A Nameless Blog

In a recent comment, one of the Joshes requested that I write about my trip to Mexico.  This poses a problem because no matter what I do, I’ll be breaking one of my rules for this blog.  On one hand, I always take requests and do my best to fulfill them, no matter how inane or misguided.  On the other hand, I avoid writing strictly about personal experiences because, well, this isn’t a diary.  (I only make exceptions in the most extreme cases.)  It seems that I’m at a crossroads, Secretary Heller.

Thankfully for me, I’ve found a compromise that doesn’t sacrifice too much of my pride.  What follows is a collection of thoughts based upon details from my Mexico trip, many of which never actually happened.  That’s right — it’s Josh’s requested Mexico post with the requisite commentary, but it’s filled with lies.  Everyone wins.

Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised about the inequity with the border.  Getting in to Mexico was super easy — we just passed on through.  There was even a welcoming committee waving at us, offering to sell us mangos.  Leaving Mexico, though, we waited in a ten-mile line for nearly three days.  I had to take an extra day off work.  By day two, I considered hiring a coyote to whisk me across the desert, but I decided that I didn’t want to abandon my car (in fucking Mexico, no less). 

When we finally got to the checkpoint, we all had to verbally affirm that we were U.S. citizens and assure the guard that we knew only enough Spanish to order tacos.  “Conjugate ‘estar’ in the perfect tense!” the guard screamed.  “We don’t know how!” I sobbed.  “Good — welcome home,” he said, patting the trunk as we passed.

The greatest thing about Rocky Point: the women.  Wait, let me amend that.  The greatest thing about any tourism-rich beach city: the women.  They’re also the most frustrating thing, though, since hot women rarely come to a tourism-rich beach city during an off weekend without at least one dude to keep them in check.  It makes for great sightseeing, but not as much fun as one would hope.

All streetside salesmen in Mexico are friendlier and easier to haggle with than I expect.  Even the drug dealers care about customer service.  But come to think of it, I imagine that the drug dealers are more invested in customer service, considering the heightened risk in the event of a disgruntled buyer.  Even still, the folks at the pot-and-peyote stand were wonderful.

I quickly found out that the friendliness is only there to compensate for bad merchandise.  All I saw were shoddy jewelry, tasteless beef (or beef-like substance), busted sunglasses, hats with holes in them, and heroin half as strong as methodone.  Weak sauce, Mexican street salesmen.

If you want to eat at a fancy Mexican steakhouse, make sure you have the cash to pay for it.  Otherwise, you’re paying via credit card in pesos.  It’s shocking to see $3400 on your bill after a single dinner.  I’m sorry, I didn’t realize that I ordered the gold-encrusted ribeye.  Eventually, the wait staff explained the nature of exchange rates to me and it all worked out.

Canned Dos Equis gets old pretty quick.  So does bottled water, incidentally.  I’m a habitual drinker of tap water, so it took some acclimating to reach for some of that pre-bottled nonsense.

A shitload of resorts have popped up in Rocky Point over the last few years.  The sudden height and modernism among the desert and squalor is striking.  Brian rightly likened it to Dubai, only on a much smaller scale.  My favorite part about it is that it’s a few miles up the coast from the area of Rocky Point where everyone hangs out.  The resorts offer a sort of vacation from the vacation by walling themselves off from the ramshackle dives and taco stands.  The rich folks (as well as employed young folks pretending to be rich) have the option of having their Mexican experience in small doses.  Judging by the number of condos, that appears to be a very popular service.

Turns out, it’s a lot harder than you think to sell your friend into white slavery.  I thought it’d be the perfect capper to a great weekend to pay for the room by selling one of the Joshes (we had one to spare).  It didn’t work out, though, since tourists are expected to be buyers only — locals are the sellers of all goods, and there’s nothing you can do to convince them otherwise.  “He has a good attitude and a low threshold for pain — easy to boss around!”  Alas, no takers.

That’s about as much riffing I can do about Mexico.  It was a pleasant weekend whose details are too mundane to recount in a blog post.  What else do you want?

-Darrell

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 29th, 2007 at 4:48 pm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.