as an easily explained astronomical phenomenon. Yet crocodiles, wild dogs roaming the streets, an epidemic of hurricanes, and an eclipse. Coincidence?
Then, two weeks later, we were there as the country celebrated Dia de Los Muertos, a time in Mexico when the dead return to Earth for one evening to visit the living. The day is very close to our Halloween. To help understand Muertos, Kris and I visited a local Panteon, a cemetery, to see how the graves were being decorated for the holiday. Families typically build ofrendas—shrines to the departed—at the graves of the departed and spend the night there to greet them. We were alone at the Panteon during the day, walking between the graves. It was quiet and a little foggy. A little too quiet.
I am a rational man. I believe in science, and each of these phenomena has a logical scientific explanation. Yet, as I thought about it, I wondered if these occurrences—the unusual appearance of a crocodile on a riverbank, a roaming pack of wild dogs, three sudden and devastating hurricanes, torrential flooding, a solar eclipse, and Dia de Los Muertos—all within three weeks of each other, had any sort of special significance.
I mean, on paper this sounds like the twelve plagues of Egypt, right?
No. All these things happen in Mexico. They are not especially unusual. In fact, the Vallarteans seemed especially sanguine about the hurricanes. They shrugged and dealt with it. Floods, crocodiles (and snakes and jaguars and other critters), hurricanes, even earthquakes go hand-in-hand with living in the tropics. They portend nothing.
And Dia de Los Muertos was not a climax to these events. Quite the contrary; it is an acknowledgement of that which cannot be known. In Mexico, death, the greatest unknown, is acknowledged and welcomed for one night. It is part of life.
If I was a superstitious man, I might have gotten spooked. But I’m an educated, rational man who—only every now and then—gets the willies or feels the hairs on his neck stand up.
Only every now and then.
Notes
- https://whenisthenexteclipse.com/how-past-civilizations-and-tribes-viewed-eclipses/
- https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/8/18/16078886/total-solar-eclipse-folklore
- https://www.npr.org/2023/05/24/1177917332/popocatepetl-volcano-eruption-mexico-city-smoke-ash-evacution#:~:text=Popocatépetl%20volcano%20just%20outside%20Mexico,shown%20it%20spewing%20incandescent%20material.
- https://www.inside-mexico.com/the-legend-of-popocatepetl-iztaccihuatl/