More Acapulco Information

We’re different! On Mexicana Airlines, it is no problem if you are not wearing seatbelts, if your seat is fully reclined, and they are landing the plane. This was new. Also there are Segways in the Mexico City Airport. Also, some of their gates go like this, in this order: 22, 24, 23.

We spend a lot of time in Acapulco. Here is a description of Acapulco: there is a town square which is very great in an oooh-this-is-a-dump-but-there’s-personality type way, with shoeshine stalls that are always empty and a big fountain. There is an aerobics/tae qwon do combo gym (obvious) that gives classes that you can hear in the square. There are very effective vendors of small trinkets, particularly gum. They enhance their marketing technique by being either children or teeny tiny and Indian and in very fun aprons and shaming you when you say no. Most effective last week was a vendor who was nursing as she walked around, as in infant on a boob and put naked boob + infant right in your face. We were unshakable! And had only pizza! And did not buy trinket! There are also terrifying nightmare Mexican clowns that kinda walk around and will maybe do shows (terrifying) and a giant gazebo that has banners and people pontificating about something--last week it was stopping child abuse (they love stopping child abuse! they are so cute!). Beers are always $1 and you can get delicious crack-based ice cream for 30 cents.

Last week we also ate at a small local restaurant, where a guy was playing the saxophone in a bizarre way and later a rather intoxicated shoe-free gentlemen entered and sang songs very poorly for the tables. It was a tiny place that was chock full of all locals (locales) and we were the only gringos in the place. When you order fried fish for $4, the only drawback is that it is probably fresh from the harbor, which means it’s diet was mercury and exhaust, but otherwise, it came with soup, fresh tortillas made on the griddle in the joint, rice and beans, spaghetti and butter, salad, and a weird jello-ish dessert that was just like jello but harder, kinda amber colored, and not very sweet. Full for a week!

Castmate and self walked along the beach afterwards and saw more cats (obvious), smelled the fartyharbor and then saw people dragging rope for the equivalent of about 2 city blocks on the beach. So we stopped to watch and it was like ye olde tyme old man and the sea, with all ages of guys pulling the rope very hard, one person about every yard. There were children pulling, and old grizzled guys who had part of a net around their shoulder, tied to the rope so they could lean forward real hard and pull by walking. So we sat and watched for an hour, deciding it was a boat that they were dragging in (silly idea!), before realizing that they were pulling in a giant fishing net (oh) at like 9 p.m. So they pull this huge net of fish in, the lead fisherman guy wiry and ripped and shirtless and probably killed a few guys and a ridiculous cliché, so there was about 4 yards wide by 2 yards deep of flapping fish. They make kind of a sound of pouring buttons on other buttons? Bacon frying? Snap snap snap? Yeah. A bunch of the fisherman leaned over the catch and started winging the bad stuff back into the ocean. The bad stuff included manta rays, who spun sideways in the air and looked like Frisbees going back in the water and random fish that looked just like all the other fish. They also got quite a few blowfish, that they very gingerly picked out of the catch and chucked in a little pile. There were fish all over the place, if you wanted to lean down and get one, that was not a problem. The other star feature was a fisherman/local resident, who did all of his sorting while huffing glue from an empty water bottle via mouth and nose. According to a cronie from the peace corps (whatep Josh), this is a regular delight in certain parts of Latin America, to which I say yay+horray+hehehehe+yay+barf.