There’s No Place Like Troncones

By Stevie Goggans

Living in Troncones is like living in a strange, beautiful, Twilight-Zone-type dream, where the days run into each other and time slows down. I believe Troncones is a vortex, that where the mountains meet the ocean there’s an intensity that seems to amplify every experience and every emotion.

I lived in Troncones during the winters of 2020 and 2021. I was in my hometown in South Carolina on a break from traveling when COVID hit. I didn’t want to get stuck in the States during the pandemic, and I knew Mexico was one of the few countries U.S. citizens could travel to. A friend co-owned a retreat center in Troncones called Present Moment and got me an interview to be a massage therapist/yoga teacher there. I landed the job and was quickly on a flight to Mexico. I’d never been to Troncones and was told it was a “sleepy beach town”. I found this description to be true, although lacking in coming anywhere close to defining Troncones’ beautiful weirdness, strange intensity and bizarre loveliness.

My first surprise when I moved to Troncones was my living arrangement. I’d booked it online and had been told it offered bungalow-type apartments, and that it was also a cat sanctuary. A woman keen on cats had a rescue operation where she rescued strays and gave them a safe life within the walls of her bungalow complex. I’m not a cat person, but the bungalows looked cute and I’m not bothered by having a few cats around. A few is an understatement. Settling into my new home, I found out there were 30-some cats hanging around. They posted up outside my room like the cat mafia keeping watch. Mostly, they were cute and I grew to love them, except when they’d wake me by getting into gnarly cat fights in the middle of the night.

Troncones is a little town. Everyone knows everyone. When I first arrived, I assumed I would be having a very quiet winter, spending time alone, reading a lot, enjoying the sunshine and the beach. For the first month, it was just like that. However, when you see the same faces everywhere you go, multiple times a day, you have no choice but to make friends or try extra hard to be anti-social. I made friends.

There was a café directly across from my work called Café Corazon. Every morning, and frequently throughout the day, I would sit in there having coffee, getting to know the owner of the café and many others who came in. There was also a yoga studio down the road led by a couple who were about my age. I started going there as well.

Within another month, a small group of friends formed between myself and a handful of others. One of the beautiful things about living in another country for a brief period of time is that everyone seems to be aware that time is fleeting; there is no sense in holding back or acting coy. You show your hand and they show theirs, and you become like family almost immediately. We did become family. We became inseparable.

My days were soon spent bouncing from one café to the other, boogie boarding at Roberto’s, trying to have a relaxing swim in a never-stop ocean that threatens to eat you alive and spit you back out; there were bonfires, music circles, bike rides, stopping for coconuts at Lorenzo’s stand. Lorenzo always had his bible out on his little table. We joked he was hiding more scandalous reading material underneath. It was as idyllic as it sounds.

I stayed in that cat-covered apartment for two months until one of my new friends got me kicked out for squatting there. Ok, I’ll be honest, I’d invited him to stay with me. He’d become my best friend and had nowhere else to live because he was young and broke. At first, I didn’t know there were rules about more than one person living in the apartment. I broke the rules, continued to break the rules and snuck him in and out until I could find somewhere else to live.

My friend was constantly being made unwelcome by the man living in the front bungalow of the complex for no other reason than the man just didn’t seem to like his face. The man would continuously scream things from inside his bungalow in Spanish at my friend as we walked by, like, “Go away. You’re not welcome here.” Imagine the voice of Oz booming from the shadows. It was definitely time to move. I found a cheaper place down the road, but it didn’t come with hot water or AC, which I found out are, in fact, quite a luxury.

One of my favorite constants of Troncones life were the produce guys, a couple of young guys in a pick-up truck loaded with fruits and veggies, who would come twice a week and stop right outside my little apartment complex. They’d yell up asking if anyone needed any produce and I’d run down to load up. We’d speak in the little Spanish I could. One of the guys always told me I was his girlfriend, even though he had at least one other girlfriend I knew about. I didn’t mind. I was single and ready to be a fake girlfriend for a day. My grocery store trips now are forever ruined, completely pale in comparison to those pleasant produce-truck encounters.

Christmas and New Year’s were lit up in Troncones. I remember going to Amor Tropical, an outdoor bar for New Year’s Eve. A group of us had our own little corner in the back. We danced all night and I was so energized and high on life that when it got to be 2 am, and I needed to get home, I ran the two miles back to my place because no one else wanted to leave. Pitch black roads, the middle of the night, and me running down the road, jumping into bushes when a car drove by, just in case. I remember passing a drunk girl on my way home. She was right outside of Present Moment, a guest of the retreat, I believe, which makes the scene even more perfect as it’s meant to be a wellness retreat center. She was flat on her back in a bush, legs in the air, screaming for someone named “Steve”. For at least ten minutes straight, she just kept yelling “STEEEEEEVE!!!” in this mooing sort of way, like a cow. I stopped when I saw her, and stayed close by watching to make sure she was ok, until a man, who I’m guessing was Steve, came out to get her.

One of the best feelings I had after living in Troncones for a few months was riding my bike in the morning and hearing, “Stevie! Hola!” by five different people on my short commute to work. That’s part of the magic of living in Troncones. It’d be barely 8 am and I’d gotten to say “good morning” to at least five friends in passing. The flip side is that if you are feeling particularly anti-social and don’t want to talk to anyone, you’re still bombarded with greetings and run-ins. The only way to avoid this is to not leave your house at all. Even then, friends might show up. I was hardly ever alone in Troncones. Most of the time I loved it; sometimes I thought I was going crazy.

I came to love my job at Present Moment. It was an ideal setting, right on the beach. I massaged out of a little cabana, and taught yoga on a platform overlooking the ocean. It was stunning. I did have a few unfortunate massage clients. I suppose it comes with the territory of the job. One man was staying on-site with his girlfriend. She’d booked him a massage and he showed up super drunk. I told him that once I stepped out of the room he needed to undress and get under the sheets on the massage table. I guess my Spanish isn’t really that good, because he grunted something and stripped his clothes off faster than I could actually leave the room, and jumped on the table butt naked. That was awkward. After the massage was finished, and he’d drooled everywhere, I woke him up and he started screaming his girlfriend’s name at the top of his lungs. Mind you, the cabanas are open air, so all of the other massage guests heard this commotion. He and his girlfriend were kicked out of the retreat center a few days later. Not for the drunk massage but for other drunken-related things.

Before Troncones, I’d spent the previous 10 years traveling the world and living semi-nomadically. I was fortunate to experience many communities, extraordinary sites and collect tons of outrageous stories. However, no other place truly imprinted on me like Troncones. The people I came to know and love, the feeling of being home in a foreign place, the rainbow of emotions I moved through, Troncones is something that has to be experienced to be understood. I know I’ll come back to visit throughout the rest of my life. It left a colorful string attached to my heart that will continue to tug me back there again and again.

Perhaps writing this piece for us was just what Stevie needed to get her back here. She’s hosting a retreat in Majahua in February. Registration is open.

https://sagewellnessmassage.com/yoga-retreat/

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