The Sounds of Mexico
Originally Published on July 1, 2010
The sharp taste of cilantro, the scent of toasty tortillas rolling off the belt, the aquamarine ocean so bright it makes your eyes water, your skin baking under a sun that brands you while the breeze fools you into feeling wonderful. It is a feast for all the senses. You may be expecting me to wax poetic about mariachi or the sound of the waves or children’s laughter, but the sounds that typify the experience of living in Mexico are the bells and whistles of the vendors on the street.
My house in Cancun, like many homes in the “older” section of downtown (in a 40-year-old city “older” deserves the little quotation marks) is built to cover almost all usable space. The yards are not large and my living room window is literally 5 feet from the street, and a concrete grillework wall covered with ivy is all that separates me from passersby. Windows are always open to catch any stray breeze so every conversation or revving car engine is heard.
There are easily 20 different calls to be heard on any given day. The drinking water man on his tricycle shouts a nasal, “Agua… Agua,” and the knife sharpener has a distinctive whistle that can be heard for blocks. The propane truck trundles past blasting, “Here comes the Zeta gas,” which sounds nothing at all like “Here Comes the Bride.” Each evening the bread man claps his arrival — two short, hard claps with a ten-second space in between intervals.
Moving into my house, this was all a surprise to me, yet my neighbours would run outside with their coins in hand when they heard the sound of their special treats coming up the street. “Pepitas, cacahuates, PEPITAS, CACAHUATES!!!” from the seller of pumpkin seeds and peanuts. “Elotes, esQUItes de elote,” from the man who sells corn, the white corn that was considered “cow corn” back home, tough, white kernels the size of your fingernail smothered in lime juice, sour cream, chile and stinky cheese. Yum.
“Cocos, cocos friooooos!” These are whole, green coconuts stored in a box on top of a block of ice in his makeshift traveling icebox. The “Coco Man” grabs the fruit and in a split second, with no regard for his fingers, chops the top of the fruit off so that the pulp is just barely exposed and a dime-sized hole appears. He serves it to you with a straw and if you choose to drink it right there with him, when you are done he will chop the husk in half so you can access the coconut meat. The meat is never the dry, hard-to-swallow stuff that we use in cooking, but instead is almost custard-like. He will give you a curved sliver of coconut shell to use as a spoon so you can get every drop.
Then there are the “Cremas, creeeemmmmaaass,” translation “creams.” How could I not try them? It was quite exciting running out of the house to buy a crema not knowing exactly what to expect. Turns out “cremas” are VERY hard squares of gelatine, not refrigerated, sort of a hospital deja vu. People ride by on their tricycles selling ices, fruit-flavoured snowcones scraped by hand from a big block of ice, or homemade root beer and barley water.
As a newlywed, I was overcome by excitement when I heard the melodic tinkle of a bell one afternoon. Every Canadian kid knows what that means — the Dickie Dee man! The ice cream truck! My eyes lit up and I rushed for my purse, grabbed the hand of my Mexican husband, and pulled him out to the street as quickly as I could given his seeming reluctance as I told him that it was my treat, I would buy him anything he wanted from the truck. He stared at me with a strange expression on his face as we waited on the corner for the bell to get closer. The bell ringer rounded the corner about 20 feet ahead of the truck… the garbage truck! The man with the bell was letting us know it was time to take out the trash. The bottom line is that we decided not to buy anything from the truck. I sure miss the Dickie Dee man…
Besos,
Danielle