Everyone is in great spirits. You recognize some people
from the plane who are going to be on the same bus as you. It always takes some
time for the bus to leave the airport. Sometimes the bus driver and a cohort or
two will try and sell you a beer for 3 bucks a pop before you are on your way. If
you are really observant you might notice a crucifix or rosary beads hanging by
the bus driver’s seat. A man in a coloured tee shirt (red for Air Canada) makes
a few announcements to the bus passengers after everyone has been accounted for
as the bus finally pulls away from the airport. He tells you of some of the dos
and don’ts in Mexico.
You try to get the lay of the land as you peer out of the
bus window. You quickly realize that you are indeed in a third world country. You
see rundown buildings, some of which look like they were never completed. You
see rebar sticking out of the roofs. Often these buildings house restaurants that
never seem to be very busy. There are no grass lawns because of the dry
climate. Locally owned vehicles are often secured behind metal fences. Mounds
of dirt can be seen along the roads, giving the appearance that someone just
dumped the dirt there and abandoned it. You may well come to the conclusion
that most of the land in the area is of little value including the prospect of
growing anything on it. You get the distinct feeling that there is a lot of
poverty in Mexico.
But this is not your problem. You are here on vacation.
Eventually the bus pulls up to the resort you will be staying at. The reception
area is always enormous. Big is meant to impress you and your fellow travellers
from north of the border. People have come from all over the US and Canada to
get some rays and to forget about the snowstorms and digging out their
driveways. It seems that in this tropical paradise there are 2 Canadians for
every 1 American.
You check in and are offered some kind of colourful
looking watered down cocktail. You can’t wait to get to your room and slip your
sandals on. The room turns out to be better than you might have expected. They
are usually quite large. Now it is time to check the place out. There is
usually a really large pool, often contoured with a bridge. There is also a
smaller “adult” pool nearby. You wander passed the pools to the beach. Most
Canadians live nowhere near a beach and just being on any beach in the tropics
in the dead of winter is part of the dream. You’re here. You made it. It is
time to relax and enjoy.
You find your way to the large dining room. All the meals
are buffet style. As you are led to your seats by the hostess you notice that
the other guests have varying degrees of being exposed to the sun. Some are
beet red. If food is your thing there is plenty of it. It is hard not to notice
rather the number of rather large people with loaded plates waddling back to
their tables. Being overweight is almost the norm at Mexican all-inclusives. To
some the buffet is an all you can eat place. More discerning eaters look for
the fresh fruit and salads. A little bit of cilantro goes a long way. Mexican
cooks seem to take delight in torturing meat cuts.
If it is your first time in Mexico you are probably going
to let the minor annoyances slide a bit. After all this is a different country.
You learn very quickly that you should get your pool towels early so you can
reserve one of the more choice spots by the pools. Sometime around 11 a.m. the
music starts. Usually it is some kind of fast paced techno stuff. A couple of
things some of the poolside disk jockeys have as part of their routine is the
Looney Tunes cartoon theme and the strange “ooah ooh” exclamation. I’m not sure
if the “ooah ooh” is meant to startle or as encouragement to get in a party
mode.
After a day or two of lounging around the pool and baking
yourselves, you decide to venture into the downtown core of the city and get a
feel for how the locals live. You notice that the sidewalks are higher than
back home and you have to watch your step when you get to a curb. The high
sidewalks were built to direct flood waters during the rainy season. You are
accosted relentlessly as you walk towards downtown with offers to look at
condos, fishing trips, or restaurant coupons. Store owners try to convince you
to come on in. All the while on your walk you can smell car exhaust and you
hear a lot of cars honking their horns. Not exactly peace and tranquility.
You decide to check out the Catholic Church with the huge
steeple. Often this is where beggars with missing limbs like to hang out. Not
quite an uplifting sight. You know enough to stay away from street food as our
northern bodies are not immune to what may be in some of the ingredients. You
quickly realize that almost every small shop is selling the same stuff as every
other small or big shop. You are hard pressed to not want to bring home a
blanket with the Green Bay Packers logo on it. Mexican straw cowboy hats are
quite popular for some who like to hang around outdoor bars.
Back at the resort you venture out past the pools to the
beach. To actually get to the water you have to get by the poor people dressed
in white who are hawking everything from jewelry to mini parachutes. These poor
folks stand out in the hot sun for hours on end hoping to take home a few bucks
from a day of pleading for attention with “touristos” who mostly want nothing
to do with them.
You decide that you would like to explore a bit more,
have an “experience” or two. Deep sea fishing usually costs an arm and a leg
and what would you do with the fish if you caught one? Taking in the Mayan
ruins is well worth it but you can usually get to these destinations for a lot
less by using public transportation instead of being part of an organized tour.
Organized tours often include stops at jewelry stores and other places you
hadn’t planned to visit.
You might consider swimming with the dolphins as a once
in a lifetime experience. You pretty well have to do a booze cruise or a sunset
cruise at least once when in Mexico. There are some other off the wall
adventures to be had like a camel ride in the desert. Linda went on one of
these where the tourists were not allowed to take their own pictures of the
camels but were welcome to purchase photos taken by the tour company.
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| Booze Cruise Cabo San Lucas |
The
First Few Times In Mexico
Most Canadian and American tourists seem to end up in
either Puerto Vallarta or Mazatlan on one of their first trips to Mexico. Both
cities have beaches that are nothing to write home about. If snorkeling is on
your list of to do things, forget about it at these destinations. For all
intents and purposes you are smack in the middle of a huge tourist trap.
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| Puerto Vallarta |
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| Mazatlan |
A lot about visiting Mexico is about what age you are. If
you are single and in your twenties getting pissed in some nightclub in Cancun
during spring break or getting wasted in Sammy Haggar’s Cabo Wabo in Cabo San
Lucas could be a blast. You kind of look like a bit of an idiot with arrested
development if you are still hanging out in these places in your forties.
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| Cabo Wabo Cabo San Lucas |
There are family friendly resorts that seem to work and
it can be a lot of fun to enjoy the tropics with your kids. All-iclusives are a
good deal for families as dining out for four or more can be quite expensive.
My experiences tell me that most who travel from Canada
and the US to Mexico in the wintertime are usually over 50 years of age. Disco
until dawn is usually not on their radar. In fact Mexico is crawling with
Gringo tourists who are passed 60 years in age. Most are fat. There I said it!
Most are well past the point of giving a shit what they look like. They just
yank off that XXL tee shirt and let it all hang out by the pool. The one thing
they know is that there is always somebody a bit fatter a few chairs away. I
could lose a few pounds myself.
If you are retired and live somewhere like Red Deer,
Alberta, Toronto, or Northern Ontario you might start thinking after a few
visits to Mexico that you could handle several months in the wintertime of
sunshine every day and not freezing your ass off. You could get a big hat and
stay in the shade as much as possible so your old skin doesn’t wrinkle from the
sun and avoid getting skin cancer. Somehere there has to be some small town
away from the tourist areas that you could while away your remaining winters?
What if?
There
Is Always A Trade
I have to confess that I have never really spent any time
in one of those small places in Mexico that some Canadian tourists rave about.
The closest I came was renting a condo on a golf course once in Mazatlan where
we had to buy our own food. The main drag was very busy and the beach sucked so
I ticked Mazatlan off as somewhere I never wanted to back to. We did find a
good rib place for dinner but that wasn’t enough to cut it. A few days ago a
Mexican billionaire drug king pin was arrested in Mazatlan.
Over the last several years we kind of settled on Cabo
San Jose about 45 minutes up the road from Cabo San Lucas. Between Linda and I
we have been to Cabo San Jose 9 times in the past several years. One thing we
really liked about the area was the long white sandy beach. Up until our last
trip we would spend a day in Cabo San Lucas as a change of pace and walk along
the waterfront with the huge crowds, often people from the cruise ships. It is
a pretty town with a lot going on. We would take the “local” bus to Cabo which
cost us under two bucks each. We would stop somewhere and grab some lunch.
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| Cabo San Lucas |
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| Cabo San Lucas |
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| Cabo San Lucas |
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| Cabo San Jose |
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| Cabo San Jose |
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| Cabo San Jose |
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| Cabo San Jose |
Back in Cabo San Jose we would usually spend part of a
day walking back and forth to the village. There really isn’t much there other
than shops selling Mexican souvenir junk but the walks got us away from our hotel
for a while. We would also walk up to a giant Mexican supermarket close by and
pick up some sun tan oil or something else we might need. We would grab a
Starbuck’s coffee next door. You might say we kind of had a routine.
After this last trip and coming down with a cold I got to
rethinking our visits to Mexico and whether the whole deal was worth it. I’ve
been there about 15 times now. I’ve known for some time that spending a whole
winter in Mexico is simply not my cup of tea. I like where we live on Vancouver
Island a way lot more than frying day after day in the sun in Mexico.
#1 Most Mexican people in resort areas could give a rat’s
ass about tourists. We are simply marks that they can try to extract cash from.
Try taking local bus transportation and you will notice right away that there
aren’t many smiling local faces on board. On our last trip I bought a Bob
Marley tee shirt. The vendor stuffed a sun faded tee shirt in the bag which he
had substituted for the one he had shown us. Luckily we took the tee shirt out
of the bag and discovered it was faded before leaving.
#2 Mexican food just sucks. At resorts it is horrible. It
kind of kills any anticipation of enjoying a good meal. Meals are something one
should enjoy on vacation.
#3 You kind of have to wonder a bit about a place where
you have to drink bottled water. This includes brushing your teeth.
#4 If you have ever ordered a drink at one of those
thatch covered bars by the pool and looked over the bar you just might notice
how unsanitary the whole deal is. Pretty well everything behind the bar is a
mess with things thrown all over the place. The drinks are poured sloppily and
the liquor is watered down. Nothing ever seems to get cleaned up. There is no
charge for the fruit flies.
#5 If you want to watch TV in your room you are stuck
with mostly Mexican stations with lots of yelling in the TV ads. Without a
laptop you are pretty well out of the loop as to what is happening back home.
#6 Mexican stage shows are mostly boring. Seeing one is
more than enough. You also know the performers are being paid peanuts. 12
guitars is not better than one when the players hardly have a clue about how to
play their instruments.
#7 Your hotel person from the airline you took is often
full of shit and tries to direct you to places he gets a kick back on. On our
last trip we were told to ignore time share people in the hotel. What are they
doing in a privately owned hotel in the first place?
#8 At one resort we went to there was construction going
on all day until 6 in the evening. On our last trip we had to get our room
changed because they were shellacking hotel furniture below us and the fumes
were coming into our room.
#9 At the end of your trip you always seem to be waiting
for hours in the airport before you can go home but they still get one last
kick at the can by selling you a slice of pizza for 10 bucks. On our last
flight home the plane was delayed for hours because of the shortage of one
oxygen bottle. 23 people had to volunteer to stay another day before the plane
could leave. We weren’t one of them.
At this point in our lives we don’t care to ever go to
Mexico again. It is one of those been there, done that kind of things. The
history of the country is interesting but so much of the touristy stuff is just
fake.
When we were leaving Vancouver for Mexico we ran into a
couple from Campbell River, BC in their mid-sixties. They were about to go to
Panama with no hotel reservations and just travel around the countryside. We
admired their adventurous spirit but we know that’s not us. We are well beyond
staying in 3rd rate hotels in a 3rd world country.
We had originally planned to go to Hawaii this year but
thought it could get pricey with having to eat in restaurants and renting a
car. We also considered Cuba but the best hotels are quite pricey and nobody
who comes back from there raves about the food.
So what is the answer?
Next winter we plan to fly to San Antonio and rent a car.
We will visit Austin and Padre Island. We can do it all for about the same
price as going to Mexico. Sounds like a plan.
And….what’s the deal with Corona beer? You can stick a
slice of lime in the bottle but it still isn’t beer to anyone with any taste
buds.
Adios Mexico!
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| Mexican camel? |
