First off, neither of us are very pleased with the Westin. It’s okay as a hotel, I guess. But as one taxi driver put it, “It’s a little rusty.” We’re in a renovated “junior suite” which I actually paid more to upgrade to, and it’s little more than a slightly larger room. It does however, have a jacuzzi on the terrace, which should be nice, but again, we’ve had a lot of trouble working it. I think it ran all night, in a low-grade sort of way. I finally got it turned completely off.
So, the hotel is just okay, and when we arrived we were too early to check in. After some back and forth, Jane agreed to go into town and see the sights. We started on the Malecon, Puerto Vallarta’s version of the Wildwood boardwalk. It’s mostly a collection of souvenir shops, restaurants catering to tourists (chains like Senior Frogs), and jewelry stores. Before you get to the river, there’s an old cathedral that is the pride and joy of the town. We walked up towards it, and since we both needed to use the bathroom, we climbed the stairs to a restaurant overlooking the church. We ordered drinks, since the sign clearly stated that the baños were for customers only, and watched the people go by. The most interesting thing was that most cars that drove by the intersection where the church was, the passengers would genuflect, crossing themselves before going on. It was quite fascinating.
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Mass was still going on, so we paid up and headed to church. I had read that the church had a dress code and that tourists should be courteous about their dress when entering the church. There’s even a sign at the door. No shorts, basically. As I was wearing shorts, and carrying a rather large camera, I hung back towards the door. Jane, not being the least bit shy, walked right in. Within seconds, she’d gotten in line and before I knew it had taken communion. Go girl. I looked around and noticed that several of the Mexican men around me were wearing shorts so I walked in and stood in the back.
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We left church, Jane feeling like at least she’d “gotten that out of the way” and we headed down the street. Somehow, here’s where it went wrong.
We stopped briefly in front of one of the hundreds of stores selling tequila, and struck up a conversation with the guy who worked there. It started friendly enough, and he asked what we’d been doing. We mentioned that we were thinking of renting a boat and going fishing. Of course, he had just the boat, blah, blah, blah. So he took us inside where he proceeded to have us taste his tequila while he tried to sell us on a boat. Before long, we were whipping through tiny shots of flavored tequilas, everything from vanilla and piña colada, to añejo and pomegranate. Most of these, the flavored tequilas, were only 19 proof, being little more than premixed drinks. But still. Francisco, as we learned his name was, explained that he was the manager of both this store, and the one across the street. So, then we went over there and tried more tequilas. By the second store, and another half dozen shots, he let the cat out of the bag.
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The thing you have to understand, is that in Puerto Vallarta, everything is about real estate. Most of the large resorts have at least one component that are privately owned condos, or time-shares. They employ a wide range of people, both on-site and off, that try to reel in the tourists, and turn them over to sales people who’s sole job is to show you how nice the place is, and if they think you might be interested, they turn you over to the master salesmen to close the deal. It all starts innocent enough. They can offer you discounts on food and alcohol at your hotel. That boat ride you wanted? You can have it for free. You want to go snorkeling? They’ll take care of it.
All you have to do is agree to come to breakfast where they work you for 90 minutes. First, for most of these places, they just want to show you how nice the hotel is, which presumably is a good way to convert repeat customers, but the real money is in selling you a condo or timeshare. The low level people, the men and women at the airport, the guy selling trinkets on the beach, and the tequila places, are all paid by one real estate company or another, to reel you in. For this they are paid a commission.
They’re very good at this. I’m by no means an easy sell and generally I have a good radar for bullshit. But I can feel sympathy for what they’re trying to do and sometimes that’s my downfall. The problem is, I’ll listen.
I told Francisco, in no uncertain terms, that I was not interested in taking the tour, listening to any sales pitch, or in any other way, doing anything but enjoying my vacation. I’ve seen hundreds, if not thousands, of hotels, and I don’t care how nice they are. I’m still not interested in buying anything. In fact, even though I think the area is very nice, I’m not sure I’ll be coming back soon, because there are still a lot of places in the world I haven’t seen, and before I start repeating myself, I’d like to see them.
But Francisco wasn’t giving up without a fight. The main pitch of these guys is, “You don’t want to save money?” And then they look at you incredulously, like: you stupid American with more money than brains. And you say, “No. I’m not interested in saving money.” And then they cock their head like the RCA dog.
Now meanwhile, he’s still pouring shots of tequila. This is his standby gesture.
So the boat we’re looking at is a 37’ fishing boat with a baño, which can be nice when you’re out on the water for four to eight hours. He wants $340 for the trip, but he’ll give it to us for $40 if we go on his little tour, which is at least two hours of our time between the supposed 90 minutes plus travel to and fro. I’m willing to just pay for the damn boat. But really, I want to think about it. I’d like to shop around, but he’s making phone calls, writing things down, trying to close the deal. Finally, he just wears me down and I give him a $60 deposit. I have to pay the remaining $280 to the boat captain. Which means, to me, that I should be able to get the boat for $280, because I’m sure he keeps the $60. But whatever.
So, finally, Jane and I leave and we begin fighting. I didn’t want her to interfere in the negotiations, she was just trying to have a good time. I overreacted. She got her feelings hurt. It wasn’t pretty. We proceed to fight all day, threatening to ruin the rest of the vacation.
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Oh, we walked down to Zona Romantica, actually ate the best lunch we’ve had since we got here, took a cab back to the hotel, where I argued with the hotel and looked at no less than three rooms, before deciding to pay more for the one I wanted, went to the bar by myself, went back to room, fought some more, went down the beach and had a beer, came back to the room, got Jane and went down the beach to watch the sunset (which was beautiful), went back to the room, fought some more, ordered Jane room service and finally went to sleep. Somewhere in there we made up.
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And that’s pretty much how we ended the day.
I’m still not sure what to do about the boat. I’m sure it’s wonderful and that we’ll like it fine, but that’s not the way to make a deal. I’m thinking of walking over to the marina, which is just behind the hotel, and taking a look at the boat. Possibly talk to the captain and get him to throw in beer and food. If he’s not interested, Francisco can keep the $60 and the captain will get nothing from me. I’ll go find another deal.
I’ve also thought about calling Cesar and seeing what he can come up with. I’m sure he knows somebody with a nice boat. Everybody does.
But mostly, we’ll lay in the sun today. They do have a nice beach area, with these large white beds. They’re maybe 15 feet square and made of white cushions about a foot off the sand. You take up the whole thing. It’s quite nice. Jane wants to swim in the Pacific. I’m generally happy with the pool. We’ll go back to what we’ve been doing, which is reading, drinking, eating, and getting a tan.
We did find what looked like a very cute little restaurant called TRIO: “Mediterranean Food Cooked with Love. A European garden Restaurant with a Colonial Touch.” [ Guerrero 264, Col. Centro, PTO Vallarta, Jalisco, México 322.222.2196 : http://www.triopv.com ]
Maybe we’ll try it out, or maybe we should just avoid town.
P.S. I just found out there may be a problem getting my Russian visa turned around in time, so the office might want me to FEDEX my passport to Washington, D.C., get my visa processed, then FEDEX it back to me. I'm not really comfortable with this, but I guess the worst thing that happens is I have to go to the consulate and get another passport. It would also mean we would be at least a day late getting back. I don't know what it would mean for our airline tickets. This is not what I need right now.
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