If you are just joining us, you should really read "The Mexico Story" which is the first part of this story or none of what follows will make much sense.
On with the story...
So at this point I have just woke myself up, with my own moaning, in my hotel room in Zihuatanejo. The more awake I became, the less I liked it. When I went to sleep I could swear my bed had cotton sheets, now I was laying between two layers of fine mexican sandpaper. Every move hurt and it was really hot under the covers. I layed there for a long time trying desperately not to move. But I couldn't help it, or should I say my insides couldn't help it. My intestinal track had picked now of all times to begin a festive mexican hat dance. I don't believe this was the mexican culture that was in the brochure.
Finally, I weakly threw the sandpaper covers off and rolled over onto my back. Bad, bad idea. In the fetal position I had been able to keep my internal festivities inside my body, the minute I rolled over, all bets were off. It was at this point my insides made a noise that I can only describe as something akin to a wookie mating call. I did not have time to see if any wookies answered because there was suddenly definite pressure below my stomach in the colon-spleen area. It was time to get up! I ran, wait let me rephrase that, flew to the bathroom. It was pitch black in the bathroom, I didn't bother to try and find the light switch. If there had been a seatbelt on that toilet, I would have used it. At this point everything I may or may not have eaten in the last 24 hours evacuated the building. All at the same time, through the fire exit. I saw lights and stars and I think at one point I saw Montezuma, laughing his butt off. After what seemed like an hour, I wandered back out into the bedroom and collapsed face down on the bed. I lterally could not move, I was that drained. I woke up a few hours later and crawled back under the covers.
Score:
Mexico - 2 / Al - 0
The next morning I felt like hell, but there was work to do, so I got up and got dressed in my travel agent best and headed down to breakfast. It was a beautiful sunny mexican morning. Ever notice how sunshine can actually make you feel worse when you already feel like crap? I was completely there. I grabbed a nice dark table against the wall and ordered some toast. At this point I had not made the connection that eating in this particular restaraunt, might not be a good idea. Although it is hard to screw up toast.
As I sat there feeling miserable, I surveyed my surroundings. The beautiful bay, the swaying palms, the huge cloud of cigarette smoke headed for my table. The restaraunt in the Irma was the daily gathering place for the local business men to shoot the breeze, drink mexican coffee and smoke like they were trying to generate special effects fog. I have never seen so much smoke, I am not even sure how many guys were in there smoking. You couldn't see them through the haze. By the time my toast got there, I was four shades of green. I began to make deals with myself. I was supposed to see 7 hotels in Ixtapa and 2 hotels in Zihuatanejo that day. I was flying out of Ixtapa the next day. I decided that I would go and see the 2 hotels in Zihuat and then I would go back to my room and disintegrate until morning and see the rest of the hotels the next day. This sounded much more doable and I began to enjoy the slight nicotine buzz I was having with my toast.
As I left the hotel, I noticed it was really hot. Not so much outside, but inside my clothes, I was radiating major heat. I quickly ran back to my room and ditched my work clothes in favor of a tank top, shorts and huraches before catching a ride down to the Fiesta Mexicana.
The Fiesta Mexicana is the sister hotel of the Hotel Irma and at the time was being managed by a wonderful mexican lady name Mercedes.
You can see current pictures of the hotel (they have changed the name) here
As I started my tour, I began to feel worse and worse. November was a slow time for the Fiesta Mexicana so all the rooms had been sitting empty and sealed up in the tropical heat. The smell was like the inside of that ice chest from last summers picnic that you find in the garage six months later when the potato salad sealed inside begins to move around under it's own power. Yeah, that smell. With every room, my will to stay upright got weaker and weaker. Finally Mercedes noticed that I was staggering along behind her and took pity on me. She led me to the restaraunt to sit down. "I will send a waiter over, you should drink something", she said. The table had a wonderful clear plastic cover on it. It was very cool against my forehead. When the waiter arrived, I ordered in my best spanish: Uno 7-up caliente. What I thought I was ordering was a cold soda. Caliente is spanish for hot, so I got a very warm, very flat 7-up.
I sat there for quite some time sipping my sickeningly sweet beverage. I waited and waited, but Mercedes didn't come back. I wanted to get next hotel inspection done so I could get back to my room. After looking around a bit, I realized I could see the Villa Del Sol just up the beach from The Fiesta Mexicana. It was walking distance. So with some major resolve I got myself up and headed towards the next hotel. It was not far, there was only a small vacant lot separating the hotels. But as I got out onto the beach and into the open sunlight, things began to go south. It felt like the sun was beating down on just me, weighing me down, like I was crossing the sahara. In reality it was probably a 400 yard walk, but it seemed like forever. In my high school humanities class we read this french existentialist novel about a man who killed another man simply because he was blocking the path to the water on a very hot day. I think the novel went on to try and prove in some weird way that it was not the man's fault, the sun drove him to it. It never made sense to me until I saw the shade at the Villa Del Sol. I would have stabbed a bus full of nuns to get to that shade. Towards the end I think I was running, I am not really sure.
As I reached the shade, the surreal nature of my surroundings began to set in. The Villa Del Sol is a five star resort which was built by a german man who came to Zihuatanejo in the 60's and never left. It has a huge german following. So as I staggered into the shade and towards a lovely plastic table and chairs, I couldn't help noticing that all of the sunning lounges where filled with hunky young german men in black speedos. (I believe the black speedo is the national swimwear of bavaria). There were rows and rows of them (or maybe I was halucinating at this point).
So I collapse into a plastic chair and lay my head down on the plastic table. It is at this precise moment that I realize I am going to throw up. It is only a matter of timing and location. I look down towards the ground and begin to panic. The sand is raked into cute little rows. THEY RAKE THE SAND! I cannot hurl on their lovely sand, I have gotta move quickly. I look to my left and see the vacant lot between the hotels, it is full of weeds and old brick and stuff. Perfect! The plan is to get up and run to the fence. No one will care if I hose down the weeds. So I stand up and take one step towards the fence and my body says, "yeah, I don't think so". I fall to my knees in the hot sand. It is at this precise moment that I realize just how bad my sunburn is. I actually scream out loud. My knees are on fire and the vomit has left the launching pad, I have got to think fast. There is a large cement planter that runs the length of the hotel and happened to be within grabbing distance. I pull myself over the planter and thow up until there is nothing left to throw up. It hurts terribly. My whole chest spasms. At one point I thought, this is it; I am going to die right here. They are going to bury me under the raked sand and my wife will never know what happened to me. There will just be a little headstone that says "Here lies El Gringo Grande". Also note to self, never, ever, eat guacamole again.
At some point, between yacks, I start calling out for help. After a few minutes a shadow enters my blurry peripheral vision. In my best spanish, I blurt out, "My name is Al, I work for Love Mexico, I need to speak to the manager." In broken english with a definite german accent the answer comes back, "I'm sorry, I don't speak spanish." It is speedo-man, he has come to my rescue.
Score:
Mexico - 3 / Al - 0
To be continued...
The Mexico Story, part two (or part dos for our Spanish friends)
The Mexico Story
Things have been very busy lately, but nothing really new to report, so I thought I would start documenting some of my earlier misadventures. This story is actually the original misadventure. It was after telling this story at a party that I realized I might not be normal like everyone else (I had a sneaking suspicion before that, but nevermind)... Oh well, put on your way-back goggles, cause we are going all the way back to 1992.
Insert way-back wavy visual here...
In 1992 I was working for a small travel agency called Albany Travel, located suprisingly enough in my hometown of Albany, Oregon. My wife and I were expecting our first child. Times were very tight, at one point the year before I had done a quick unofficial phone survey and found that the fry-personel at McDonald's were making better money than I was in at Albany Travel. The one upside was every once in a while we got to travel and we love to travel, so it all works out right? So one day when my boss came in and announced that he needed me to go to Mexico on a "business" trip, I was thrilled. My wife who was 3 months pregnant was not. Pregnancy does not bode well with my wife, while she is very happy to be pregnant, she is pretty much miserable the whole 9 months. At this point we were just exiting what I like to call the "Morning Sickness from Hell" phase headed steadily for the "Massively Uncomfortable for the Next 4 Months" phase. It may have just been the nesting instinct talking but she finally agreed to let me go. I was cleared to go on my first international trip.
The first couple of days of my trip were very uneventful. I spent two days in Guadalajara, which has some lovely museums, but our story really picks up when I landed in Ixtapa/Zihuatanejo. For those who are unfamiliar with the Ixtapa/Zihuat area, a quick intro. In the late 80's and early 90's massive amounts of money was poured into the Ixtapa area, it was expected to be the next Puerto Vallarta or Mazatlan. Ixtapa is centered on a nice beach with 7 or 8 skyscraper hotels and all the resort amenities. It kind of reminds me of Waikiki, except with sombreros. Right next door is Zihuatanejo, a small mexican town which wraps around an astonishingly beautiful bay and features La Playa Ropa, one of the most gorgeous beaches in Mexico. One thing I forgot to mention, Albany Travel was really two businesses; the travel agency and a travel wholesale company called Love Mexico Tours. Love Mexico sold reservations at small mexican hotels that usually weren't represented by american firms. Which is why I was here. My job was to do hotel inspections at all of our properties in the area. My home base was the Hotel Irma in Zihuatanejo, our flagship property. We actually represented 3 hotels in Zihuatanejo, The Irma, her sister hotel The Fiesta Mexicana and an amazingly upscale hotel called The Hotel Villa Del Sol (We get to these hotels in a few moments).
I arrived at The Irma late in the afternoon on Saturday. It is a modest mexican hotel on the cliffs in Zihuatanejo. The view is Phenomenal.
Here are some current pictures of The Irma Hotel from our friends at Hotels.com. There are several pictures of the restaurant at the hotel, this location will come up later in our story.
Having arrived on Saturday, I was kind of stuck. If you have traveled in Mexico, you know that not much work takes place on Sundays. Fortunately our local ground operator offered to take me snorkeling. So bright and early the next morning I headed out with several of the ground operator's staff on a trimaran to a spot just outside Zihuatanejo bay. I had never snorkeled before so this was quite a treat. I spent several hours in the water paddling about while almost everyone else stayed on the boat. I found out why when I got back onboard. They stayed on the boat because the captain was serving a wonderful mexican lunch. By the time I got down to the galley all that was left was a few tortilla crumbs in the bottom of a bowl and a cooler full of Coronas. I was voraciously hungry at this point and things were about to take a turn.
Score:
Mexico - I / Al - 0
The boat ride back to Zihuatanejo was the longest hour of my life. I swear by the time I got in the taxi back to the hotel, I was starting to waste away. When I reached the hotel I flew to my room to shower and dress. Upon getting out of the shower I noticed my skin was warm. Very, very warm. A quick check in my bag confirmed that my sunscreen was not waterproof. At this point I was not worried, I had never burned easily and I was sure by morning everything would be fine, besides I was STARVING! So I headed down to the hotel restaurant, which overlooks the bay. I did not have a lot of money on this trip, but that night I didn't care. I ordered one of just about everything on the menu. The first entree to come was the nachos. My experience with nachos up to this point had been tortillas covered in cheese and various other toppings. Nachos ala Irma were a little different. What was placed in front of me was a plate covered in guacamole. Twenty or so tortilla chips were standing straight up in the green mixture. I don't really like guacamole, but I ate it like it was my favorite food on the planet. This was just the first of several courses to come. As I stuffed myself, the tv set (the only one in the hotel), blaired a sunday night variety show, kind of mexican version of Lawerence Welk...and all was well with the world , for the time being.
After a huge dinner I retired, exhausted to my room. I fell asleep instantly. Sometime around 3 in the morning, I was woken up by a strange noise. I lay there for a minute listening. I heard it again. It was moaning, I definitely heard moaning. After a few minutes, I heard it again. I thought wow, the people next door are really enjoying their mexican vacation. After a few more minutes, I realized it was me moaning. To be continued...