I apologize for this giant empty space. I couldn't get rid of it without losing pictures. just scroll down. thanks. I will fill it with a picture of an old Church in PV and of Richard being dumb.
This past weekend, team Michigan-plus-one-from-Wisconsin departed for Puerto Vallarta. For roughly $130 dollars per person, we got tickets for the 4 1/2 hour
bus ride to and from our destination--which came with really comfortable chairs, a non-stop flow of "Friends" in Spanish on good sized plasma screens, a bag lunch, and one screaming Mexican toddler--two nights at a 'four-star' all-inclusive resort
(Mesa del Mar), and taxi ride from the airport to our overrated abode. Prices are down right now because todos los gringos tienen miedo del influenca y narcos
(all the white people are afraid of the flu and druglords). All accomodations were about 40% cheaper than they were prior to the flu scare. It served us well, and we took advantage of the epidemic. The weekend trip was not always what one would call "fun," but it often was and it left us with a multitude of stories to tell. If this were a Law and Order episode, it would start:
"In the commercial tourist business of Mexico, white people are catered to by hordes of friendly workers, and encouraged to do anything that will equal profit or entertainment for the people of Mexico. Here are their stories."
The bus ride, as stated, was about 4.5 hours long. It was essentially all mountains, right up to the beaches of Puerto Vallarta, where there was about 200 feet of sand between the bases of the mountains and the Pacific ocean. We were very much in the jungle, which was wierd for me, because I only know the jungle from movies, and I have never seen a giant tour-bus clamoring through the jungle on a paved highway in any of those movies. I wouldn't mind seeing Harrison Ford or the Rock fight some infuriated aboriginal protector-of-ancient-treasure or some greedy
British collector threatening the existence of the planet on the top of the big red bus we were riding in. If anybody reading this knows somebody in Hollywood, throw that one on the table, see what they think. At any rate, some of the gringas (white girls) were getting a little motion sick on the giant, swaggering bus as it barrelled through the wild at high altitudes, often overlooking rocky declines of death. Nobody threw up, though I almost did when I used the bus bathroom.
We got to Puerto
Vallarta--after some confusion with the cabi over whether or now we were entitled to the ride we had already paid for at the travel agency--
and saw our hotel. I arrived believing that I was going to stay at a four-star resort with 4 restaurants and a bar, with wireless internet and phones and a TV. What we encountered was a four-star resort with one buffet-style restaurant 6 floors from our room (the elevators really didn't work) and one very limited restaurant on the beach (11 floors down the stairs) --both of these places closed at 10pm--there were no TVs, which didn't matter because we weren't going to watch it anyway, no phones, which didn't matter igualmente (equally), and no internet, which mattered alot because Korey and I were supposed to send stories into the Vanguard to be printed on Sunday (sorry Sarah). But we
refused to be discouraged, and immediately went to the very limited bar with only three kinds of beer (estrella, Sol, y Dos Equis). This is my diagnosis of the situation: sometime around 194o of 1950, La Mesa Del Mar received a 4-star rating (it was one of three or four resorts at the time), and since then, it has just refused to be re-rated, not keeping up with the times and retaining its antique, 4-star status. If I were a critic, however, I would have given the beach 5-stars (until later chaos ensued). I was told most of the beaches in PV were rocky; ours was not. It was soft and sandy and the depth of the water increased at a perfect rate. The view was gorgeous, as one can
see here. Also, Vicente brought us as many
drinks and plates of nachos as we wanted while we were down on la playa (beach). There was a high risk of sunburn, which Korey and Richard chose to protect against with sunblock that Richard took from his African American friend (surprisingly, the sunblock failed and they were both burnt to a crisp.) I, on the other hand, went with SPF 1-million--the shade--and was only darkened while I frolicked in the waves or strolled on the beach. Pictured here are me and Korey, and a number of glasses that represents about 20% of the drinks we desired on the beach. Notice that Korey is drinking some wierd, pink, gringa shit and I am delving into a michelada, which I commonly refer to as the blood of Mexico.
There were other hazards on the beach, though, that provoke me to reduce my 5-star rating of the beach to a 2.5 star rating. Korey stepped on the severed head of a barracuda, cutting her foot. There we
re hour-long spans where we couldn't swim because there were flocks of sting-rays patroling the shore for Australian people. There were flocks of salesmen shoving cheap plastic crap in our faces, telling us that their family of artisans made it (I would then ask if Alfredo, the man who tried to sell me an identical blanket with the same story, is a part of his artisan family, at which point the truth was out and the vendor and I would just chat for a few more seconds before the went on to harass more people.) Alfredo tried really hard to sculpt his lie about how his family made blankets, even showing me a blanket with flaws in the pattern and telling me his children who were still learning made it. I saw the same blanket in several locations around PV. It hurt. There were also a number of diseased looking birds that had little respect for t
he cultural norms for social promity and chose to get close enough to me that I could have slapped it if I thought it wouldn't have started another epidemic in Mexico.
The most pressing threat on the beach, I think, were the aguamalas (jellyfish), also called "medusas." As we were all laughing and giggling like children in the waves, Richard complained that he thought he might have been bitten by something on the shoulder. We all gathered around in the knee-deep water to look at the tiny little pick-mark on Richard's shoulder. As we did so, a wave crashed into the back of our legs, carrying with it this spawn-of-satan, which wrapped itself around my lower leg, causing me
to cry out in pain and sprint to shore. At first, it just stung, like I had been stung by a special-ops team of abejas (bees), but within minutes, the poison from the little bastards began to set in and the entire left side of my body was charged with a combination of two sensations: being struck in the testicles and wacking one's funny-bone on a marble counter. Pictured here is the mark left by the medusa. The picture doesn't capture the mark at all, so if you just imagine the Greek alphabet writen on the segment of leg shown here in a red, 3-D pen, you are imagining the scar. We tried
several methods of abating the pain, most of which were drawn
from knowledge Richard gained from an episode of Mythbusters. We scraped the back of my legs with cards to removed the small poison-pods. We rubbed hot sand on the leg. Richard peed on the wound (not a joke, that happened.) Here is me laying in agony as that mix of sensations I previously described began to set in. I also drank 4 shots of Vodka to numb myself. The only thing that immediately stopped the pain was Richard's urine, but I was so grossed out that I rinsed it off quickly and the relief was gon
e. A few minutes after we tried all the remedies but rubbing hot sand on it, we went back down to the beach, because I didn't want to ruin the party for everybody. When we got to the beach, they rubbed hot sand on the wound, and I began throwing up yellow bile from the pain. I know what you are thinking: are there any pictures of Stu throwing up? YES! but the bile really isn't captured, so you don't get to see the plutonium-like glow of absorbed jellyfish poison. Thankfully, I didn't lose any of the medicinal vodka I had ingested, and in short order I stopped feeling all together and we went on a walk down the beach where I happily told everybody of my misfortune, including the pee.
After several hours, the pain and drunkness began to fade, and we went into PV el centro to see the nightlife. But, before we went, we ate dinner. When dinner ended, Korey and Richard went to the bar and we the others sat and talked for about 25 minutes. In those 25 minutes, Korey and Richard exhausted the bar of its liquor. In a role reversal from Tequilla, I watched over them as they stomped around Puerto Vallarta. We stopped into on ridiculous club, watched a few minutes of ameteur rock music, saw alot of cool sand sculptures, played on some statues, and used a public restroom or two. After only about an hour, we went back to the hotel and stayed up really late telling life stories (once, going to the Oxxo to get ice cream.)
We got up the next day, checked out, and headed back to Guadalajara, where we didn't do the homework that was due in the morning and told everybody about how Richard peed on me.
Until next time, no hagas nada malo que no hiciera ya (don't do anything bad I wouldn't do.) And remember to brush your teeth.
-Stu
building than those of last semester, el edificio de negocios (business building). The walk to class is slightly longer, and I climb an extra flight of stairs, leaving me a little winded when I arrive to class, but none of this drawbacks could outweigh the benefit of immeasurably better bathrooms. They are cleaner, have larger stalls (Hudini would have had trouble relieving himself in the stalls of the previous building), are void of puddles of water that force me to hold my pants around my knees to keep them from getting wet, and even have a higher quality brand of toilet paper. So I left the bathroom in an unavoidably dandy mood and climbed back up the stairs to my classroom where I ran into Korey. Korey related to me a story that I didn't expect. Not at all. She said: "So...Richard just told me he got kicked out of class."
grammar professor, Gloria, has a hefty rapsheet after only one week of classes. Gloria is Mexican, but easily achieves a higher mark on the Stu-Chipman Scale of un-Mexicanity than did the previous pack leader, Maggie (Korey's ex-host mother.) She is a funny shape, about 6' 1'', 105 lbs, with elbows and knees that look like garden stakes, a chin that looks like a spade, and cheekbones that look like a normal chin. Her hair is almost jet-black, and her eyes have a slightly Asian quality to them, which could be due to the incredible amount of time she spends with the Asian students studying at UAG. This process is described in a song by the Vapors' 1980 smash hit, "I think I'm turning Japanse." Japanese definitely qualifies as un-Mexican. For whatever reason, presumably the described transformation, Gloria has a poor understanding of all things fun, funny, or fun-related. She is unhumanly rational in a way that would make Fredrick Winslow Taylor nod with approval (but only for a second before he moved on to evaluate the efficiency of something else). Last Friday, when Richard stopped into class on our way to the doctor's office to tell Gloria that we would all be missing class on account of violent, abnormal discharge from both sides of our digestive system, Gloria was skeptical, and told Richard to return to class after he saw the doctor. Of course he did not, as we were diagnosed with gastriticiticisus or something like that, and none of we three could go more than 25 minutes without a visit to the bano (bathroom). Gloria then proceeded to lack any sort of helpful or compassionate character trait while Richard was trying to catch up in the classes he missed, collecting his assigments (completed with no direction), and grading them without giving him a chance to revise them and without returning them with an explanation of what he misunderstood or any correcting guidance. One can also deduce, by the vigor with which she persues social relations with the Asian students, that she has not other friends. On a final note, she has put on her daily quizzes to the class such questions as "If you were in love with your professor, would you tell her?" So that's Gloria.
