Montezuma’s Revenge

We have met many wise folk in Mexico. A Canadian lady we lunched with in the fishing town of Teacapan offered the following sage advice:

“If you encounter a problem while travelling the byways of Mexico – and you will” she said, “don’t worry. Consider your predicament an opportunity.”

So that’s what we did when we both became so sick we couldn’t move.

First we arranged a police escort to see el doctor. I told a cop – in my best Spanglish – that “mi espousa was infirma”. After a futile effort at offering directions he gestured me to get back in the van and follow him through town to the doctor’s office.

Later we checked into the beautiful Hotel Torres del Fuerte in the interior Colonial city of El Fuerte. The temperature out on the street was well over 100°F but the cool shade under the courtyard portico was the perfect place to sit, read and obey grumbling intestines during our four days of recuperation.

We didn’t contract our dysentery in El Fuerte. I’m pretty sure we picked up the extra e. coli during a romantic dinner of fried fish and week-old “fresh” salsa on the beach in Lo de Marcos, near Puerta Vallarta.

The moral: don’t eat in a Mexican restaurant – no matter how spectacular the setting – if they haven’t served a customer for two days.

The r&r at Hotel Torres did us a world of good. We brushed up on our Spanish conjugations with Christina the hotel manager who nurtured us faithfully. She didn’t have much else to do. During our entire stay we were the only guests.

On the fifth day, despite our beautiful surroundings, morning felt like Groundhog Day.

So we packed up a kit and boarded the famous Copper Canyon train into the Sierra Madre Occidental mountains where we spent a couple of days with the indigenous Raramuri people – independent natives who forsake electricity and other modern conveniences.

On the way to the train station we spotted a small Datsun pickup truck loaded with eighteen human beings: four in the cab and fourteen more – including two bambinos – in the box.

Which reminds me of a joke.

“How do you get eighteen Mexicans into a pick-up truck?”
[Insert clever answer here]

Winning entry earns a beach-front restaurant salsa surprise.

Gerry