Fat as a ship...

As well as my Freighter Travel witterings the Observer also published my latest column last Sunday, which seems to have lost a little of it's edge in the editing due to my slightly flippant observations and criticisms of American tourists we encountered in Zihuatanejo. Judge for yourself by reading the unexpurgated version below and the online version on the Guardian website here.

23rd Observer column

We spent the festive season in Veracruz on the brown sand, crab-patrolled beaches of Mexico’s Caribbean coast. Our first journey of the New Year was a cross-country bus mission over to Zihuatanejo on the Pacific, a couple of hundred kilometres north of the tourist hordes undoubtedly ‘going loco’ down in Acapulco. In typical style we completely misjudged the duration of the first night-bus leg of the trip, arriving in Mexico City at 4.30am. Which was nice.

‘Zihua’ was our first real taste of a mass-market holiday resort in Mexico. It’s a former fishing village on a beautiful horseshoe bay of rocky, forested headlands and a series of sleek, sandy beaches. Bodily unself-conscious North Americans waddled along the shoreline whilst mahogany-skinned Mexican beach dudes, with deep tans the colour of expensive, antique furniture, touted various serenity rending activities. The air was thus filled with the squeals of parascending ‘vacationers’ and the nasal whine of waspish jet-skis.

We stayed in a hostel in town run by a Canadian: Mexican couple, lovely in all respects bar its location which gave us an unwanted insight into the (very) early morning activities of the market next door. I explained our slow travel trip to Gregg, the gringo half of the partnership. ‘You’re in the right country’ he winked. We’d also admired the lovely white sheet on our bed that had a striking red striped strip along one edge. Very Mexican we thought and asked Greg where we might buy some. Turned out the sheet was unique, he’d bought it in a second-hand shop in Vancouver. The label said ‘Made in Pakistan’. The bloody bed linen was better travelled than we were.

It was a slight shock to the system to suddenly be surrounded by so many Americans. On the distinctly un-touristy Veracruz coast the only guy we’d met from north of the border was sporting a Vietnam veterans cap and a sweat-shirt that read ‘I’m 100% in support of more gun control’. Which seemed fine until you saw the legend on the back ‘One shot, one kill – now that’s what I call control!’.

At a bar in Zihua Fi was accosted by a woman built like the hulking cruise ship moored in the middle of the bay, blighting the whole horizon. ‘Where in Scotland you from?’ barked barge-girl on hearing Fi’s accent. ‘Edinboro?’ she mispronounced whilst echoing Fi’s reply, before reeling off a list of places that were either incomprehensible or nowhere near ‘Auld Reekie’. ‘Row-Ther-Ham’s not in Scotland honey’ pointed out her equally distended husband who appeared to have wandered off the film-set of ‘Eraserhead’.

Extricating ourselves from this decidedly un-illuminating chat, fate decreed that we bump into them again later in town. Our friends, who were staying at the same hotel as the blimps, attempted to share a taxi back with them. The fallacy of this became clear as the pair of them heaved their well-fed forms onto the back-seat. ‘Sorry’ apologised Eraserhead, ‘there’s no room’. As the old joke goes; ‘How many Americans can you fit in a taxi?’ The answer, apparently, is two.

The following day we were enjoying lunch under the palapas of a beach restaurant. A large group of impressively turkey-wattle throated elderly Americans arrived and began downing Margarita’s at the adjacent table. A prowling Mariachi was recruited to serenade them with a couple of tunes, one old crone taking long, lingering and lascivious delight in stuffing pesos into the almost as mature musicians’ trouser pocket. The American gift of vocal projection gave us little choice but to eavesdrop on their conversation. ‘Your ass ain’t going to bed at five’, rang out one curiosity-inducing fragment, ‘I got plans for your ass later’. The mind it boggleth.

Cheap Yank-baiting aside there is a serious aspect to the influx of North American cruise ships to Zihua. At present passengers are ferried ashore by a flotilla of small boats but plans are afoot to build a proper cruise ship terminal with questionable benefits to the local economy and ecology of the bay. The jetty plans are generating stiff local opposition and wider national support, even bringing the enigmatic Zapatista leader Sub-Commandante Marcos to Zihua for a tub-thumping pipe and balaclava speech in solidarity. The stakes are high as the initiative threatens the finely balanced mix of local family owned businesses and limited corporate tourism that makes Zihua so attractive in the first place. There is and should be room for both. But maybe not in the same taxi.