Damnit, Zoë, we forgot to pack the time machine!

Our last dinner in Acapulco was spent at the restaurant of the Hotel Flamingos, a storied establishment on one of the big bluffs on the east end of the city. It was once owned by Johnny Weismuller, of Tarzan fame, and was frequented by Hollywood stars who came down from Los Angeles by boat in the company of Weismuller and John Wayne. We ate fish and shrimp on a terrace overlooking the Pacific Ocean, and watching the sun set. The only problem was with the year: it was 2007, not 1967.

You see, Acapulco’s glory days are long over. The spectacular setting of the Bahía Santa Lucía is now marred by an overabundance of hotels and condos, many of them long past their prime. International tourism now goes to the Carribean resorts, like Cancún, and the domestic tourism that still favors Acapulco is not enough to keep the place shiny and vibrant. The tour guides, somewhat pathetically, still try to milk the old Hollywood cow, pointing out the places where Elizabeth Taylor got married and the like. As you can imagine, this makes little impression on our students, who have to have explained to them who these people were.

Now, you might ask why I would know about tour guides. Well, S@S organizes tours for the voyagers to take, some of them frankly recreational, and others supposedly educational. We’ve been on two. One was a fun thing, a tour of the Acapulco Botanical Gardens, along with a bird-watching trip on a little boat. The other was one of my FDP’s (Faculty-Directed Practicum), an excursion organized specifically to complement one of my classes. Zoë already wrote about it, the trip to the little villages outside of Acapulco. There’s not doubt that the students benefited from it. None had ever been to Latin America (except for Cancún, which doesn’t count), and so this was their first time seeing the rural and village life of a Latin American country. But the trip had been billed as “The Historical Route of the Nation.” The “historical” part consisted of a constant dribble of factoids issuing from the mouth of an ever-chattering tour guide. I found out later that, because this was my FDP, I could have arranged things to do the historical talk myself. I wish I had!

At least the guide was honest. He sugar-coated nothing, talking about governmental corruption, the drug trade, poverty, the flight of rural people to the city, unemployment, labor politics. Clearly relieved to get out of the touristy circuit, he seemed eager to tell us everything he knew and opined about his country, but that he normally doesn’t get to share with tourists. Back in the city, however, the schtick came back like a bad rash. Eva Gardner this, Frank Sinatra that. At least I’d heard the names … I don’t think they were any more familiar to the students than the names of Aztec gods.

Back at the Hotel Flamingo, the rooms seemed empty and the paint was peeling. We are the only diners in a restaurant that has clearly seen better days. As I write this on board the ship, somewhere off the coast of Central America, a lingering stomach ache leads me to revisit my meal there, wondering what it was that made me sick. I wonder if Johnny Weismuller’s piña coladas were made from purified water? I don’t think mine was. Next time I’m in Acapulco, I’m bringing my time machine so that he can make it for me himself.