Arriving in Acapulco

Zoë has already beaten me to the punch, giving you the blow-by-blow on our first couple of days here in Acapulco. So, I’ll just touch on some personal highlights.

My personal Acapulco adventure began at 4:30am on the morning of our arrival. The ship was stopped out in the Pacific, killing time so that we wouldn’t pull into port before our dock time. There was a storm to the north producing big swells, so the ship was rolling much more than usual. I was awoken by a phone call, from a rather worried Kid who thought we were going down. We should never have taken him to that museum exhibit about the Titanic! I went to his room, and found that what had woken him was not the motion, but the banging of the door of his little safe, which was unsecured. We locked it, I tucked him back in, and tried to go back to sleep.

No luck. What do you do on a ship at 4:30am? Why, email, of course! But there was no internet access . . . Perhaps the faculty lounge? It turned out that the faculty lounge, with is on the top deck and forward, was the perfect place from which to watch our arrival into port. It was still dark, although occasionally the distant lightning would illuminate the sea around us. I went out onto the deck, onto the closest thing I had encountered to a scene from Melville. The ship was moving now, and it was leaning to starboard (notice my increasing competence with nautical terms – look for a future post entirely in pirate language), with a strong wind cutting across the deck. A ribbon of lights across our horizon gave away our destination. A few groggy RA’s were there, taking pictures and drinking the ship’s regrettable coffee. None of us spoke. The wind, the darkness, the lightning, the waves, the distant port became for each of us a private sea adventure.

I thought about the Manila Galleon, about which I’d lectured the day before. This was the solitary ship that connected Acapulco with Manila, bringing Chinese luxury wares to colonial New Spain. The trip took three months or more, and death rates were as high as 50%. Thirst, starvation, and scurvy took their toll. I guess their buffet wasn’t as good as ours.

As the day dawned and the port approached, more people turned up on deck. A student came up to me, and told me she had been thinking of the Manila Galleon as well. Cameras flashed, and Acapulco slowly took shape. Lights became buildings. Dark shapes became mountains. We pulled into port just as the sun began to peek over the mountains that ring the port of Acapulco.

The ship docked, we went straight to the fort, and found out just how hot Acapulco really was. After days in the chill of the ship’s air-conditioning, none of us were ready for 90+ humid degrees. The museum at the fort (built 1615) was fascinating, and the ice cream at Sanborn’s shortly afterwards equally so. The Kid, I’m sure, would rave most about the waterpark later that day, though he might have a good word or two for Restaurant La Chilupeña, where we feasted on exquisite tacos, enchiladas, and pozole.

OK. That’s all for now. Next time I’ll write more about the S@S trips we’re taking here in town. One yesterday, the other tomorrow.