Acapulco

...or as most people know it Johnny Weissmuller's personal playground. Anne and I recently took a trip down to Acapulco, actually we went in August during my brief respite from school. We utilized our airline miles to go down and that proved to be quite fortuitous as we would later find out (that was what I call in the amateur blog biz a "teaser"). Our flight was scheduled to leave about 1:00 AM on a Saturday morning. On paper this sounded good to us as we planned to have a few beers, head to the airport, have a few more beers, and then sleep on the plane to Mexico City where we had a fairly long layover. Then finally we were to take a quick flight to Acapulco and be in by noon to the resort.

The first red flag we encountered was only realized in hindsight, the agent at the ticket counter where we checked strongly advised us to carry our bags on and not check them. No big deal at the time, as we intended on doing this anyway (another teaser). Then, our "beers at the airport" plan was foiled by the fact that every establishment that sells alcohol in the international terminal of JFK is shut tighter than a nun's knees by 11:00 pm. This development had me fairly irritated, but I moved on as it's hard to spoil the beginning of a vacation.

The flight to Mexico City was great, the plane was only about 30% full, red flag #2 (I should change this column title to Acapulco Teasers...wait that sounds like a strip club), which meant that we each had an entire exit row to ourselves and were able to stretch out and sleep quite comfortably. The flight landed right on time and we made our way through customs and to the terminal for our flight to Acapulco. After waiting several hours with all of the other passengers for the flight, we learned it was cancelled. Huge bummer, a delay between us and our vacation. Oh, did I mention the flight was Air Mexicana? Have you heard of that one? Oh, no? That might be because it's out of business. As of the morning we landed in Mexico City. As in, we were in Mexico City with tickets to flights that no longer existed on an airline that was no longer in business. Needless to say we were rather distraught upon learning this. We pleaded with the manager to do something, in fairness he was quite sympathetic to our cause but simply kept saying "we're broke". We learned our options were to book a flight on another airline if we wanted to leave the airport via plane, otherwise we could walk/drive/take a bus/crawl/live there forever. As we waited in an incredibly long line for another airline with everyone else who was charting the far reaches of shit creek with us, the manager whom we had spoken with previously came and found us in line. He was communicating with someone over the phone, and telling us to hurry and come with him. He told us our flight on Mexicana was reinstated and to run, nee, RUN to the gate to catch the plane.

We sprinted through the terminal (well, I slow jogged and Anne sprinted) to the gate. There we were met with new people who were not sure if we were going or not. (Bear in mind that Anne speaks essentially no spanish, and I speak very little and seeing as we weren't in need of any "papas fritas", I was useless in this situation). Eventually, we got boarding passes, felt a wave of relieve and headed down the jetway. Whoops, stopped again this time I could see the inside of the plane, taste it even. More delay, eventually let on board. More delay, more official looking people coming in and out of the plane, inspecting us and leaving again. Finally we took off and were on our way. You can imagine the sense of relief that was felt by the passengers on board. All 3 of us. Aside from Anne and I, there was one other gentleman on the plane. Stewardesses were taking photos together, we took photos, it was quite a scene. Beers were free, and that is how we were on board the second to last flight ever flown on Air Mexicana (the same plane returned to Mexico City with a lot of people running on as we deplaned, looking much like we probably had an hour earlier.

Anyway, after spending a couple of hours on the phone with American while we were at the resort, we had to spend about $250 bucks for a flight to Mexico City, American got us a new flight back to New York (this is where having used miles came in handy), and credited us back the miles for the trip to Acapulco and back. A pain yes, but it could have been much worse. On to the vacay itself.

We arrived at our resort, Las Brisas a couple of hours before check in and were entertained in the lobby with pink margaritas and a very hospitable staff. This resort is really cool, it's heyday was clearly the 60s/70s but it is extremely well kept and clean. The kicker here though is that each room has its own private swimming pool. As a result we didn't plan on doing much aside from swimming, napping, eating, and drinking. On that last note we decided to make a beer run into town (the resort is not all inclusive). By beer run, I mean we went to a local Wal-Mart (vacation!!!), bought 4 cases of beer, two bottles of rum, a bottle of vodka, all of the mixers, and a blender. We were quite the spectacle both in the Wal-Mart checkout line and when we arrived back at the hotel lobby. (the remainder of the week was spent meeting looks from the staff of subtle grins and chuckles). At last, the room was ready and the hotel jeeps (this is how they take you to your room, very hilly) took us and our bar up to our room. Our room was fantastic, a nice patio overlooking the pool, and all of that overlooking the entire Acapulco bay. It was incredibly scenic. We settled in and had a nice room service meal and drank beers by the pool for the rest of the day.

The next day we went down to the beach club. The hotel has a separate beach area that is all the way down the mountain at the water. A van takes you down and it's private for the hotel guests. We had some nice drinks by the pool there, including a fresh coconut hacked open with a machete and filled to the brim with different types of rum. We also had a really great meal at restaurant with waves crashing in on the rocks just below. We went back up to the room that afternoon, did swimming, and went down to the nicer restaurant on the resort was I was kindly asked to stay near the bar as I didn't have on dress pants. So we sat with the open night air blowing in and looked out over the bay and had drinks.

The next day we headed down into the city of Acapulco for the first time. It's really not that nice of a city, not terrible but kind of dirty. I swung through the Wal-Mart a second time to pick up some khaki pants (my mexilones) and we went all the way around the bay to see old Acapulco. The cab driver was very determined to tell us all about Johnny Weissmuller and showed us where he lived (in a large room at an old hotel) and all of the stars who used to come there etc. For those who don't know, Johnny Weissmuller is a former Olympic swimmer who played Tarzan in the movies back in the 30s or something. He's been dead for a hell of a long time but is still quite big in Acapulco for whatever reason. Anyway, we were rapidly moving toward the point of explaining how we couldn't give a shit about Johnny Weissmuller when mercifully we were taken to a bar built on cliff's where you could watch the world famous Acapulco cliff divers. This is as touristy as it gets there and as a result our expectations could not have been lower. However, we were both quite pleasantly surprised. The cliff diving show is really pretty cool. First of all, the cliff's they dive off of are damn high. I would say at least 100 feet or more. Second, the area of water they dive in is basically a crack in between two cliffs. So the breadth of the water they land in is only maybe 20 feet wide, which might as well be a kiddy pool to me. Third, the water they dive in is evidently quite shallow, so much so that they have to time their landing into the water with when a wave comes in so it is deeper. Finally, they don't just do a straight up dive, they'll go off of the very top and do flips and all sorts of tricks on their way down before finishing with a dive. The show is not singular reason to book your flight to Acapulco today, but if you ever decide to go it's certainly worth seeing.

After we headed back to the hotel, we again took a swim and probably napped somewhere in there. Then, armed with my fancy new pants from Wal-Mart, we confidently marched into the restaurant for an excellent meal of duck for me, and Anne had some fresh tuna. It was really a nice meal and worth the cost of the pants to be sure.

One morning we woke up and decided we ought to do an excursion that day. Since our budget was a little pinched from the unexpected expense of buying a plane ticket, we opted to move down form the deep sea fishing to a nice boat cruise around the bay, or that was how it was advertised to us. The price was right and it included all of the drinks you wanted. Yes, a booze cruise. Seemed fun, and we both wanted to get out onto the water. As it turns out, the bay is quite rough. The boat was a pretty large boat with probably 200 people on it, but big enough that it didn't feel crowded. They had a band and nice roof deck with good views. The boat really did sway quite a lot the entire way. Shortly after departure Anne started looking/feeling pretty green. I got a little snack and some beers and that really helped. I also moved to the center of the boat, reasoning that the swaying would be less in the middle as opposed to the edge which was moving up and down pretty solidly. After a few minutes, she settled down and was fine for the rest of the trip. Others, uh, didn't fair so well. Before we got off we had dubbed it the Puke-Ship-Lollipop. It was comically bad. People were hugging trashcans everywhere, as soon as the bathroom door would open, someone else would fly. I saw one girl throw up in a sack, and another over the back railing. I, sadistically, was getting quite a kick out of it. Otherwise, it was very lovely. On the way back we stopped off for a traditional goat stew, made only on Thursdays, at a local restaurant in town. The place came highly recommended and the food was excellent. That pretty much capped our day and was back to the room once more.

As it's been quite sometime since were there, (I really slacked on getting this up) I'm having some trouble remember day-by-day how things went, so I'll try to hit some highlights. One night we went to eat at this restaurant not on the resort. It was a pretty nice atmosphere with decent food and it also overlooked the bay. The really noteworthy part of the meal though was when randomly during the meal these huge movie screens descended from the ceiling and covered the large windows which offered the view. The lights were dimmed and we were treated to a video of a concert of a Mexican band that was probably a 7 piece band backed by an orchestra. The first song was all in spanish, and I of course didn't know it, but the second was a rather emotional rendition of "Knights in White Satin" sung in English but with Spanish accents. It was totally bizarre and we were really fighting back laughter but everyone seemed to enjoy it.

Also, sometime during the trip I got a touch of food poisoning and spent an entire night and day sweating out a terrible fever and running to the bano (spanish) for various reasons. That sucked, but I got over it pretty quickly. All in all, the trip was great though. The room was really nice and we definitely intend on going back there when we are ready for another relaxing vacation. The trip home was uneventful, thankfully, and it was back to NYC for a healthy dose of reality.