I never intended we go to Mexico, but last year while I was away mothering three other guys through Siberia, Kay accepted an invite from friends Elle and Rob to join them in Puerto Vallarta. It seemed sensible to add on a trip to the Copper Canyon which is north of there. So why not see if Murray and Yolanda were going to be about and join us? They said yes, and then suggested they show us around some of their favoured places near Mexico City. One can’t turn down an offer like that, so visiting friends in San Antonio got deleted. I originally had booked a flight from there to Dublin, but it had been cancelled and it was easier to give it a miss and fly from Mexico. Or so it seemed. Three more flight changes followed, with the result of a night having to be spent in Iceland, and further compounded by the late realisation that 2 hours was never going to be enough time to get through all the US machinations of arrival in Atlanta and to catch an onward flight. Money solves most things when travelling and the original flight was abandoned for a new later one. And I don’t think we will use Aeromexico or Icelandic Air in the future.
So having dealt with all that, we did our annual couple of weeks in Fiji and then flew from there to LA and the next day arrived in Puerto Vallarta. It used to be a little fishing village but in 1964 was the place where a film called The Night of the Iguana was made starring Richard Burton. He turned up with his new girlfriend, Elizabeth Taylor, and apparently the world was agog and the little village started to become a big tourist town. There are still iguanas, some definitely bigger than you would expect, and there is now everything else tourists could ask for. We stayed up the coast a little at Nuevo Vallarta which is property developer’s dream, with wall-to-wall condos and hotels. Rob and Elle had got hold of an apartment 6 floors up and right on the beach and we were very happy to be there . I had to buy a fake panama hat because it was sunny and hot, but I didn’t buy any of the t-shirts urging Trump to do something to himself that is physically impossible. I suspect his disapproval rating in Mexico would be more than 99%. I did buy a t-shirt another day which is a brand called Señor Frog. This must be a hugely successful business because S.F. is everywhere, and when we finally gave in and went into one of the shops I found out why.
For part of our 10-day stay we had a hire car and did some trips to the old town, and once up into the surrounding hills to visit some nice villages. Coming back from there we drove through a severe electrical storm and one lot of lightning hit the ground in a field about 100m away. Elle’s sister, Jan thought it was exciting and exhilarating. I was trying to remember what happened when lightning struck a car and if I should put on my jandals or not (I did).
We did lots of good eating and drinking and Kay has developed a liking for Margaritas, which I am hoping will finish when we leave this country. The seafood was exceptionally good with the shrimps my favourite. They were big, with a lovely texture and perfectly suited to cooking with butter and garlic. My long-unused words of Spanish were reappearing so I could get by at a basic level of asking questions and usually understanding the answer.
Eventually the lotus eating ended and we left our generous hosts and got on a bus heading north to Mazatlan. When I asked how long it would take, the ticket guy said 7-8 hours, which seemed a bit vague, but getting further clarification was beyond my linguistic competence. It ended up being 8.5 hours and the uncertainty was because of a lot of roadworks early on, which Kay told me about. I was catching up on sleep and the bus was good for that. Once we got on the motorways the main interest was what would we find at the next toll gate. Quite a few were “occupied” by protesters, seemingly for various causes. The bus had wifi so I had a bit of a look and apparently it has become a popular thing to do. The president isn’t happy about it, despite supposedly being a man of the people, and there were 6 trucks of soldiers heading toward the last one. Coincidence probably, but he was reported as going to send in the army .
This new president, Obrador, is not from the old political class and was elected on a platform of vague socialism and promises to cure criminal violence and corruption. Good luck with that. The murder rate for the first 3 months this year was nearly 10% above last year’s record high at 8493, and one of the states we have been in was right up there. That was Jalisco and we are now in Sinola which is synonymous with drug cartel violence . So far I don’t have any sightings of such activies.
In Mazatlan we stayed across the road from the beach which is nice in the day time, but extremely noisy at night. A combination of people having fun after being in the bars down the road, and the anti-social hoons with sound systems in their cars that would be adequate for a large stadium concert. Good wax earplugs nearly do the job but can’t keep out the base vibrations. I had visions of how satisfying it would be to have a nice little artillary piece, the one with the square bit of armour to hide behind, set it up in the middle of the road, and efficiently blow the bastards up. Apart from that it is a lovely old town.
So far everything has been very cruisey and peaceful. Probably because the Agricultural Correspondant is not with us to culturally misbehave.
Hasta Luego.
Dennis.