The Foreigner

 

I was a foreigner.

For 9 whole days I was a foreigner. I didn’t speak the language, understand the routine or even get the culture, but I managed, adjusted and came out stronger in the end.

Last week this time I found myself in the beautiful Puerta Vallarta, Mexico, a tiny little metropolitan beach city on the west coast that sits right off the Pacific Ocean in southwestern Mexico.

Going down there, I had no real expectations (aside from maybe having a little tequila). Truth be told I was over worked, over stressed and generally killing myself with life’s petty little blunders [and I’ve barely dived into my 20’s]. I just needed an escape from reality, and some sort of peaceful hiding where no one could ever find me and I could reprogram my brain to better handle life. And Puerto Vallarta was the perfect place.

 

Villa del Palmar

Little is openly known about the city, unfortunately most Americans/Canadians know little about Mexico (outside of Cancun and maybe Mexico City). When my mother told me that’s where she and my father were taking me [as a graduation gift] my first reaction was, “What’s in Mexico?” I couldn’t for the life of me figure out just what was so damn special about Mexico and assumed the entire vacation would be a bust, but I was wrong.

Mexico [in general] is a beautiful country rich with flourishing greenery, deep green and blue water, warm tropical climate, white rocky-sandy shores, breath-taking mountains and thriving exotic wild life [oh and it’s humid as hell]. Unfortunately, even in all of its beauty and tourist attractions, Mexico is still a country full of poverty. Most of the people only get paid $5 a day [or so we were told]. Which is something to the tune of $165…which is practically nothing in American economy, but they survive. As a tourist you forget that as you sit at your all inclusive resort, sipping on your free pina coladas [and they were oh so tasty], and having your own personal mariachi band play la musical de amor, all while you bask in all of your uppity foreign glory…so ok the last part about the band and music were totally made up, but you get the picture.

 

on our tour of the jungle

Let’s get to the bottom line here. Inside the resort my parents and I stayed at was top notch [Villa del Palmar http://www.villadelpalmarvallarta.com/]. Everyone generally spoke English and everything we could ever need was available at the push of a button or a stroll down the stairs. Step 5 to 10 minutes outside the resort and the world as we knew it completely changed. It was actually somewhat disturbing…we saw people digging out of trash-cans, dogs and cats looking like they were on their death beds as they attempted to capture some bit of shade, and little village kids handing us exotic flowers in return for money.

We decided to walk everywhere we needed to go in order to save money [we walked an average of 8-10 miles a day depending upon where we needed to go]. Traffic is horrible in Vallarta, yet not many of the citizens even own cars. In fact, most of them use public transportation [partially because gas is the American eq. of $4-$9 a gallon depending upon where you go]. A good bulk of the traffic congestion was from tourists, buses and taxies.

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traffic

Obviously outside of the resort everyone speaks Spanish. The locals know a little bit of English, but it is typically broken English only relating to money [cost of an item, tips, etc.]. Outside of that, don’t expect too much of a conversation unless you are speaking to a tour guide or someone trying to sell you a timeshare [more on this later]. Even with my 6 years of Spanish [2 years in high school, 4 in college], there were still certain things that I couldn’t figure out how to say which left me feeling stupid. There were times when we had major communication flaws simply because we couldn’t connect, but then again how selfish of us to feel that they need to speak our language for our own selfish benefits. For the majority of our stay, I had no problem getting around. It was like all of my Spanish lessons fluently came back at once! It was actually kind of cool to be the interrupter of my parents. I even had a few vague conversations with a few people we met.

Now down to the not so kosher part of Mexico. The one thing that actually irked my nerves, [I’m going to warn you so that it doesn’t happen to you if you ever decide to visit a commercialized area of Mexico]. If anyone approaches you about tourism, or a free taxi ride, or things to do in town [particularly at the airport or on a street corner or tequila shop] TELL THEM YOU ARE LEAVING THAT DAY AND THAT YOU ARE NOT INTERESTED, otherwise you may find yourself in timeshare hell. Timeshares are a nice way of saying you own a part [just like the other thousands of people that go there] of a really nice resort and can stay there for 5 weeks out of the year for a small fee. My parents own two [that is how we were able to go to Mexico]. Anyway, you may say, oh, “but they are offering me money, free rides, free tickets to tours, and they seem so nice, why would I pass this up for a 90 minute presentation?” I don’t care how poor you are, nothing is worth those presentations. And they don’t give two shits about you; they only see dollar signs when they look at you. First off they are not 90 minutes…more like 6 hours [which kills half a day of your vacation]. They generally serve you free breakfast [which is not free because YOU have to tip the wait staff ALL of the wait staff], then they high pressure sell you for about 2 hours where you are told what you can and cannot afford based on your income [like they are inside of your head], they take you on a tour of the property [which will be ten times nicer than anything you could ever afford] and lastly after several failed attempts they hand you your free “gifts” in frustration [their not really free—you still have to tip and pay for extras like your lunch] and send you on your merry way. My family went on three of these while in Mexico, I declined the last one because I refused to subject myself to such a wasteful day.

Apparently tourism is Mexico’s number two cash cow, and I can see why. They make a decent profit off of tourists.

A few more things to point out before wrapping up this entry…after being in Mexico for a week, I truly believe that a lot of Mexicans see American/Canadians as being wealthy [which is a stereotype because I am quiet the opposite]. I kid you not, everywhere we went/everything that we did required a tip to someone or another, or someone randomly husslin’ jewelry, fruit, chickens [?]…

example of true husslin'

 

But back to tipping.

It’s not that I look down upon tipping [when one does his or her job well], but tips for cab rides? C’mon, gas is high enough. We went on this one night cruise [tickets were free] but there was a $10 raffle for the kids, $50 for a dvd of the entire night, tips for the staff—and would you believe that we gave our waiter $5 [after he only served the three of us a complimentary free drink] and he got the nerve to be like, “could you give me more than $5, how about $15?”

My mom’s a good one…because I just gave him a death stare. Needless to say he got her money. I don’t know I found that to be extremely rude, especially when we only saw him once during the night.

Other than those few flukes, oh and the fact that I got food poisoning the first two days, My Mexican vacation was something that I’ll never forget. I hope to get back there some day [maybe not in August—it’s too damn hot].

nice view

 

Suddenly America seems so uninspiring now. I miss the excitement of Vallarta. Back to the grind I go…