Acapulco is all you would imagine and more!

Pie de la Cuesta (Acapulco), Guerrero 28 March - 2 April 2009

We took our leave of Grandma Sharon and Molly Ann in Zihuatnejo, allowing them a week chill out at their own pace instead of having to operate at ours. We turned the nose of the van southward and began the arduous journey to the Acapulco area. The highway is tortuous, two lanes with endless topes. The lunch stop was at a roadside restaurant offering tacos of "barbacoa de chivo", which we only figured out later is stewed goat. And when they stew a goat, they stew the whole goat. There were bits of tripe and stuff with tubes coming out of it, which we obviously did not point out to the boys who were quite game about trying something new.We found or way to the Acapulco Trailer Park, located ironically enough in Pie de la Cuesta, which is about 8 km north of Acapulco on a narrow isthmus between the Pacific Ocean and the large Laguna de Coyuca. The town itself is quite nice, except for the fact that at night there is little to do- like Tenacatita, it is a day destination and the sidewalks roll up at sunset. We were the only rig in the park for the first two days, and by the end of our stay there were only two more.

The focus of the town is on the lagoon, where much fishing, water skiing and tourism goes on. It was neat to see the fresh water culture as a change to the beach culture. We spent the first day on a boat tour of the lagoon (M$100 each, ten dollars), which took us for lunch on an island at a restaurant that had three small crocs in a plastic tub. We then went to another restaurant on the barra that divides the lagoon from the ocean. The boys fished using their Mexican fishing rods (an aluminum beer can with a few meters of line and a hook) and got the Mexican kids jumping from the boat into the river where we were parked. Remy tried a coco preparado, which consists of a fresh coconut with gin, lime and sugar added to the coco water- delicious (and cheap- M$30, three dollars)! We missed some of the tour as the captain spoke Spanish rapidly, but we picked up on the high points, like the island of birds, the hacienda owned by one of the higher-ups at Modelo (one of the major breweries here) and the location where Rambo: First Blood Part II was filmed.

We took the scenic and treacherous  bus trip twice into Acapulco, which is a minimum one hour each way. We unfortunately picked "cruise ship" day for our first visit, so we were constantly being assailed by hawkers, hucksters and "walking tour guides" wanting some of our tourist dollars. 

We caught the famous cliff divers and were in awe as they each free climbed up from the water along the craggy cliffs to the perch they would eventually dive from. Some did a graceful swan dive and two did a toe curling double summersault. We discovered later that the price to watch the divers doubles to $7 us just before the tour buses arrive. The smart, independent tourists only had to pay $3.50!

 We made it to the Fuerte San Diego, which was an interesting museum trip, and Liz had a pedicure from a very masculine transexual. The boys have obviously become quite worldly as they didn't make any comments about the sexuality of this person until we were well away from the salon. Little did they know  though that the attractive owner of the shop, the one showing lots of cleavage and sporting long braids was a boy too!!

 The second day in town we spent at the Cici Water Park. This is one of the biggest any of us had ever seen.  It was great, as the park was not very busy and no lineups were to be had. Remy had a rough start to the day- the first ride down a slide saw him get slammed so hard near the end that it opened the skin on his scalp and made the lifeguard jump, and on the second ride he skimmed across the water of the landing pool and rode completely over top of Bowen, who was still trying to get out of his inner tube. We watched the Mexican dolphin show (not quite the same level of quality as that at San Diego), ate a bunch of junk food and played in the wave pool. Altogether a fun and adventurous day.

-Remy