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 Travel & Outdoors | February 2007 
Mexican Surf Camp was Heaven; Resort was Hell
 Robin Summerfield - CanWest News
There's something about a beach holiday that makes people lose their heads. They do things they wouldn't dream of doing on home turf.
Streaking naked into the ocean with a video camera rolling comes to mind, as does hitting the bottle by 9 a.m.
My story is set in Mazatlan, Mexico - a hot destination for multitudes of Canadians escaping winter every year.
Last week, a friend and I went to a weeklong, learn-to-surf camp in a quiet fishing village an hour north of that popular Pacific coast city. For seven days there were no phones, no e-mail and no problemos. It was a true rural Mexico experience - spotty plumbing, stray dogs, lax personal hygiene (mine) and all.
We saw how locals really live, plus we got to hang out with surfer dudes and drink tequila.
It was a little glimpse of heaven. And then it was over.
On the eighth day we went to a beachside resort in Mazatlan and entered the seventh circle of hell - which, up until this point in my life, I had always thought was Wal-Mart.
Not any more.
All-inclusive art thy name.
The all-inclusive resort was like being on a cruise ship, or what I imagine a cruise ship would be like. It's all about over-eating and over-drinking. To put not too fine a point on it, the all-inclusive is a sanitized vacation with very little exposure to local culture.
But it did expose a different sort of culture.
The beachside hotel was teeming with North Americans and lots of Calgarians getting their freak on. And by freak on, I mean plowing through monster buffets, playing poolside darts and bingo, hitting the dinner "Broadway" shows and getting cornrows a la Bo Derek.
And they partied, partied, partied. With "free" beer and margaritas at the ready, the booze flowed. People blew off steam. And then at noon, they blew off some more.
Case in point: A 50-something woman from Michigan, there with her husband and a crew of friends, was "detoxifying" the evening we met at happy hour. She'd sworn off margaritas because the night before she got so drunk she had to be delivered to her hotel room in a wheelchair.
Wheelchair drinking - that's hardcore at any age.
Men wore novelty muscle shirts, including one that depicted 20 different sets of cartoon breasts like melons, grapes and balloons, which, while fairly informative, really isn't something you would wear back home. We also spotted a Viking hat, complete with horns, making the rounds on revellers' heads in the lobby lounge.
It was partying loud and partying proud.
For three days, we tried to figure out what kind of bizarre cosmic bubble we had been enveloped by. Who were these people and what must Mexicans think of North Americans?
Beyond the drinking, other vacation transgressions were easy to spot.
There were the fanny-packs-a-plenty, with grown men and women of all different shapes, sizes, ages and IQs strapping on stitched leather pouches around their guts.
Is it a purse? Is it a wallet? Ask yourself: in Canada, would you wear a fanny pack to the grocery store, the office or anywhere in public?
The answer is no. Yet, somehow, 4,200 kilometres south of here, a pouch strapped around a paunch somehow becomes the must-have accessory.
We also spotted three elderly women sporting earmuffs in 20 C-plus heat. And the award for the funniest sighting: An elderly Caucasian man sitting poolside took off his fake leg, complete with pulled-up sock and sandal, set it upright beside his lounge chair and used it to hold his water bottle. A makeshift ice bucket, of sorts.
At feeding time, the buffet served up tasteless fare like mac and cheese, hotdogs and french fries. Not an enchilada in sight. We endured two buffet meals before finding an a la carte restaurant included at the all-inclusive. Yet that restaurant - which served tasty, yet Americanized Mexican food - was always empty while the buffets were always packed.
Is this really North American tourist culture? What happens to North Americans - their sense of style and decorum - on vacation? Perhaps, we had little to begin with.
But before this dips into a nasty, insulting rant (arguably 15 paragraphs ago), let's move on to some positives.
I feel duty-bound to offer a few helpful travel tips.
- Pack your passport and unpack your earmuffs and fanny packs.
- Don't buy or wear novelty muscle shirts. Cornrows belong in farmers' fields, not festooning your distressed scalp.
- Socks don't go with sandals. And a fake leg is not an ice bucket.
Now go forth and have fun. Just don't tell anyone where you're from. |
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