I must admit, Mexico has never been my most favorite place. The reason was quite simple. When Margot and I were first married, we were given a trip, by American Airlines to anywhere on their system. We chose Acapulco, Mexico for our honeymoon. It turned out that this was a big mistake. I remember drinking with a guy by the name of Montezuma and before long it started to play a revenge on me. The honeymoon came to a screeching halt and there, I laid, leaking from all ends of life.........to put it mildly. I totally blamed Mexico and their water for this. Years passed and even the mention of Mexico put fear into my eyes. Margot eventually convinced me to give it another try. This time we visited a totally different locale, Cabo San Lucas, a resort town on the southern tip of Mexico's Baja California peninsula. Just by adding the word California, my guess would be that everything would be OK. WRONG !!!! We arrived into Cabo took a taxi out to our hotel, a pink palace located in the city of Cabo San Lucas, I learned that the nickname of the hotel was..............the prison. We had passed over two bridges on the main road to reach our destination and one of the first things I remember seeing was how high the curb of the streets were in comparison to other cities. It was that two nights later that I found out why. We had left our hotel for a walk to the city. Stopped for an ice cream just as the sky opened up and it started to rain...........buckets. No problem, the rain was warm and when a slowing down occurred we made our way back to the hotel....only about a block or two away. The water was rushing down the street and now the reason for the high curbs was noted, there were no drains. The water literally ran down the street to its lowest point................a river bed that one of those bridges were built over. Well, we were now safe in our hotel...............so I thought. That night we went to bed listening to the rain coming down. No problem,...................until I woke up about 2am for a need to go to the bathroom. I step out of bed .................onto a soft wet carpet. Knowing at that moment not to turn the light on. I pulled my legs back into bed, wiped them off on the sheets, woke Margot and told her not to get out of bed until I checked out what the hell was happening. I called the front desk and told them my discovery and at that point, they sent a person up to check it out. They discovered that it had been raining so hard that the rain had found a small hole in our ceiling and found its way down the back wall of the room. They helped gather up few clothes we had with us and quickly changed our room to a lower floor.
Next morning, we found the desk clerks and the maintenance staff with mops and push squeegees attempting to clean the main lobby. NOW was the time to move and leave Mexico.
First discovery was lack of taxi cabs since the water had literally washed away the two bridges since the building code was apparently so relaxed that the bridges were built on nothing more than the sand. The rushing water had washed away the sand at both ends of the bridge and the bridge toppled. The only way across was to wait in line with other people for a helicopter to fly in and out taking people to the airport................or starting out now, take the taxi to the first river and walking across. We decided to do that. We reached the river and found that here we could wait on line to get a horseback ride across the river with a guide or try wading the river. Here again carrying only hand baggage we rolled up our pants and with our hand carry on our heads, started across. Wasn't so bad except for the water rushing and trying to pull us off to the side...............but we reached the other side and to waiting taxi's that were stranded in between the two rivers. We made our way to bridge number two, where we were dropped off. This river was a little steeper...............guess the sand was softer and washed away quicker. We sat there thinking about how we were going to escape this horrible, lousy trip Margot had talked me into going on. Finally a Mexican worker in his peek-up came by, viewed the situation and decided that his 4 wheel drive would be able to go down the embankment, across the river and up the other sided with no trouble. He offered us a ride in the back of his truck which we took him up on and down, across and up we went. He drove us to the airport but dropped us off on the main road which gave us about a mile to walk to the terminal. When we showed up at the Alaska airlines check-in we were quickly reminded that airline standbys had a dress code. At this point we simply wanted to get out of Mexico so off to the bathrooms to change. That Mexican water will get you .......one way or another...................
It was 28 years later that my kids talked me into taking them all to Puerto Vallarta to celebrate my 80th birthday. That was my turning point in my Mexican vacations. We have been back 3 times since that most memorable vacation. This is now my city of CHOICE. Just have to remember not to go during the rainy season.(August)
More to come about Puerto Vallarta in the next post.
