The Manzanillo Experiment

Bananas, coconuts, tomatoes, chilis, and mountains. Such is the landscape southbound from Puerto Vallarta. Winding through more crazy mountains, we saw some pretty amazing scenery, PCH eat your heart out:

Beautiful and desolate.

We ended up trecking to Manzanillo, slightly farther than intentioned after I refused to take the first hotel we came to. In the middle of arguing on the side of the road with my dad, a guy in a truck came up and started asking us questions about our bikes. I asked him if he knew where to find a cheap motel, and he said absolutely, and when he asked if we knew Manzanillo and we obviously said no, told us to follow him. He lead us far out of his way (to Guadalajara) and through Manzanillo proper to a section near the beach, which he may have not realized was incredibly busseling given the time of year. Though he led us to a cheap motel, it was fully booked. So too were the next 3, and the ones after that were far more expensive than I wanted to pay. We reluctantly asked at a Best Western at the end of the strip, and hit a sort of paydirt. Though very expensive, the people behind the counter took pity on my haggard features, and at one point I had all three counter-jockies at work finding us a cheap motel in the area: one looking up numbers in their address book, one googling away, and one on the phone calling for prices. As incredible as this may be, I was still in utter shock of being completely in the conversation I had with the man behind the desk. We spoke fluently and withohut hitch, and I understood everything he said. I’m still miles from fluent, but it felt great to pretend for a few minutes.

Best Western’s best found us the… best in the area. It was slightly off the strip, and directly on an amazing neighborhood park. The park had kids playing into the wee hours of the morning, a store that sold beer (hooray!), a giant severed head sculpture, and even a restaurant open in the middle where we had our dinner. Add in satillite TV with news in English that allowed us to catch up, however briefly, with global goings-on and we had a pretty sweet deal. While having dinner, we had a long conversation with a caretaker and appliance repairman who handles a handful of homes for wealthy Americans. He filled us with thoroughly fascinating insights into the goings-on in that part of Mexico from the 1940’s through the present, all in stunningly fluent english considering he’d never left Mexico or trained formally. He told us about how Manzanillo is something like the #2 port in Mexico, and practically the exclusive one serving the Chinese. He spoke of how many black market goods are smuggled in, and how much garbage is shipped out to China.

On the way out of town, we saw the port, and it was unbelievably massive. We also got another pair of conflicting directions from Pemex employees. Ahhhh, Mexico, how I’ll miss you when you’re not even still in my rear-view.