We (my sister Jerre flew in from California to meet up) stayed at a little hotel (La Posada) at almost the end of the road at Las Brisas beach. Here's the view from my room window.

I sprung for the extra five bucks a night to get an air-conditioned room just in case, but it turned out the weather was just fine to go without it. Jerre and I had rooms next to each other. 50 bucks a night to be right on the beach, including a nice breakfast with fresh fruit, eggs, ham and toast. The airport is about 30 miles north of Manzanillo and during the taxi ride I saw huge orchards of mangoes, bananas, papaya, and who knows what else. The fruit we had every morning was probably on a tree the day before.

Here's the beach curving along toward Santiago Peninsula.

Here's one of the big grocery stores. Wal-Mart just built a super-center there also.

Had lunch at a beachside restaurant called La Palapa. Roughly translated "The umbrella". Here's a few pics.

We went to a little beach called La Boquita (I think). It's almost completely protected by the way the peninsula curves around and hardly ever has any waves at all. Having said that, Jerre and Madeline (a wonderful lady with her equally wonderful husband, Tom) were wading out and almost got swamped by a rogue wave that was a little over waist-high. Here they are beginning to wade out. Jerre has her head thrown back with a big grin on her face because she has no idea of the one wave of the day that is coming. You can see how still the sea is. Who knows where that one wave came from.

We spent the day lazing under one of these umbrellas and having restaurant-quality lunch from one of the little open air cookeries.

The sand had tiny little flakes of gold in it. So gold that you would swear that today was the day to get rich just scooping it up. Turns out it was Iron Pyrite, but it sure looked like the real thing. Guess that's why they call it "Fool's Gold". As the waves came in and out the gold just swirled. The picture just doesn't do it justice. We didn't go snorkling, but there were lots of people who were. They said the water was Caribbean clear with lots of beautiful tropical fish.

Here's me with Tom and Madeline, drying off after the day at the beach.

One morning, just behind the hotel, a bunch of people showed up and began to drag in a big fishing net. We had no idea it was even there. This went on for a few hours and when they finally drug it all in, there were lots of blow fish, some sea urchins and lots of small fish. It looked like everyone who helped drag in the line got to take some fish.

That's downtown Manzanillo in the background.

Jerre and I took part of a day to grab a bus and go downtown. Buses run all over the place all the time and you can go just about anywhere for 5 pesos (50 cents). Manzanillo is the Sailfish Capitol of the world and there is a huge monument to that effect downtown on the edge of the harbor.

That's me wearing the official uniform of the American tourist.

Here's a pic that gives some perspective to just how big this sculpture is, taken from a couple of blocks into the downtown area.

It was while we were sitting in the restaurant of Hotel Colonial, a beautiful old hotel that has been restored, eating and watching people and cars go by, that Jerre noticed that all the cars were nice clean late-model cars, there were no beggars anywhere, and even the taxi cabs were brand new. Here's a pic of the Hotel Colonial and one of the several stained-glass windows inside.

Thumb back through the pictures. There's not an old pickup held together with duct tape anywhere. There were no little kids begging and trying to sell you Chiclets on the sidewalks, and the only "workers" on the beaches were the occasional person selling jewelry. Seems that Manzanillo has low unemployment, there is a huge port operation there, a huge power generation plant, and the Mexican Army and the Navy both have their home bases there. I saw new car dealers for every make except Toyota and Toyota has a dealership in Colima, thirty miles away. Even on the 5 peso bus rides you don't get that icky feeling you get riding a bus in any American city. I'll admit it ... my only previous experience in Mexico has been at tourist traps or border towns, but this is a really nice place.

As we were walking along on the main road by the harbor, all of a sudden a police car came up behind us and hit the siren once. I turned and thought there must be an accident I didn't see, or maybe that's just what they do to get people to move along, but he was stopping traffic for a little impromptu parade. Here's a couple in costume with paper-mache heads. They looked ten feet tall.

Next came four or five little pickups, each with a load of people in the back handing out samples of some kind of fruit drink, and a beauty queen sitting on the hood.

It was all pretty cool, and a few minutes later when we had jumped on a bus to go back to the hotel, we passed the little trucks. The parade was over, the tall couple disappeared, but the trucks were going 30 miles an hour with the beauty queens still on the hood. Wish I had gotten a pic. Pretty girls, fancy dresses complete with beauty pageant sashes and tiaras sitting on the hoods of pickups going way faster than makes any sense. Viva la Mexico.

I'll be back, and I'll be back to stay.

Email me (Jack Akers, alive and well) at:

jackak10@gmail.com

Much thanks to Jerre for the more artistic and interesting of the pics on this page. She has a real eye for this stuff.