Mikey’s Around-The-World 2024/2025 trip: Mexico City & Puerto Vallarta, Mexico
My real goal on this leg of the trip was to get to Puerto Vallarta, or PV, a small beach town on the west coast of Mexico and visit with friends Mark and Kirsten. And lie on the beach for a month. And eat good Mexican food. And buy some over-the-counter human growth hormone and narcotics – no, not really! Facebook – please don’t ban me!
The flights from St Louis to DFW and then to CDMX, as the locals call it, were good. I got on the plane at DFW using facial recognition ONLY! Wow. The highlight was flying right past the SpaceX factory and launch complex in Boca Chica Texas, where I had visited back in September 2021, I made a post about that a few weeks ago. At immigration in Mexico I scanned my passport, did another facial recognition and was in the country without speaking to a human. Wow. The only downside was a piece of paper was ejected saying I had to scan the barcode or go to the listed web site – or I would not be allowed out of Mexico! The printer was so jacked that the barcode wouldn’t scan and the web site was non-existent. Nice work guys!
A long taxi ride took me to my hotel. This is the point where I had a small heart palpitation looking at the listed prices. Everything here is shown with a ‘$’ sign, but it means Pesos, which are 20 to USD $1 now, so the math is easy. Come on guys, get yourself a ‘P’ or something… After checking, apparently it goes back to the Spanish Pieces of Eight, also called the Dollar, way back in the 16th Century. OK, you can keep it.
I stayed in a hotel next to El Bosque de Chapultepec. This is a plan 47 years in the making! When I took Spanish in high school, the textbook told stories about Juan and Elsa, and one of the things they did was go to Chapultepec Park! I changed some money and got a local 1 month SIM card. I walked to the park only to find it is absolutely massive, with the walkways lined with kiosks selling all manner of things from food to souvenirs. I found a quiet row of sit-down restaurants and had an order of pollo enchilada verde. It was so good I had another order. At night I took a long walk down Avenida de la Reforma to the Angels of Independence statue & roundabout. Groups of rollerbladers, cyclists and joggers are out tonight. 12,600 steps!
I intended to use the public transport, a network of buses and subways. Google Maps says they exist and it gives actual route numbers and schedules to get you from A to B. Sadly, somebody needs to tell Google that it’s all some tequila-fueled hallucination because while buses exist, they do not stop where shown, do not display the route numbers and do not run on any sort of schedule known to our version of space-time. Some subway stations and lines actually exist while others are under construction and others exist only in hopes and dreams. Trust me, use Uber – it’s cheap and gets you where you want to go.
The next evening I took a Viva Aerobus flight from CDMX to PV, the RyanAir of Mexico. I bought the “Smart” fare that lets me check in a 15kg bag and one carryon. My rollerbag was 14.7kg and the clerk looked disappointed that he couldn’t charge me extra. Seasoned traveler for the win!
I got a taxi to Mark & Kirsten’s apartment, which is built on the side of a 45 degree hill, about 5 blocks up from the sea. Not looking forward to making that walk home when I’m tired and drunk. The neighbours Martha and Norris were very helpful to get me settled in and had me over for dinner. They told me to get an Uber for $2 to bring me up the hill, everybody does it. The downside is all of the roads in town are literally cobblestones held loosely together with concrete. The result is a suspension-destroying and teeth-rattling ride wherever you go. The apartment building is great with fantastic views, a pool and a rooftop patio with a hot tub, gas grill and it’s covered in solar panels.
When Mark & Kirsten returned from America, I moved to a brightly-painted boutique hotel called Casa Colibrà Malecon just one block from the Malecon, or boardwalk, along the ocean. It’s in the flat part of town, no impediment to drunk walks home and with strong aircon and a TV mounted to the 4-poster bedframe. I picked up an HDMI cable and watched a lot of YouTube and movies off my laptop.
The next 3 weeks went very quickly, I kept myself busy doing things like taking the hop-on/hop-off bus all the way through the dense hilly forests to the south to a secluded beach cove village called Mismaloya where I had a chicken quesadilla and then a massage in a bamboo structure overlooking the beach. I walked the neighbourhoods up and down the town every day, including the Zona Romantica where I spotted a sign saying “Is it just me or is everything here Gay?” It turns out PV is one of the top LGBT* vacation places in the world. That explains the beautiful young shirtless muscular man who offered me a massage there one day. I turned him down but I did have several massages at other places around town. I walked up and down the Malecon that comes to life at night, with dozens of restaurants and bars and 3 huge clubs with thunka-thunka music that rattles your ribcage as you walk past. Chilling on the beach drinking margaritas, going on a booze cruise on a huge boat down the coast, and going to many, many bars to experience the local live music scene. These bands typically tour Canada in the summer and come back to PV for the winter. Very, very skilled musicians of all musical styles. And a literal wooden pirate ship shoots off fireworks just offshore at 8:45 every evening. Never a dull moment.
PV is a frequent stop for cruise ships, they pull right into the harbour, next to Canadian and Japanese warships looking for a short holiday too. It’s a mecca for Canadian snowbirds looking for a place to stay warm over the winter or move permanently. I met more Canadians here than I have in the last 10 years.
I also had a series of Zoom meetings and did financial and market analysis for an Angel investing group I’m in. We started with 74 candidate startups, currently narrowed the list down to 12. Ping me if you’re interested in becoming an Angel with an investment as low as $5K.
If I had to do it again, I’d come a month later as it’s hot and sticky as balls right now, and has occasional torrential rain. They say the weather changes dramatically in the next few weeks and that’s when the high season really kicks in. The aircon in my room was a godsend.
Oh and I picked up some generic Imitrex for my migraines, sweet sweet pain relief, and legal-ish.
In the middle of all of this I got the invitation from Tesla to attend the Robotaxi event in Los Angeles. I wrote that trip up in an earlier post and made preview and summary videos for it. I went up and back in a whirlwind 3 days, wow.
Some sad news as Drake Hogestyn, the brother of my high school friend Bart and son of my mom’s close friend Shug, passed away from pancreatic cancer. Drake was a fixture as John Black on ‘Days of Our Lives’ for 40 years, and as with all of the Hogestyn clan, was a super nice gregarious guy. Big hugs to his family.
At the end of my time here I flew back to CDMX, stayed for 1 night and then started the journey to Tokyo, via New York of all places, but hey that’s what the around-the-world ticket rules said I had to do. And that threatening piece of paper I got entering the country? Nobody cared. Ugh.
