Sunday, October 16, 2005

I love food. Food cheers me up a lot. And if tonight we had not found some really good pescado zorandeado, I would leave Mazatlan tomorrow morning with very, very bad feelings. Post fish, and barring any unforseen developments in the morning, I will be leaving with meh feelings.

Mazatlan started out on the wrong foot with me. It's a twelve-hour bus ride from Guaymas. Our only choice was overnight, but thats cool because then we save the cost of a night in a hotel. And I always sleep through bus rides anyway. The bus was not full, but one of our fellow passajeros was a Mover. He started out in the seat behind the driver, but he saved the very front starboard side seats by putting some stuff there. We sat in the second row behind his empty but saved seats.

When we got well underway, the Mover, an older guy with lots of facial moles and apparently no access to a comb, sat on a cooler right next to the driver. After a while, he claimed his saved seats in front of us. There was a stop at 4 am, and a family vacated two sets of seats behind his original seat. Like a flash, he claimed one set. (If you haven't kept count, that's six seats and one cooler that are now his domain.) In the morning, he was next to the driver again, touching his knee, or his arm, or the steering wheel with every point he made; and there were many.

When we arrived at Mazatlan and arose from our seats, he was passionately discoursing on some "pinche gringos." These pinche gringos were probably not us, but thats hardly the point. I mean, it would have been pretty bad form for Michael and me to sit on that bus and discuss the mystery person who had urinated on the bus floor in the night as a "filthy Mexican," with the defense "oh but w'ere not talking about you." It wasn't that big of a deal, but it kind of put a sour taste in my mouth.

After removing our dusty mochilas from under the bus and using the 3 peso restroom, we went out to catch a bus to where the cheaper hotels are. Following the directions of the LP, we chose the right-hand side of the street. When a bus came along, we asked the driver if he was going to Playa Olas Altas. He told us to go in the opposite direction. We schepped our stuff across the street and asked the next bus driver. He also told us to go in the opposite direction.

Mazatlan is a tourist town. And a tourist town well past its heyday. It's dirty and crumbling and makes up for this with neither cheapness nor friendliness nor charm of any kind. The beach is covered with plastic bottles and six-pack yokes and the undertow is deadly. And if it were a cartoon town, Michael and I would be represented as green dollar bills with feet. I so hate the feeling of being badgered at every moment to ride a taxi or eat in a restaurant or take a tour. Not to mention getting yelled at because you dont want to stop and chat when you know perfectly well its going to be a pitch for a tour you dont want.

The locals were not interested in us as individuals in Guaymas either, but they werent unfriendly, they were simply busy living their lives. In Mazatlan its like people resent our pinche presence and are tolerating us only because our gluttonous desires for seafood and beer and taxi rides are built into the economy.

Not to mention that no one seems to understand my Spanish. People have told me that my accent is pretty good, but its entirely possible those people were just being polite. Still, even if I had the worst accent possible, how badly could I possibly mispronounce the word "taco" as to make it unrecognizable to a waiter in a restaurant in Mexico? Or "Corona?"

Then yesterday we went on a long, long walk along the seafront from Playa Olas Altas to Zona Dorada (thats where the Senor Frogs is, y'all). The c-shaped curve of the beach with the three green islands in the distance should have been lovely, but somehow wasnt. We were going to an English-language used book exchange. (The store also offered massage therapy, of which we did not partake.)

It was really, really hot and really really bright. Its not the city's fault that we didn't realize it was four kilometers when we started out. (We took a bus back.) And its not the city's fault that we got lost today for no good reason and wandered around and around in the blazing sun just beyond our hotel for half an hour. After forgetting to bring enough money for lunch and thus not being able to eat. But I don't care. It was still misery experienced in Mazatlan.

So tonight we found the spot with the pescado zorandeado, which is the local specialty - whole grilled fish with onions, peppers and spices. We had a minor setback when Michael accidentally scooped the head onto his plate and the eyeball rolled out. But we're grownups; we know pescado comes from pez. So we got over that and the good food cheered me up a lot. Its hard to be hateful when you're eating fresh fish and drinking cold beer and watching the sky turn purple over the water.

But I'm pretty sure we were sleeping on a boxspring and not a mattress.

Anyway, we're never coming back to Mazatlan, and that is about as nicely as I can put it.

Update - January 13, 2007

You know... I have no real desire to go back to Mazatlán, but somehow it doesn't seem so bad to me at all, looking back. I think if it hadn't been so hot, those minor problems would have just rolled right off our backs.

HOURS ON THE BUS: 47.5

 

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