If you read the previous blog, you would know that we spent an amazing day on a new beach in Mazatlán. At the end of that day my little guy (12-year-old son) and I were jumping waves and enjoying the water when he began to scream bloody murder and swim to shore as fast as he could. I was right behind him and as he started to scream, I knew exactly what had happened. We were both being stung by Blue Button Jellyfish. They are common in Mazatlán in early summer as the water begins to warm. They find their way to shore and if it weren’t for their long blue tentacles, you would never see them. They are small clear little ‘buttons’ with powerful stings.
The commotion caused quite a scene and before we knew it we were surrounded by people with medicine trying to feverishly apply it to where we were pointing. My son got the brunt of the stings. It covered his back, his arms and his hands. I was stung on my neck and the back of my left arm. There is no cure but the lifeguards (I didn’t even know were there until they showed up in our crisis) knew to have Lidocaine ointment on hand. It almost instantaneously stopped the intense burning. A woman selling a large tray of fresh mango also had stopped and helped apply the ointment on both of us.
The feelings I had experienced in that moment matched exactly what I have been feeling since we moved here. The people here care. They are warm, supportive and make everyone feel like family. I was grateful, so very grateful. I was not able to muster any broken Spanish to communicate with them, so my husband took the lead but as far as I was concerned there was no barrier between us.
That same woman selling mango continued her pursuit of sales but came back our way a bit later to make sure we were on the mend.
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