I have a certain prejudice against Mexican beaches in August. It goes back to two horrible nights of unsuccessfully trying to sleep in a little tent on the seashore. The inside of the tent had literally been transformed into a sauna by the high heat and humidity, while outside, hordes of bloodthirsty mosquitoes hovered, just waiting for me to pull a zipper ... and to make matters worse, I couldn’t remove the rain fly because it was drizzling all night long. “Never again!” I swore.
Last week, however, my wife Susy and her sister talked me into it: “So what if it’s August! We´re not going camping. We will watch the surf from inside our air-conditioned room and stroll on the beach at night, sipping margaritas.” Ah, it sounded tempting and I gave in.
So, we made reservations at a hotel and headed for Manzanillo. I should mention that Manzanillo is a deep-water port on the coast of Colima, reachable from Guadalajara in three and a half hours via toll roads. Manzanillo is not La Manzanilla, a cute pueblito, also on the Pacific Coast, 150 kilometers south of Puerto Vallarta, nor is it La Manzanilla de la Paz, located high in the mountains near Mazamitla. No, Manzanillo is a busy city through which great numbers of freight containers pass day and night. It’s also the self-proclaimed Sailfish Capital of the World, apparently based on a catch of 336 sailfish during a tournament some 58 years ago.
We drove into Manzanillo and headed for the Marbella Hotel which had looked quite glamorous on their website, but turned out so unremarkable, we sailed right past it. “What? That was it? Do they even have a sign?”
After a glance at the exterior, Susy didn’t even want to get out of the car. I said, “The outside is dingy but maybe the rooms are gorgeous.”
Somehow, that did not cheer her up and, alas, after lugging our 472 bags (that’s how many they seemed to me) up to the second floor, we discovered that the room we had booked had all the charm (and smell) of a prison cell. Sigh.
Before abandoning the place, however, we had lunch at their restaurant, which features cuisine from Spain. To our surprise, the restaurant and its food were of the very best quality, although I must add that the prices were very high. We found the service impeccable, the beer ice cold and the Spanish tortilla (eggs and potatoes) marvelous. ¡Viva España!
Nevertheless, my lady companions would have none of the hotel, even though we had prepaid the room. So, we (meaning, mainly I) carried all those bags back down to the parking area and proceeded to the Best Western Luna Del Mar Hotel, which had a small irregularly shaped room available – “and we’ll put in an extra bed for John,” they said. OK, we toted the 472 bags in, via a bridge over a swimming pool, I might add.
The strange shape of the room resulted in the narrowest bathroom I’ve ever seen in my life. No one wearing extra-large could ever squeeze in there. A prominent sign warned us that the water was undrinkable.
I spent an hour trying to get the wi-fi to work, with no luck. My bed, along with the hairdryer, fan and iron we had requested didn’t arrive until we complained. “Best Western?” We quipped. “Worst Western is more like it.”
The next morning we and all those bags moved to a larger room whose long, skinny bathroom was one inch wider than the other one’s. From here the view of the bay was great and the wi-fi worked. We were happy.
I went for two walks. The first was along Avenida Lázaro Cárdenas which I assumed was the “main drag” for hotels and beaches. However, it was the middle of the day and beastly hot. Not a soul could I see in any direction on this wide boulevard. It was the high season, but almost every shop, hotel and restaurant I saw was out of business and, in most cases, the premises were crumbling to pieces. Along this beach front, Manzanillo’s tourism looked to me pretty close to dead and buried.
My second walk was along the beach in the evening and I must admit it was a most enjoyable experience. Although it was August, the temperature was pleasant and the humidity tolerable and not once did I see a single mosquito – a real blessing since chikungunya (a dengue-like disease) is now all the rage in other parts of Mexico. The water was nice and warm, the beach pristine and I could only see a handful of people out to watch the sun set on this spectacular bay. Meanwhile, gigantic cargo liners were silently floating by in an endless procession, nearly sinking under the weight of what appeared to be thousands of containers. These are obviously the real life blood of Manzanillo. Who needs tourists?
So, if you want to enjoy a picture perfect beach sans human beings and mosquitoes, head for Manzanillo while there are still a few hotels standing.