The Babel Bar on Cuale Island in Puerto Vallarta has Great Food, drinks and is in a Lovely Riverside Setting.  I Interview Owner Arancha Asensio.

Also, Russian Intrigue in Mexico?  The Assassination of Leon Trotsky and connections to Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera.

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Hello fellow travelers, welcome this episode of the Puerto Vallarta Travel show. I am your host Barry Kessler and I am just so happy to be introducing you to my favorite vacation destination, and maybe even yours, Puerto Vallarta Mexico.

That music you were just listening to is performed by Alberto Perez, the owner of the La Palapa Group of Restaurants. Those are La Palapa, The

El Dorado Beach Club, and at night for dinner The El Dorado transforms into the ever so romantic Vista Grill with those dramatic views of the Los Muertos Pier all lit up at night in beautiful colors. Of course, at La Palapa you can enjoy that same view of the Los Muertos Pier all day long for breakfast, lunch or dinner, seated with our toes in the sand right at the water’s edge. It’s so romantic, it’s so, Puerto Vallarta my friends.

This week I have an interesting guest, her name is Arancha Asensio, from Spain and she runs a place called Babel Bar, on Cuale Island but first, let’s see what’s happening this week in Puerto Vallarta the 19^th of July, 2018.

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Ocean Grill Reopens

Word has it that the Ocean Grill, on Playa Colomitos has reopened, and I have a news flash from Bob Price at the Vallarta Botanical Gardens who writes…

It’s Official: The World Famous Ocean Grille Restaurant has now reopened at Los Colomitos just passed Boca de Tomatlán. Today was the soft opening and I was lucky enough to be invited! With Peggy and Big Daddy, Ernesto and Alexa. Catch the water taxi at Boca pier and spend a magical day floating in the ocean snorkeling or eating and drinking in this magnificent setting. Go there!

I don’t know if you remember, but they closed down the Ocean Grill about a year ago due to issues concerning ecology and taxes and other issues, but they are finally back, and when I get back in October, I’ll make sure to get over there and check out the place for you.

Make Reservations at The Ocean Grill in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico

Great Deals To Puerto Vallarta in October

Speaking of October, I made reservations. Get this, round trip air from via Southwest Airlines, one free bag folks, LAX to Vallarta $218 Round trip, nonstop. 6 nights in a newly listed Airbnb for about $25 per night plus a service and cleaning fee comes to $147.73, for six nights, coming to a grand total of $365.73. Not bad. Now this condo is up in the Cinco de Dicembre neighborhood. Ill be walking up a

hill and climbing stairs no doubt, but it’s air conditioned and that’s a must in October. I’ll let you know how it works. So, airfare and condo, six nights from Los Angeles, under $400 US. Of course, We are talking about October and it’s still hot and humid, but I love October in Vallarta. Anyway, I know I have a lot of listeners in the Los Angeles Area so just a heads up to you.

Edgar Prefers to Be Called Rambo

Last week I interviewed Edgar Rene Luna Chang, Rambo, and I got a note from Fred who writes.,

Hi, I ran into Rambo yesterday and brought him to an internet cafe to listen to the podcast. He was tickled to death. “That’s me!” he kept saying.

Thanks for the show and take care.

Fred

Fred also writes… He told me he prefers Rambo to Edgar)

So, how about that. When you see Edgar, call him Rambo then, and for sure, tip him for dancing. I got lots of mail and great feedback about Rambo, so good on all of you.

Frida Kahlo and The Assassination of Leon Trotsky

So the news these days is Russia, Russia, Russia, so I thought I would tell a story about a murder that occurred in Mexico City, involving Russia!

Now hold on a minute, this murder took place on August 20, 1940. So some time has passed since, but It involves a famous exiled Bolshevik, one of the founders of the Russian Revolution, a man named Leon Trotsky, and it involves a famous Mexican Artist and her famous Mexican artist husband. Interested?

Last year I talked about Frida Kahlo, on her 110^th birthday. Well, on July 6^th Frida Turned 111. Well she has been dead for the last 68 years, but if she was still alive, she would be 111. So, who is Frida? Well, if you’ve spent any time in Puerto Vallarta and its environs, you most likely have seen paintings, prints, local artists renditions, you name it, of a woman’s face, Roundish with a bunch of black hair piled up on her head, surrounded with flowers, with a thick unibrow eyebrow thing across her forehead. That is Frida Kahlo.

Frida was an artist, she is perhaps Mexico’s most famous female artists. She married another famous Mexican artist, Diego Rivera, who was

easily 30 years older than she.  Both she and Diego were members of the Mexican Communist party, and they were instrumental in getting Leon Trotsky, one of the fathers of The communist revolution in Russia, a guy exiled by Joseph Stalin after the death of Lenin.

In 1937, Trotsky, was a man without a country. He had come to Mexico as a political refugee. He had been expelled from the Soviet Union by Stalin and for nine years, Trotsky and his wife Natalia had lived in exile, searching in vain for political asylum in Turkey, France, and Norway, with no country wanting to admit them permanently, fearing reprisals from the Soviets. Hey, they threatened, for instance, to cancel their large exports of Norwegian herring if Norway took old Trotsky in.

His supporters were called Trotskyites, and all over the world they were frantic with worry. Frida and  Diego Rivera, who I said were well known Communists and recent converts to Trotsky’s brand of Communism, came to the Trotsky’s’ rescue, intervening on their behalf with the Mexican government to grant them asylum in Mexico City.

Let me read from an article I found on the interwebs that I found interesting and provocative titled…

Frida Kahlo’s Secret Revenge Affair with Leon Trotsky

To get back at her much older husband for his most recent infidelity, Frida Kahlo’s odd choice of a lover was their new housemate, the even older and also married Leon Trotsky. It is a plot out of a French farce, soap opera, proper high-brow opera, or an episode of The Jerry Springer Show if he had Marxist Revolutionary Week.

The exiled 58-year-old Leon Trotsky and his second wife Natalia Sedova arrived in Tampico, Mexico on a heavily guarded Norwegian oil tanker on January 9, 1937. The muralist and dedicated Trotskyite Diego Rivera had lobbied the Mexican government to offer Trotsky political asylum. Diego, ill and hospitalized, could not be at the port to meet the Trotsky’s. Instead his young wife, surrealist artist Frida Kahlo, was at the dock with journalists, Communist Party members, and government officials. She accompanied the couple back to Coyoacán and the home she shared with Diego, La Casa Azul (The Blue House), where the Trotsky’s lived heavily protected and catered to for two years.

Still angry and hurt from discovering Diego’s affair with her beautiful younger sister Cristina, Frida lost no time in openly flirting with Trotsky, who must have been flattered as hell at the attention. That spring their emotional affair grew into a physical one. Some of Frida and Trotsky’s clandestine meetings took place at Cristina’s house, which Diego had probably bought for her, along with a suite of red leather furniture. Frida and Trotsky spoke English in front of their spouses, whose grasp of the language was paltry to non-existent, in Natalia’s case. He sneaked love letters to Frida between the pages of books he loaned to her.

Rivera was, by all accounts, an unrepentant philanderer with the hypocritical tendency to randomly fly into jealous rage when Frida behaved similarly with other men during their stormy marriage. (Her affairs with women, like Josephine Baker, didn’t bother him.)

Diego, Frida’s husband and Natalia, Trotsky’s wife eventually discovered the dalliance, which seems to have been over by July 1937. Surprisingly Rivera allowed Trotsky to continue to live at La Casa Azul instead of coming after him with a gun. There was enough of a political falling-out between the two men, not over infidelity but over Trotskyism, to prompt the revolutionary and his wife to move out of La Casa Azul and into a nearby house on Avenida Viena in early 1939.

Frida and Trotsky remained friends until his assassination by Ramón Mercader on Stalin’s orders the following year, struck on the top of the head with an ice axe. Jacques Mercader, a Spaniard who was brought by his mother to the USSR after the Spanish Civil War and raised as a rabid Stalinist, was trained by the secret police to kill Trotsky. Mercader split Trotsky’s skull with an ice-climber’s axe which he had hid inside his raincoat. For this, he spent 25 years in a Mexican prison. Upon his release, a Czech plane picked him up and brought him to Russia where he disappeared. After Trotsky’s assassination in 1940 by the Stalinist agent, Kahlo was questioned by police for suspected involvement in the murder. She had met the assassin, Ramon Mercader, in Paris and invited him into Trotsky’s refuge in Coyoacán. The suspicions were unfounded. Or were they? Hummm.

No passionate missives between the unlikely lovers survive. According to biographer Bertrand M. Patenaude, author of Trotsky: Downfall of a Revolutionary, at the end of their brief relationship Trotsky asked Frida to return all his love letters so he could burn them.

https://dangerousminds.net/comments/frida_kahlos_secret_revenge_affair_with_leon_trotsky

Trotsky’s body was cremated, and his ashes are buried in the courtyard under a stone that bears his name above a hammer and sickle.

The house is now a popular tourist stop. The Leon Trotsky Museum in Mexico City, and if you are visiting that shrine of communist commitment, check out Rita Kahlo’s place, Casa Azul down the street.

Trotsky’s office where he was killed is exactly as he left it, with an old-fashioned typewriter with Russian letters.

So, Russian meddling taking place in Mexico, involving our dear Frida? Say it isn’t so. I have links to all of these articles in the show notes, so check them out.

All right, have you had enough of Russian Meddling. I have. Enough of this Bolshevik!  Let’s get on with the show.

Babel Bar Puerto Vallarta, México

We are going to a restaurant and bar on Cuale Island for our next interview so let’s go from history to geography. Let’s talk about Cuale Island in

Puerto Vallarta. Cuale Island is a long piece of land situated in such a way, that the water coming down from the Cuale River Gorge splits along either side, creating an island from jacarandas to the ocean, about 6 blocks long. It is accessed by swinging pedestrian suspension bridges, stairways and walkways. I have a map that I made showing the access points. And on Cuale Island you will find restaurants, lots of shopping stalls, the Cultural Art Center and a really cool place called Babel Bar.

You can get to Babel bar several ways. The easiest way is to get to the Insurgents Bridge, we call it the old bridge, and walk down the steps, past Mario the Watchmaker, past the Le Bistro Café, past the statue of John Houston, and you keep going, following the signs that will lead you to Babel Bar. The

space is peaceful, right along the river, with tables set up under a thatched long palapa right along the river wall. You don’t see the kitchen but you do see a big bar, a dancing floor area, and hammocks off to the side. You can look up and see the homes that line Gringo Gulch, and view a lovely tiled stairway which you can climb for a great bird’s eye view of this part of the Island.

The other way you can get to Babel Bar is to walk up Aquiles Serdan, and between Aguacate and Jacarandas, the

re is a suspension bridge that will take you right there.

Now I’m bringing you to this place because I really like it, and it is truly a hidden treasure. They have live music and special events and they are very much involved in helping Vallarta Charities. It’s an unusual place with a good vibe good food and good music. So let’s go right now, to Cuale Island in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, and lets

meet Arancha Asensio from Babel Bar PV.

Contact Information for Babel Bar Puerto Vallarta

• BabelBar Facebook Page
• BabelBar Instagram Page
• Address for Babel Bar: Aquiles Serdán 437, Emiliano Zapata, 48380 Puerto Vallarta, Jal., México
• Phone Number BabelBar: +52 322 222 6171

 

 

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Special Events Planned for Saturdays and Sundays from 1 to 3pm They are having live music. It’s a new project of several musicians called Son de la Ostia. It’s a fusion of flamenco and latin music.

Cheryl’s Shoebox 3rd Annual Summer Bash

Sunday, August 5 at 2:00 PM

BabelBar Puerto Vallarta

About Cheryl’s Shoebox:

They raise funds for shoes, school material and other programs for kids in need. This is the 3rd time they organize this party and the second time

it takes place at BabelBar. Last year there were about 200 people attending and we expect around 250 this year. There will be live music (Jamaican Brothers and Sylvie and the Zippers), fun games and shoe decoration contest!

Okay, that should do it for this episode of the Puerto Vallarta Travel Show.

Next week, stay tuned for more on the ground reports from Puerto Vallarta Mexico, with travel tips, great restaurant and excursion ideas and more.  Until then, remember, this is an interactive show where I depend on your questions and suggestions about all things Puerto Vallarta. If you think of something I should be talking about, please reach out to me by clicking on the Contact us tab and sending us your message.

And remember, if you are considering booking any type of tour while you are in Puerto Vallarta, you must go to Vallartainfo.com, JR’s website and reserve your

tour through him, right from his website. Remember the value for value proposition. His experience and on the ground knowledge of everything Puerto Vallarta in exchange for your making a purchase of a tour that you would do anyway, you’re just doing it through him as a way of saying thank you. It

costs no more than if you were to use someone else so do it. Really. And when you do take one of these tours, email me about your experiences. Maybe you can come on-board and share with others what you liked or didn’t like about the tour. Again, contact me by clicking on the Contact us tab and sending off a message. Don’t forget his maps, his DIY tours and his revitalized Happy Hour Board. I have links to all of those in the show notes.

And once again, if you like this podcast, please take the time and subscribe and give me a good review on iTunes if you would. That way we can get the word out to more and more people about the magic of this place. Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. Remember I made it easy for you to do just that with each episode I create. But if you haven’t been to my website, you really need to have a look there.  I have the links to the places we talk about, interesting pictures and the more all right there in my blog-posts and show-notes for each episode of the show so check them out for sure if you haven’t already all-right? All right.

So, thanks to you Arancha Asensio from Babel Bar PV, you have a great place on Cuale Island. Make sure you take the time to find it the next

time you are in Vallarta, sit riverside, listen to some great music, dance, and enjoy the sights on Cuale Island. I have pictures of her place and links to the places we both talked about in the show notes for this episode, so check them out.  And thanks to all of you for listening all the way through this episode of the Puerto Vallarta Travel Show. This is Barry Kessler signing off with a wish for you all to slow down, be kind and live the Vallarta lifestyle. Nos Vemos amigos!