The laundry room in a Mexico hotel is usually in the damp, smelly parking garage deep underneath the building. This means your bathtowels will come in one of two scents – Oily Exhaust Fragrance, or Eau-de-Mildew. I prefer the mildew-scented ones, but will usually just air dry naked in front of the air-conditioner, otherwise I find myself sniffing at my arms all day as I check whether the bathtowel smell has evaporated yet
Winter in Mexico can be quite cold, but apparently us gringos from Arizona are the only ones who require heat in their hotel rooms. If you’re lucky, the thermostat in your room will kick in before the room temperature falls below freezing. When it does, be aware that the noisy, dusty, oily, dirt-covered heating unit which hasn’t been turned on since the previous winter will begin to emit a foul stench and fill the room with smoke at three in the …Read the Rest
If you like to drink coffee in your room, you should get up early and walk down to the local OXXO store (the Mexican version of 7-11) and get a to-go cup (don’t even think about room service, especially in the morning). If you do happen to have a room with a functioning coffeemaker, and the maid does remember to leave coffee packets for you at all, they will almost certainly be the wrong kind, and you will have to …Read the Rest
The maid will invariably forget to leave shampoo or toilet paper, which you will not discover until the next morning when you take a shower or have to do the necessary. This means you will end up calling down to the front desk at six in the morning and try to explain to the Spanish-speaking operator that you need to wash your hair or wipe your ass. Eventually she will give up talking to you and suddenly transfer your call down …Read the Rest
You should bring spare batteries for the remote control, otherwise you will have to get out of bed to change the channels because there are no new batteries in Mexico, anywhere. If you attempt to get the hotel to supply new batteries by disassembling the remote control, setting the batteries on the counter, and writing a note to the maid “baterias, por favor” she will simply reassemble the remote control with the old batteries and place it neatly in the …Read the Rest
The maids are very considerate, and will leave a Hershey Kiss on your pillow every day. Either eat the Hershey Kisses, or set them in a neat pile on the nightstand next to your bed. If you are not careful with the Hershey Kisses and pay close attention to their whereabouts, you will surely step on one in the middle of the night when you get up to pee, thus causing major damage to your instep
Imagine it – you’re walking down the trail to the local watering hole, minding your own business, thinking about that cute girl with the wicked dreadlocks and the small bone plate in her lower lip when WHAM! You suddenly find yourself on the ground, your shit scattered about, and you have a snorting mountain of grey bulging flesh and sharp pointy teeth laying down a bad case of whoop ass all over you. Huh? What’s up with that? If that great cosmic wheel …Read the Rest
9,900 dead in just three years. No, this isn’t Iraq, or Afghanistan, or some forgotten country in Africa. It’s sunny, fun-filled Mexico, home of the Drug Wars, and just a short drive from my home in Tucson (where Jo-Jo used to live, before he left to buy some California grass). And it’s also where I spend much of my time these days, seeing as my employer has two factories down here. Thanks for that. A few days ago, there was a …Read the Rest
Ding Dong! The Witch is dead. Which old Witch? The Wicked Witch! Ding Dong! The Wicked Witch is dead. Yeah, maybe it’s a bit lame. Lighten up, you can’t expect Hemingway every day (besides, I didn’t write it. See the disclaimer). But think about this: when the Flying Monkeys come, what will you do?
A few miles from my house, just down the highway from here and parked along the side of the road, is a bicycle. It’s a refurbished antique, painted spectral white all over (even the wheels) with a little basket on front and I think a little bell on the handlebars. It’s a mid-fifties or sixties job, really nicely restored, (not one of those retarded looking, turn-of-the-century contraptions with the five-foot-tall front wheel) and if I can get up the nerve, I’ll take a …Read the Rest