We just got back 11 hours ago, and after a l.o.o.o.ong nap, here we go with the AAR, good stuff first.
Good: the Peso is weak compared to the weak dollar, and so we had about 35% more purchasing power than last time. Prices HAVE increased down there, but I brought back 20% of my $2500 expense budget, and I've NEVER done that before.
Good: Not many tourists, so no difficulty getting on tourist jaunts. Prices for these jaunts haven't increased much, one example being a chartered (crewed) yacht trip, in a 45-foot sailing yacht, an all-day adventure including two nice meals, open bar, snorkeling and lots of quiet and good company, for $80/person. Another adventure, with a linked company, took us out into the mangrove swamps in an actual old-time steam launch. For 2 1/2 hours, we looked at most of the fine waterside villas, including the Governor's, saw 5 crocodiles, including a 12-footer which came right up to the boat. That trip was $25/person, and included all the cervesa you could drink. BTW, the picture of the retired-looking couple relaxing aboard the S/B African Queen IS yours truly and the gudwife, taken several years ago. BTW2, the launch has a new fire-tube boiler to power it's Fred Semple-designed engine.
Good: Paradise Village Resort is still the same classy place, and our accomodations, in Torre (Tower) Coba, looked down on the yacht harbor in the Marina.
Good: Puerto Vallarta is still well-protected, and has suffered none of the drug-cartel violence which has plagued other parts of Mexico, particularly the border areas.
Good: the Aeropuerto at Puerto Vallarta is growing as well, and easily accommodates the traffic.
It wasn't all roses, however.
Bad: The weather sucked a big root. The Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone had not retreated to it's usual fall-through-winter position down around the Equator, but was till hanging around at 10-20 degrees north latitude, so we had full tropical summer while we were there, complete with wilting humidity, 90+ temps, three nights of SERIOUS electrical storms, and a good lashing by the tail of hurricane Rick, the second-strongest Pacific hurricane ever (Rick was a Cat-5 until just before it passed by just offshore of us). We will NOT go there this early in the season again. We are used to the drier and cooler weather that late November-May brings.
Bad: Being there in the off-season means that a lot of the things to do simply aren't on the calendar yet. The hotel still has all their daily theme nights, but they are toned down to minor affairs, not the major hoopla deals we are used to. Putting on a BBQ night in the main dining room, and eating your meat out of steam tables instead of a chef carving it off a baron of beef cooking over mesquite doesn't quite cut it. A three-piece mariachi combo in the dining room doesn't compare to the mid-season, big and brassy sound of a 15-piece Norteno band out by the main pool.
Bad: In this tough economy, the ever-present shills (salesmen) are just about at a screaming level. They descended on us like a pack of jackals at the airport, and even sported "identity badges" saying they were employees of our resort, when I knew perfectly well (and told them to their faces) that the resort engages in ZERO promotion off it's premises. I was just on the point of lowering my shoulder and serving up a football lineman's block on the second pack of these jerks that accosted me on my way from Customs to the Taxi Dispatch.
Bad: I was pleasantly surprised to find that Mexico now has 3G wireless, but even Verizon couldn't get me out of the dollar-a-minute roaming charges, so my cell phone was STILL useless. I did manage to negotiate a deal with Verizon to use broadband 3G (a puny 500Kb/sec) down there for $10 for the two weeks I was there. Another FUBAR about wireless: they build no backup power into their comm systems there, so whenever electrical storms hit, the network is disrupted for hours.
What works and what doesn't work in Mexico?
Works: the Internet. WiFi and 3G everywhere. No excuse to not have some sort of access.
Works: Your English works just fine in Puerto Vallarta. The Mexicans are bears about their tourist industry being able to talk to us in OUR language.
Works: Your dollars work just fine down there, and that's NOT a good sign, as far as their economy and currency goes. if I was Presidente, there would be ZERO dollars used in commerce there.
Works: Your credit cards work just fine, but you pay an automatic 4% penalty for using one there. Better to take cash in and convert it. I was able to buy Pesos at less than a percentage point below the XE.com rate. Lots of stores have signs up offering big discounts for cash instead of credit cards. That tells me that there is a lot of cheating on their national value-added tax going on.
Works: Wal-Mart works. New stores everywhere, and they have it all.
Fails: Their roads fail. Take the worst pothole-alley in the USA and it would be a smooth boulevard there. Their use of speed bumps is WAAAAAY overboard, and they don't engineer them to be OK on your car's suspension at a certain speed like we do. All of theirs try to wreck you whenever you drive over them, at whatever speed. Their boulevard traffic signals are screwy. You turn LEFT from the right lane, waiting for a signal to stop the left lanes of traffic, but there is still something creepy about that.
Fail: This system of every tourist being a mark to be swindled is a MAJOR failure. Their Tourist Minister REALLLLLY needs to bear down. The outright fraud being openly practiced at the airport is just one example.
Fail: Their entire culture of electronic communication. I don't claim that we do it right all the time here, but we have NAFTA now, so why is TelMex still allowed to charge robber-baron roaming for use of a US cell phone? Changing sim cards like you do in Europe doesn't work in Mexico. You have to have one of their phones in order to lose the roaming charges. Canada changed similar rules when NAFTA came in, so why can't Mexico make us all one big happy cell-phone family? Also, why do the Mexicans require the use of a country code? Canada dumped theirs, you dial ten digits to call anywhere in Canada from the USA.
Fail: Their @$%^&*&^%$#@ city bus system. There is absolutely NO way, except local knowledge, to know where all the different private bus lines stop. There are at least ten bus companies serving PeeVee, and their fares are reasonable, less than $2 for suburb-to-town with a transfer for in-town routes, but unless you are at the end of a busline, you have no clue if it will stop for you at a bus stop, or, in some cases, you won't have a clue where the damn thing goes! The city MUST have the authority to put Autotransportes Medina's (bus line serving my resort) logo on the bus stop signs where the company stops, don't they?
Aaaah, the zzz's are catching up to me at 0315, so I'd better finish or it won't be right.
