Warning! This is a much longer post than my usual, but I seemed to have a problem breaking it up into two parts without losing the flow. So grab a coffee or some tequila, or wine, as I share some of my adventures in Mexico.
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I recently returned from a new destination for me in Mexico. Huatulco, Mexico, in the state of Oaxaca. But honestly, I think it should be named Hotulco. I’ve been to many places along the Pacific coast in Mexico and thought they were hot. But this was another kind of hot I’d only ever experienced in one other place, Venezuela. The only time I ever remember being so over-heated and sometimes feeling as though I were going to pass out was in Venezuela some decades ago and burnt my boobs right through my bathing suit.
Same deal in Hotulco, only I couldn’t sit out and sunbathe as my per usual for very long and spent most of each day in the pool. By the last two days it was even hotter, if I could imagine that was even possible. So much that the lovely ‘adult’ pool I was floating along in all week that was once cool and refreshing, had turned to substantially more than lukewarm, which had me running out of pool and under a freezing shower by the pool about twenty times a day.
Unsurprisingly, not one tourist there that I saw,had a nice brown tan, nor on the airplane home. Including myself. (Yes, I was purposefully observing.) And thanks to my seasoned sun habits and protection I used, I didn’t get burned. Oh, but in all fairness, talking in the pool for hours on end, the inside of my bottom lip definitely got a whack. 🙂 All one could do there was get redder and redder and most being careful about it. Many wearing long-sleeved SPF sun protective shirts. I applied sunscreen about eight times a day and dived back in. And heaven help you if you thought you could walk to the pool in bare feet, (like my new and hilarious gay friend and fellow widow, Ray from Calgary did).
This most southern west tip of Mexico is still an unspoiled Mexican gem. With two other main small towns and surrounded by beaches and bays, made for calm waters and great swimming in the ocean. On one of our four beaches on the property, you could just walk in and snorkel and see an array of beautiful fish. But don’t expect any pictures of that from me because I’m not an ocean-swimming girl (fear of the unknown of what’s below) and find staying on the beach twice as hot than at the pool.
The resort was beautiful and hugeeeee.The staff were all so friendly and accommodating, and it’s the first place in Mexico I’ve been to that actually accepted our most crappiest Canadian dollar for great value. The area was originally belonging to the government because it’s UNESCO Heritage land with tons of wildlife, such as many species of birds, vultures, Iguanas, and something that fled past us one night, kind of badger-y looking, and some very mischievous red breasted squirrels.
One has plenty of entertainment eating down at the Mexican breakfast restaurant, meters from the ocean, where I may add that the woman who made me vegetable omelettes daily as my main source of protein, was bueno. The birds and squirrels hang out there, just waiting for a patron to drop a crumb, or more often, get up from the table for a mere moment and leave their plate as a calling card for the crows. Twice I watched a fearless squirrel hop right on someone’s table, lift the sugarbowl lid off and seek out raw sugar packets – smart enough to know the difference between them and the sugar substitutes. 🙂
The rooms were housed in orange two-storey long bungalows with each long bungalow named as sections as clouds and stars. We were in Nimbus section. To get to these rooms situated on many, many acres of land, we had to call the lobby to send a golf cart/driver to go through the paved cement roads, pick us up through the jungle, and take us to wherever we were going as restaurants, lobby, and beaches were all spread out. At first I found it scary as they tore through what looked like a labyrinth through the jungle. I told my friend the way we sat in these 12- passenger golf carts reminded me of the Scrambler ride. 🙂 And then we’d walk some more stairs.
Between the stairs to everywhere or ramps (I still can’t decide which was more brutal), my quads are like steel and feeling like lead when I walk. One needs good walking legs to stay there, despite some wheelchair ramps. I literally felt like I was half mountain climbing every day and night. AND no air-con anywhere except one section of the lunch buffet restaurant and OUR room, which was kept at a frigid, max ice-box temperature by us from the moment we checked in. It became our salvation. Ceiling fans in lobby and anywhere else were always on slow mode and recirculating hot stagnant air, with zero breeze. LOL. Now if anyone knows me (like my gym girl pals do) they know I’ve got every kind of fan on or around me in Zumba class. Hot flashes are the gift that keeps giving.
Views from our room
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Our makeshift dryer because no balcony
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The theater had a nightly show, and a special Halloween night show and especially, on Day of the Dead show. Very talented dancers who my heart went out to in that open-air theater room, with zero breeze and not enough slow turning high ceiling fans as they were adorned in Mexican costumes, hats, and some in leather boots. We never lasted longer than ten minutes at the shows because it was so hot. One night the show began and the fans weren’t yet turned on. My friend chased down a waiter to tell someone to turn them on.
The daily temps were 40 celcius-ish. Climbing and walking and walking and sunning and swimming and tequila-ing really tested my endurance. I go to six gym classes a week here at home and remain the same weight no matter how hard I workout. I lost four pounds. LOL. The strenous workouts just to walk somewhere, the gallons of water daily and the severe lack of appetite in constant heat all playing a part. And that was just as well because I love Mexico but don’t care much for Mexican food, except fajitas, and I saw those there only once. This resort had five ‘specialty restaurants’. We were permitted to book four for the week. Three was enough for me. Let’s just say that Mediterranean food as I know it well, was not remotely Mediterranean. We plan B’d it over to the buffet, and thank goodness there was always something good on the grill at the back, especially the tadaki grilled tuna. Another night we were mystified to try out the Moroccan restaurant, that of course, wasn’t very Moroccan. If anyone has ever had tagine chicken done proper, it’s a sweet and savory slow-cooked stew in a tagine for hours and served in the same vessel. The version I received was in a soup bowl, two pieces of dried chicken cubes with couscous, no Moroccan ingredients, serviced with a piece of raw carrot and cucumber on top. They had the low tables and foot stools as chairs and many an overweight person looked pretty uncomfortable. I waited for my friend to eat her lamb dish, ( I do not like lamb). And then off to the buffet to get me some protein and steamed veggies, and yes French fries!
Moroccan/Mexican Tagine, Just no.
Onion soup much better at another restaurant
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Weather reports will tell you that in winter temps there, they CAN go down as low as 68F at night and typically always in the 80s, except July/August 96 F to over a hundred. So what the heck in November? My friend Ray informed me it was hotter in April and advised me to come back January/ February when it’s usually 85 – 90F, lol. I thought it was the cool time after summer. But let me tell you we arrived at 103 degrees F in stagnant air, zero breeze, and had to walk five long, sweaty minutes in our Canadian clothing on the tarmac to the customs and baggage in the very small and quaint airport. Our clothes were matted to us in mere moments. And the heat never left, and just got hotter daily. Not even at night was there any relief. No mercy. But there were some pockets I found where I could sometimes feel a faint, momentary breeze.
Some pics of the tarmac as we waited to depart to our plane:
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I went through two fans in one week, lol. And my right wrist has had quite a workout. The smaller fans weren’t cutting it, so I finally caved and purchased a lovely and large hand-fan in the hotel store for a painful value of $14 Canadian dollars, but I had to cave. And then it got hotter and the fan gave out on me. My friend said I should try and go back to the store for a new one. Gratis. I took her advice and they gave me another one that’s still good after two very heavy days and nights of use – especially when it was live Latin band night at the outside lobby bar full of Mexican tourists from Mexico City who came for their long weekend to celebrate Day of the Dead.
We were sitting outside in the still heat with my new pals from Calgary, Marlene and Fiona and some of their friends they met on the airport pickup bus. It was that night my friend and I had come back from the main town, Crucecita, where we hired our guy who drove us from the airport, for a very cheap fee (and nice tip) to take us around Crucecita where he took us to a chocolate mole and coffee tasting and then let us off at the boiling hot indoor market where he left us for a few hours and we did some Mezcal tasting, as we dripped with sweat. We were spent and had no wifi to call our buddy Philipe to come earlier to our meeting spot, and when we finally got back went down to lobby bar outside, we drank some straight up tequila and sucked on limes. We both came to the conclusion we preferred tequila to Mezcal. 🙂 We learned the difference between the two. Tequila is made from blue agave and Mezcal is made from green. Big difference in taste.
I know this post is getting long, so I’ll leave you with this little story about one night when the power went out. Yes, you heard me. So, after dinner one night, we decided to go back to our air-con room and call it a night around 9pm (considering we’re up at 6am daily). By the time we showered for the umpteenth time in a day, gabbed and got under the covers in our comfy beds in our morgue-like temperatured room, my friend was just dozing off and I was reading on my Kindle, when suddenly, all the power went out. That meant no wifi, no phone to lobby working, no lights, pitch darkness around, save for the tiny outside light in front of each room. AND, No air-con!
It was literally maybe five minutes before we were stifling. We thankfully, had just charged our phones and used our built-in flashlights, and in our Tshirt pyjamas, opened our door to see if it was just us or the whole block of rooms in our section. We opened the door and the heat smacked us in the face hard. We heard men’s voices below, so we hung over the balcony as I asked the one man if his power was out. The Spanish man had found a callbox somewhere near the ice-machine and phoned the desk to make them aware of what happened. We found the power outage was over the whole property, except the lobby and outside porch lights on generators. The Spanish man called three times, because the first two, he hung up on them when they wouldn’t give him an ETA on the power back on or say what happened. It took about an hour until it was restored. The next day in the pool, I was gabbing with my new pool buddy, Ray, who informed me it wasn’t just our resort, but every resort in the area had no power. Ray cracks a joke a minute and said nobody could say what happened the previous night, so he blamed it on Russia. 🙂
One more thing. There are mosquitos. You don’t see or feel them when they bite. But you sure do within hours. Some, like my friend, got zero bites. I, on the other hand, have a roadmap of welts on my back, arms, calves, and feet. Just a public service announcement for those who are magnets like me. 🙂
I’m sorry I spent hours trying to load some fun video shots here, but Windows was fighting me all the way.
So I’m home since late Sunday night, slept four hours and went to Monday morning Zumba class because my friend said, if she has to go, I have to go. Plus I missed my other friends. And they apparently haven’t finished the jack hammering on our balconies where I live, so I’m limited to write when I can hear myself think.
I found this non verbal video clip to give you a glimpse of the property we stayed at. Our room looked exactly like the video displayed. The staff told me Americans don’t come there because there are no direct flights and must connect in Mexico City. I’m not verifying this, just what I heard. Most people I pooled with were from Calgary or Edmonton, and only a young couple from Toronto with their toddler. The resort wasn’t too busy until the long weekend rolled around and became full with Mexican tourists as well.
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I hope you enjoyed my vacation, lol.
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