The plane from Chicago began its descent about 2,000 miles southwest of harsh reality, and the passengers suddenly understood where the sun had been hiding for most of the month.
We piled out of a charter operated by Private Jet Inc., and into the hot, jasmine/aircraft-fuel scent of the Zihuatanejo airport, obediently clutching our tourist cards.
When urban winter starts acting like a permanent guest, basically there are two ways to escape.
Some people plunge right into the very maw of it with effusive good cheer. They ski, ice skate, snowshoe, ride sleighs and admire white-capped mountains.
Earlier this winter, I did that, too, as you can see from the cover story this week. By taking off for Jackson Hole, Wyo., I was secretly hoping the reverse psychology would drive my least-favorite season away. The temperatures remained well below freezing, and the snow there held on tenaciously.
This latest escape, which I picked on a whim one February afternoon, is to chase down the rumors that warmer climates exist. I thawed out my credit card, called a travel agent and said, in effect, ”Get me outta here.”
Judging by the newspaper ads, my choice of routes would be plentiful:
Funjet, for example, offered an extensive menu of air-lodging packages ranging from Cancun to Orlando. So did the airlines, some hotel chains, cruise operators and packagers such as MTI Vacations, Carlson Travel Network and the Vacation Outlet at Filene`s Basement.
On that gray, dreary Thursday, I settled on a package deal from Apple Vacations that would depart the following Monday: A round-trip flight to Ixtapa-Zihuatanejo, three nights at the Sheraton Ixtapa, airport-hotel transfers and a welcoming cocktail party-all for $611, including the single-supplement fee.
Inspired by venture capital
Ordinarily, that sort of destination would not appeal to me. I knew Ixtapa had been crafted out of sand, concrete and venture capital only 17 years ago by a government desperate for tourist dollars. I had seen the place before, a spit of land with a crescent beach, allegedly selected by computer for its evenness of climate and its idyllic setting 140 miles northwest of Acapulco.
I remember driving its length and immediately fleeing in horror from its regiment of tall resort hotels, its bleak shopping mall and its cash-register ambience. But four miles down the road, I had encountered Zihuatanejo, a fishing village with unstudied charm and a couple of the most beautiful beaches in the world.
So, while my official itinerary said Ixtapa, Zihuatanejo tugged at my heart. I booked the trip realizing it would be a little like dating a brittle, glamorous beauty queen while secretly holding hands with her alluring and slightly mysterious older sister. I would sleep in Ixtapa but spend most of my hours in Zihuatanejo, crawling back only at bedtime, which in Mexico needn`t ever come.
I am not, by the way, a dedicated beach person, a class for which Ixtapa obviously was best suited. I like to take the sun standing up-on the golf course or on the streets of sleepy little towns where the people clean their sidewalks with brooms instead of snow shovels.
Apple Vacations seems bent on wrapping its tour packages in cellophane, so the tourist sees exactly what the trip will entail. A veteran traveler might feel uncomfortable with the grinning, blue-and-white uniformed Apple representatives waving their red Apple placards at the airports, loading passengers into buses with Apple signs stuck in the windshields, manning Apple information desks in the lobbies of resort hotels and making congenial little Apple speeches whenever Apple customers have been gathered in one spot.
Those who look back on their high school senior trip with fondness might enjoy the attention. I, however, found myself sinking into an unwelcome sense of childish dependence. In the Apple bus outside the Zihuatanejo airport that Monday afternoon, an Apple rep named Carlos handed out invitations to a welcome reception scheduled for a couple of hours hence, and I got the feeling he would be there taking attendance.
After checking into the Ixtapa Sheraton, buying local money (3,000 pesos to the dollar) and dumping the bag in my room (balcony facing the ocean, mini- bar, cable TV, adequate plumbing, inoffensive decor), I realized I was looking at my watch.
The Apple reception took place in a dark, barren meeting room off the Dorado Pacifico Hotel lobby. Immediately, I was glad I had come, because I wouldn`t have appreciated the atrium-style Sheraton lobby with its access to sunshine, pool and beach quite as much without this glimpse of the Dorado`s shadowy, foreboding architecture.
The lecture
Jay, another Apple representative, gave the assembled tourists a sprightly orientation lecture.
”Stay with bottled water, juices and soft drinks,” he warned. ”The banks give you a little better exchange rate than the hotel, but don`t bother saving the few cents, unless your idea of a good time is spending the morning standing in line.”
Jay`s colleague, Carlos, distributed a few sheets of paper listing restaurants in Ixtapa and Zihuatanejo, available excursions and various other tips. ”Last words of advice,” the handout concluded, ”ENJOY YOURSELF IN IXTAPA.”
Most of us Apple-ites strolled away, slurping the last of our free rum drinks and feeling sufficiently welcomed to Mexico.
A few people lingered to inquire about activities. They could take a guided city tour for $12; a guided country tour for $28; a boat ride to nearby Ixtapa Island for snorkeling and lunch, $18; a $130 day trip to Acapulco; a horseback-riding adventure at a ranch for $32; or a deep-sea fishing charter
($250 per four-person boatload).
The full agenda would have eaten up more than my allotted three days and still might have left me with the uneasy feeling that I hadn`t wandered far from the sheltering branches of the Apple tree.
A 500-peso bus ride into Zihuatanejo, however, immediately alters the experience. Loaded with off-duty resort workers and few resorters, the buses zoom past the last Ixtapa tennis courts and into another world.
Adios, `package`
The old fishing village does contain more restaurants, boutiques and souvenir shops than its 22,000 permanent residents could possibly need, but here, at last, the packaged sensation disappears and sub-tropical enchantment begins.
I found a table at one of the thatched huts maintained by restaurants that line the municipal beach and vowed to make settings like that my personal Apple Vacations headquarters. At Tata`s, the two-for-one daiquiri hour coincides with pelican-feeding time. The huge birds swarm over the bay like a lace canopy and take turns going into freefall when they spot a fish swimming below.
Another time, a meal at the adjoining Sea Food Los Paisanos, a table of jolly locals helped me maneuver through the Spanish-language menu until I decided on a superb fish salad and sublime fish tacos. The fish was red snapper, my waiter informed me through my new-found translators. I think it was lunchtime, but I hadn`t felt the need to consult my watch.
The sun started coming down rather abruptly for this laid-back land, so I took a 5,000-peso cab ride to the georgeous La Ropa beach and its low-key community of mountainside hotels with huge verandas. On one of them, which also held the main bar of the Hotel Catalina, I caught the spectacular sunset with swaying palms to filter the glare.
The hotel tenants in Zihuatanejo tend to make their own arrangements. They may be visitors themselves, but they have worked out situations that put them in touch with the culture and permit them to look beyond the plastic barriers of resort living.
A couple from upstate New York stayed in a spacious if slightly frayed room at the Sotovento for $50 a night per person, including two meals a day, plus all the charm and sunshine they could absorb. The gentleman from British Columbia assembled a six-week vacation and used as his base a $20-a-night room over the Garrobos restaurant downtown (where the splendid aroma of fish fillets searing in garlic marinade would gently nudge him out of his siestas). When I told those people my pillow was back at the Sheraton Ixtapa, they winced.
Still, there came a morning when I could walk off my gringo embarrassment on the deep green fairways of the 18-hole Campo de Golf Ixtapa, a magnificent Robert Trent Jones Jr.-designed layout. I caught up with Barbara Hanson and Joyce Karau on the first tee. The Grand Rapids, Minn., women, on a ”just us girls” vacation, picked up free Spanish lessons from the caddies, who also threw pebbles at sleeping iguanas so we could get a better look. Greens fees were $35, plus about $15 each for our guides and their refreshment-stand beers.
Perhaps the Campo de Golf is as artificial as anything else on Ixtapa, but it does provide sweeping vistas of the Sierra Madre mountains and cunningly positioned coconut palms. My post-round march hotelward, therefore, turned into a moment of sad decompression. Paseo de Ixtapa is a manicured boulevard lined on one side by hotels and on the other by shopping malls filled with familiar names-Bill Blass, Pierre Cardin, Ralph Lauren.
Visions of Northbrook
I covered the same route one evening with Steve and Laurie Marshall from Glencoe. They seemed a bit disappointed by everything in Ixtapa but the tropical air. ”This is a lot like summer in Northbrook,” Laurie said.
A bit of summer in February can`t be dismissed lightly, though, and even those who remained beached and never ventured into the more intriguing byways of Zihuatanejo could feel they had triumphed in a small way over the bone-chilling forces of nature.
Ixtapa could divert with restaurants and discos galore-several of which offer superb food (Bogart`s and Le Monmarte, for example), greet-the-dawn abandon (Carlos `n` Charlie`s) and fair prices. Nearly all of them cater to American tastes.
For a sample of the indigenous culture, the Ixtapa-entrenched could persuade themselves, all they had to do was put out $28 for the Sheraton`s Wednesday-night Fiesta Mexicana. By the scores, they gathered at dusk in a courtyard festooned with neon-tinted streamers. They sat around big tables with their plates of buffet-style enchiladas and chicken mole, drinking margaritas and watching a stage show that might have been faxed over intact from one of the cruise ships anchored in Zihuatanejo harbor.
Between the mariachi bands and Aztec dance troupes, an enthusiastic emcee goaded couples into screaming contests, balloon-breaking competitions and beer-chugging bouts. Then she brought on a trick-rope artist, and after that, she introduced a cock fight. ”They don`t kill each other,” she assured the audience. ”This is just a show.”
Judging by the smiles aboard the Apple charter flight the next day, a spurless Mexican resort experience in the dead of winter could be quite show enough.
Chicagoan Will Seymour told me: ”I just want to see and be seen and get on out of town for a few days. I like my trips short. Just a week ago, I went to my travel agent and said, `What have you got?` And this was it.”
All around him, people talked about sunsets, the elusive sailfish, the rattlesnakes on the trail, the 150-proof rum lurking in some pina coladas.
Seymour paid them no mind. With a contented expression, he took his seat and settled in for a long winter`s nap. Four hours long, to be precise.
