After a very long day of travel, I finally arrive in Mazatlan in the dark. Even though it’s late, it is still hot. In the taxi to the hotel for the first night, my first impressions are not too favorable… lots of traffic, screaming billboards everywhere, some dilapidated houses – everything is so different from Vancouver.
I keep an open mind. The taxi driver is very nice and turns up the air conditioning as I look like I’m hot. I am grateful, but not long after, I want to ask him to turn it down again… but how? He doesn’t speak English. I think about the few words that I had learned on various language apps at home – it all seems so insufficient now. I finally figure I could tell him that it’s a little cold now…”es un poco frío ahora”… well, I’m fairly certain that it isn’t actually correct Spanish, but he understands and happily obliges. I observe the driver crossing his heart in the catholic way several times… and I wonder why. Is it the traffic? Does it have something to do with the police cars that are sitting on the side of the road with flashing lights? Does it, God forbid, have anything to do with me? There is no way of finding out.
At the hotel reception, I get a plastic bracelet that identifies me as a guest of the hotel and makes me feel like a tagged piece of cattle. The hotel room is spacious and clean. The balcony looks out over the city, but around the corner it has a view of the beach and ocean. It is luxurious. I am tired from the very long travel day, so I just want to go to sleep… Just when I get into bed, the music revs up. It feels like my bed is right in the middle of a night club. It’s incredibly loud. I am exhausted and desperate to find some sleep, so I dig out some earplugs from my suitcase. The noise still there, but a little fainter, and I am finally able to fall asleep. As I wake up every few hours, I notice that the party goes on until around 5am.
After getting up in the morning I translate the house rules of the hotel. One of them reads, no noise or loud music are allowed except for the night. Hmmm, that’s different.
First thing I do is to go for a walk on the beach – it is lovely! Fine sand, warm water… very salty water – I have white patches on my legs afterwards. Different, but great. The waves are a bit too scary for me to dare going any further into the ocean.
The rest of the day I have some business to attend to: check out of the hotel, take over the rental apartment, sort out anything that isn’t working there… Everything is done in broken English and mostly Spanish through WhatsApp with the help of Google Translator. My resolve is growing – I have to learn to properly speak Spanish!