ADVENTURES IN MARGARITAVILLE
By Christine McAuliffe

I began traveling in Mexico when I was a single parent with two toddlers. We rode second class buses and trains and sought inexpensive hotels without pests. I guess I told my stories with too much vivid detail. Ten years later I was still trying to get David to Mexico. He believed my stories and the exagerated acccounts of banditos and federalis he heard as well. During that time most of our vacation time, money, and effort went into our 28 foot sailboat anyway. It was beginning to look like I’d never get beyond Nogales on annual trips to visit cousins in Tucson.

Life stress piled up on us and in 1994 I decided it was time we had a real vacation. One that didn’t involve planning, packing, unpacking, hoisting sails, folding sails, packing and unpacking and going back to work exhausted from a good time cruising the Puget Sound for 3 weeks. I informed David we were going to Mexico for two weeks. My compromise was that we’d do it his way. We’d go on a travel package and stay at a hotel, similar to ones he stayed at on business trips as a corporate manager for the largest lumber company in the U.S. He consented but insisted we keep it a low budget trip. That determined our destination.

My travel agent found an acceptable package with three hotels that varied the price moderately. She recommended the more expensive of the three, Hotel Playa Mazatlan. It was an excellent choice Mazatlan not being my preference as a destination I decided we’d squeeze the extra pennies to stay at what turned out to be a lovely, Mexican style beach front hotel as opposed to the US high rises further north. The warmth and graciousness of the Mexicans we encountered at the hotel both staff
and vacationing families as well as the twenty miles of white sand beaches, malecon, and market endeared Mazatlan to both of us.

I was excited to show David around and impress him with how well my English, with a Spanish accent and the few phrases I had memorized, could help. That wasn’t how it happened. Having been under tremendous stress for a year and a half, 24 hours after we landed I was rolling and groaning in the hotel’s firm bed with the calming view of the little used hidden back pool gripped with some kind of flu that caused all the usual gastrointestinal problems along with pain and weakness throughout my entire body. David was stranded.
Being the resourceful wanderer he is after attending to my immediate demands for help by making a trip to the hotel store and having room service deliver a gallon of manzilla tea, he abandoned me. After thoroughly exploring the hotel grounds and beach, making friends with the single moms and children in the surf, and watching a couple of margarita sunsets from the palapa bar he set out to explore the city. He explored about a half mile in both directions when he happened on the Joker with 2 for 1 margaritas all day and the Shrimp Factory with fresh boiled shrimp by the half kilo when he decided he’d found Nirvana.

By the time I recovered enough to leave the hotel he was talking about moving to Mazatlan when he retired, which he informed me, could be sooner than expected given the difference in the cost of living between Mexico and the U.S. Being a pragmatist, I took the attitude of, “I’ll believe it when I see it.”, but kept that thought to myself and encouraged him in his daydream figuring that was as close I’d I ever come to living in a foreign country in my adult life. Over the next two or three years we made several trips to Mazatlan. After the first two we found ourselves becoming quite irresponsible about going home, faxing work and the housesitter from the Hotel Playa on our next to the last scheduled day of vacation informing anyone who wanted to know that we weren’t coming home yet, we were taking another week of vacation. We were in love with Mexico.