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Dec 26
It was quite a beautiful drive into Acapulco. The road starts by hugging the base of El Popo for many miles, then cutting across impressive gorges on mile-high bridges, followed by numerous dark tunnels as you approach the city. We had to wait a while at the hotel/condo for management to find the owner. All the paperwork was in order, but I guess I looked a little seedier than usual and they felt the need to scrutinize. We waited in a nearby palapa bar and watched the ocean. It was only a couple of hours till we met up with my friend Cecillio. The mezcal started flowing on the 25th floor of this apartment building, our home for the week, overlooking the bay of Acapulco.
Dec 27
It’s hot here in Acapulco. Our mornings start slowly, only delaying the inevitable heat bath. This is the week that all the Mexican tourists head for the beach. Walking the street is faster than driving. Hopping on a collectivo will get you out of the sun and into the bus drivers favorite music played at a volume that makes the tunes impossible to miss. Loud. It’s all part of the adventure.
This afternoon we met Cecillio at the Mercado Diana via one of the collectivos. Through the years, he and his family have had shops here and nearby. Now he just sells items to some of the various shops. He’s charming and knows everyone. I suspect he may have a girlfriend or two here. He led us through the maze of Mercado Diana, squeezing between vendors, t-shirts, hammocks and adult themed pottery. Then, there in a dim and crusty back corner was our destination. This ain’t no disco. This is Bar Gay.
Cacillio says “Hola!” 
Bar Gay is where a slew of vendors and their friends gather in the shade of the market to drink beer or tequila and make fun of each other’s manliness and sexual protuberance, or lack thereof. Women are invited to join in the castigating, all of which is harmless yet sophomoric. It’s middle school locker-room level maturity by 50 to 70 year-old men. The shop owner sits with his feet up collecting pesos from anyone who wants to purchase anything, get change or sit and have a beer. Regulars are the happy lawyer, a somewhat obstinate tour guide, a couple of guys that never said anything but tolerated the verbal abuse and Travolta, the guy whose Spanish I never could understand but insisted on dancing with Sharon to the 70’s disco music.
Bar Gay. Open from 3 to 7pm. The beer is very cold and super cheap. But at 7pm, it is no longer Bar Gay. At night the name changes to Jotos Bar. I don’t know why unless it’s just a change in mindset brought on by alcohol. Cecillio, Sharon and I exited Jotos Bar at a respectable 7:30pm.
Dec 28
We collectivo’d into the area near Mercado Diana. Sharon was in need of sunglasses. We haven’t seen a cloud yet, the sun is full and Sharon’s original sunglasses never made it back from our horse riding adventure. The heat proved to be a bit too much during this outing so we concurred that the cool of the apartment was where we would spend the afternoon. We did walk a bit on the beach and got into the apartment pool but none of that lasted very long.
About 5pm we made a guest appearance at Bar Gay. There were a couple of new drunk faces, like Chuckie, who was already quite inebriated and insisted on opening his beers with his teeth (which were few in number). Also, Alma who loved to attempt English with us but was not so good at handling her mescal. We didn’t stay too long, excusing ourselves to search for early evening churros.
Dec 29
Today we made it to the sprawling Mercado of Acapulco. It’s massive. It’s gritty. It’s smelly. You can find anything here. It’s in the old part of Acapulco where the tourists don’t go. From here we walked a mile or so to the Zocalo and from there, across the street to the Yacht Club of Acapulco. There were squads of local salesmen hocking tickets to the island of La Roqueta on the far edge of the bay. The tourists were snapping them up in a feeding frenzy then waited in line for bright orange life preservers and herded onto double decker shuttle boats. We watched all this from an adjacent palapa-covered restaurant. Time for beers and Huachinango.
Todays adventure left us several miles from our condo home. We mounted the first collective we could. It also proved to be the loudest. We were at a rave on wheels, Mexican electronic dance music at maximum volume. We fully expected foam to make the experience all-inclusive. If you don’t understand the reference, just click HERE.
Yet another first for us, we walked across the street from our condo to try a Japanese restaurant… in Mexico. It was one of those Teppanyaki style ones but the chef that showed had no show. He was new and being scrutinized by management. Don’t mess up in front of the gringos. And since we were the gringos, figuring out the menu was a whole new adventure for us. Translate Japanese into Spanish into English; the classic menu triple threat. The familiar words to us are what we ordered; sake, ensalada, res y camarones. It all was quite tasty but, let us not forget to mention that this turned out to be the absolute most expensive meal we’ve ever had in Mexico. Next time, check the price on the sake before ordering.
Dec 30
As I mentioned earlier, its hot here in Acapulco. One would think we were more conditioned to the heat since we’re from South Texas. No. Acapulco comes with a magnifying glass and we are meagre ants. If you don’t understand THAT reference, just click HERE. This was a day we just stayed put during the daylight hours.
We met up with Cecillio at the surprisingly popular Bar Gay. There were some more new faces. One absconded a cheap guitar from the bowels of the market and emerged serenading the gringos with corridos and a Vincente Fernandez tribute. I reciprocated by sharing a link to my documentary, El Corrido. Suddenly Sharon and I were authorities on the subject and more Mexican / less tourist than they had assumed. The lawyer, who became more and more passionate with each beer, draped us with a Mexican blanket and insisted we pose for pictures.
Cecillio loaded us into an old VW Bug taxi and barked instructions to the driver. It translated in English to, “Take them to La Laja. Come down from the mountain. It’s the house at the third speed bump”. True story.
Tonight is the annual Alvizuri Soccer Challenge. Several generations of this family meet at the La Laja public soccer field at 9pm. This year’s shirts are issued and the men suit-up. They are very serious. It’s the vatos jovenes vs los viejos; young vs old(er). The only difference I could tell was the older team drank more beer while playing. With the score tied at two – two, Los Viejos lost in a shoot-out. Pictures, more beer, then everyone retired to the family house for food.
Dec 31
The sum of the tortilla consumption of this trip weighed heavy on me, not mentally, literally. I was pretty “off” with the combination of my tortilla hangover and the Acapulco heat, so we rehabilitated all day in the cool air of the condo, had a much needed salad and a couple of really good naps.
We had set an alarm for 11:40pm so as to not sleep through midnight. A few hundred feet into the bay is a barge that we can see directly from our patio. At midnight it was synchronized with numerous other barges to celebrate the beginning of the New Year. Cheers!
Jan 1
Sharon whipped up a delightful, non-tortilla breakfast while simultaneously clearing out most of the refrigerator. Cecillio’s daughter, Abril, texted us with an invitation for a visit. We obliged. Interestingly enough, what she wrote and what my interpretation was did not match. What should have been a 25-minute bus ride became a multi-bus two-and-a-half-hour ordeal. We kept our cool. Our self-inflicted adventure resulted in a wonderful little fish fry fiesta on a patio by the waters of Caleta Beach at Cecillio Jr’s house.
The fish? A guajillo chile based marinade, slathered on a split open sea bass, cooked skin side down until it looks burnt. Brush the top with mayo then flip. The mayo all melts of but keeps the fish moist. Good thing because I abhor mayonnaise. It was muy sabroso!
Night came and Cecillio Jr escorted us a few thousand feet to the area to catch a bus back into town. We loaded onto the bus with about 150 other people. Evidently everyone was leaving Caleta Beach at the same time on a Saturday night. An hour and a half of sub-crawl speed, we gratefully exited the bus to say our goodbyes to the night’s attendees at Bar Gay. They insisted on more pictures.
Jan 2.
We said goodbye to Acapulco. What spare room we had before in the Element is now filled with hats and “things” that Cecillio wants us to bring back to the States. Some day soon we’ll meet up with Abril and she will sell these items in her store at The Oasis up in Austin.
Today’s drive is mostly a repeat of the drive into Acapulco, but the latter half will take us into the traffic jam the locals call Cuernavaca. Eventually we got onto a road to take us away from Cuernavaca and into the lush forest mountain reserve to the west. There, it’s a relaxing and lusciously curvy drive amongst the pines. There weren’t many cars and the few that I saw I was content to let them pass. Once down off the other side of the mountain, the pines were gone but the countryside still felt fresh and clean and fertile. There were lots of free-range cows just doing their thing amongst the long grasses along the road.
In this area, which we’ve been in a number of times, we’ve always noticed the roadside vendors. One popular item are the bundles of fresh flowers. Another is a bright green sausage. Sharon has always been inquisitive of the “chorizo verde”, so we picked out little roadside open-air café and tried it.
Welcome to El Gordo y Rosy where the sausage is green, the beer is cheap and your waiter is the nine-year-old boy that was just out in the road kicking a ball. The green sausage is grilled with Cecina, a wafer-thin beef, along with nopales, onions a couple of French fries. We threw on some hot sauce just to be safe and maybe kill a bug or two. A couple of these and a beer and we were quite content for the rest of our short drive to Toluca where we will stop for the night.
Jan 3
We stayed in the nicest little chain hotel called “City Suites”. It was clean and friendly. Our room, though quite large, could have been featured at an Ikea showroom. The most memorable part and certainly Sharon’s favorite were the window blinds. That’s right, just the blinds, crafted so well that 100% of the light was shut out. We thought we were getting an early, pre-sunrise start this morning till we opened the blinds. So I guess I should throw in that they had really great beds too because we slept like mummies.
