Mexico II: Puerto
Vallarta
11/06/06 – 11/09/06
The Bus
station in Puerto Vallarta is not downtown. It’s dark and we’ve got no idea where we are. And we still haven’t slept in what feels
like months. I pull out the compass and
we head off west. Eventually we’ll find
the ocean, yes? It´s also really hot
compared to Guadalajara. Really
hot. We finally find ourselves on a
main road with signs pointing towards Pt. Vallarta. It’s a dark ride into town and the road is under major
construction. Several times we have to
get off and walk (push!) the bikes when the sidewalk or shoulder has
disappeared – it’s too damn dark and narrow to ride on the road. We pass block after block of million dollar
hotels. It almost reminds me of
Vegas. Nasty. We finally stop and ask at a taco stand if there are any hotels
for normal people. We´re told to
continue down the road into the actual town itself. We take the first hotel we come to - La Mission. We wake a very friendly man who insists that
our bicycles must be very tired and invites us inside the gate. We leave our bikes downstairs, locked in a
corner of the first floor restaurant and make several trips with our bags to
the 3rd floor sweltering room.
Though exhausted, we’re even more hungry, and hit the streets looking
for food. Street tacos (yum!) and bed.
We had
breakfast in La Mission the next morning.
Our waitress was Elisabeth, a very nice young woman from Canada who was
traveling the world. She has stopped
here in Pt. Vallarta to work for a few months. We walk around the old parts of town. Really beautiful streets and homes built into the sides of the
mountain. Some amazing public sculptures. Great boardwalk on ocean. Mucho Gringos. Mostly Canadians.
We end up
spending a few days in Vallarta. One to
rest, two, waiting on a contact from couch surfing (check it out: http://www.couchsurfing.com) to see if
we can crash at her place. (we never
heard from her, though several days out of town we did hear from another woman
who offered to let us stay with her…too late!) We discover the amazing culinary
wonder of tacos al pastor!!! We find
some Malaria pills a thousand times cheaper than in the USA.
The day
before we leave we decide to make a little money. 200.00 US dollars to be exact!
And how does one make such money in a few hours in Mexico you ask? Ah, let me be the first to let you in on a
way for thick-skinned folk to make some traveling money. It’s the wonderful world of Timeshare sales! We got accosted the day before on the street
by a man who offered us a gift to go and listen to a sales presentation. The gift was a free taxi ride to and from
the hotel, a free breakfast, a free “day pass” to hang out at their
pool/grounds, and 1500pesos. He upped
that to 2000pesos after we tried to run away.
Okay, so we’re hooked.
So we ride
in a taxi out to a little town just north (Nuevo Vallarta) which seems just
build for this GIANT resort. The
Mayan. It is the largest and “best” in
Latin America, and ranks 3rd in the world. The place is really indescribable. (spend some time on this site to get an idea: http://www.mayanresorts.com/index.cfm?lang=en
)We are in awe and terror and disgust. Our handler warns us in the taxi of what
we’ll be asked. He tells us how to
respond to the hotel people in order to get in and out and get our money. He doesn’t care, he gets his cut for just
getting us there. The first thing we
have to do is get checked out by the front door woman/security. Are we married? Are we owners of property?
Have we been to one of these sales presentations before? Finally after passing their scrutiny we are
given our saleswoman/guide: Jenni.
Jenni is an Irish ex-pat, with bottle blonde hair who has almost lost
her accent. She leads us around this
monstrosity for 4 hours, trying to sell it in any way possible. When Christina asks about how the workers
are treated she thinks she has us figured out: “Oh very well. They’re all paid the min. wage. The owner is very nice and proud of his
Mayan heritage. He even sometimes gives
them the old TVs out of the room when we refurnish. Did I mention the nature preserve he helped buy the land for?”
It’s
exhausting, and although the free breakfast was good (not nearly as good as 99%
of the street food we had already had), we were ready for our money. In the end she sat us down and we were tag
team attacked by 3 sales people. It was
good cop, bad cop, funny cop. Our Irish woman, an Australian, and a
Canadian. Christina began to
crack. I think she felt sorry for the
saleswoman who worked only on commission.
Finally, after we basically told them that the place disgusted us and
represented the worst of capitalist greed and cultural imperialism, they
decided to let us go. The Australian
said with a look of disdain: “I guess you are travelers, not vacationers”. No shit buddy, now give us our 2000 pesos! We are finally released and led to a man who
counts out our money. It’s for real! But we’re not through. One more guy – an Englishman who likes his
weed and afternoon bottle – has to sit with us. He’s a developer for the company and tries to sell us something
else. Neither of us remember anything
he said. Blank.
We got our
day passes, swam in their mega pool, drank some tequila, and took the Bus back
instead of using their taxi money – in the end we brought in around 2200 pesos!
Over 200
dollars in US money. Not bad for a few
hours. We wouldn’t do it again though.
Well maybe for 3000pesos.
The
following day we left Puerto Vallarta on the bikes. We’d heard it was uphill out of town, but we had NO idea what we
were in for. It didn’t help that we
left the city in the middle of the afternoon.