Well worth seeing

Look at me - I'm well worth seeing!

Look at me

After the previous night’s 5am finish I woke in time to see the last couple of minutes of morning. I made my way downstairs. Chica the dog was outside on the terrace, her nose pressed against the patio door, tail wagging. There was no sign of Sim so I made myself a coffee, said morning to Chica and had a dip in the pool. The coffee and the cool water of the pool failed to fully wake me up and I had a little nap on one of the sunbeds by the side of the pool. As I drifted off I felt like I was having an out of body experience. I was looking down at myself on the sunbed and it was as though I was living someone else’s life. Here I was in a stunning villa overlooking apicturesque bay, napping by the pool in the Mexican sun. It certainly made a change from the Monday to Friday, 9 to 5 office hours I had become used to before I quit my job. And before any of my old colleagues comment 9 to 5 were my hours of attendance in the office, not necessarily the hours I actually did work.

I woke an hour or so later. Sim had surfaced and I made us a fresh pot of coffee. We sat out on the terrace with that morning after the night before feeling, both of us saying that we were getting too old for two late nights in a row. The day was really starting to warm up and we headed for the pool to cool down. We relaxed in the pool and chatted about the quality of the boys in the bar the previous night. I told Sim that they weren’t really my type. They all seemed so young. Sim didn’t seem to mind that as much as me. He said that it was sometimes difficult being a “foreigner” going out as the “locals” assume he is a wealthy sugar daddy (despite him being younger than me). It seems to get Sim no end of attention but sometimes makes him wary as to the motives behind it.

I felt really comfortable talking with Sim and we talked about feelings and past relationships, something that I am not normally very good at. I blame the fact that I am (a) a man and (b) from Yorkshire. After all, the start of the Yorkshireman’s motto is “’Ear all, see all, say nowt...”. As we talked about past relationships we both noted how gay men tend to remain friends with their exes in a way that straight people don’t. I had lost touch with a couple of exes over the years but there was only one that I had lost touch with on purpose. I still saw some of them fairly regularly too and we had become good friends.

I was so relaxed at Sim’s the days seemed to fly by and I couldn’t believe it when my last full day came round. We had spent a couple of days just chilling at the villa, swimming, writing, drinking, eating and watching scary movies. I was up fairly early and had breakfast with Sim who had a busy day of work ahead of him. He was up early to let in some men who had come round to cut the coconuts down from the palms around the villa. One guy would climb the tree, barefoot, with nothing to stop him from falling out then hack away with a huge machete & then lower the nuts to his colleague at the base of the palm. It was impressive to watch. After they had done all the trees I got a photo of myself holding a lovely bunch of coconuts. They were bloody heavy.

I’m well worth seeing!
Miriam headed over to the villa and the two of us went to the beach for the day. We settled ourselves in a couple of chairs under an umbrella. It was about 11am so I ordered a beer. The beach kept us entertained for the day. Aside from the beers, some amazing cerviche and guacamole, swimming in the clear blue waters there was plenty of people watching to be done. There was an older guy in a Speedo jogging along the beach. Not a pretty sight but not that unusual until he made his way back in front of us, this time jogging backwards. When he reached the end of the beach he jumped up on top of a large rock and proceeded to do something that looked like a cross between tai chi and the crane move from The Karate Kid. Miriam and I could hardly do anything for laughing. After his rock moves he swam out a little way to where a pontoon boat was moored up, climbed onboard & proceeded to do a series of push ups and hand stands before diving in from the top deck. He was clearly enjoying himself down on the beach and he kept us entertained for hours.

Dinner on the final evening was at a restaurant called Aquachile with Sim, Miriam, Jamie and Omar. We sat out on the terrace by the ocean. There was one other table of diners who were being entertained by a little mariachi band. I resisted the urge to join in singing when they started to play Guantanamera. It was another last meal on my trip where I was with a group of new friends who had gone out of their way to show me a great time and I felt a little sadness that I would soon be leaving.

The Manzanillo gang

My final morning I was up and packed early. Sim and I made our way to Margarita’s for a farewell breakfast. It seemed a fitting place to go as it had been the place we had had breakfast on my first morning in Manzanillo. Jamie and Miriam joined us for breakfast before the four of us headed over to the airport. I checked in for my flight and dropped off my case. The small airport had a few passengers milling about. They would all be on my flight, it was the only one leaving for several hours. We stood in the terminal building checking out the other passengers, working out my chance of being sat next to a hot guy on the flight. Practically nil. Still, it didn’t matter too much. I was off to Mexico City and then on to Cancun to be reunited for a week with my sister and Mother.

“Look at me- I'm well worth seeing!” 
Lyrics from Look at me from the musical The Witches of Eastwick

Let the dream begin

Let the dream begin, let your darker side give in

Let the dream begin

I was starting to get used to the Mexican pace of living at the stunning Villa Las Cumbres. The spreadsheet itinerary was soon forgotten about. Sim was a great host and kept asking me if I wanted to go do various trips and tours but I was content to chill round the pool, catch up on some rest and relaxation and drink gin. I think the previous four months was beginning to catch up on me, reminding me I was not as young as I once was. I’m nearly 34, which a friend kindly pointed out is “almost dead” in gay years.

Friday was a lazy day. I caught up with my dear friend Gail who updated me with the latest news regarding her family, my godson and godson-to-be. It was so nice to hear her voice. One of the things I am missing most while travelling is talking to my old friends back home. I’m making lots of new friends on my travels but it is nice to be able to speak to the old ones. After catching up with Gail I had a swim & a gin in the pool with Sim and Jamie. I figured that doing a couple of lengths of the pool between each sip of my G&T was a good way to exercise.

That evening Sim said we could check out the local gay bar. There was only one gay bar in Manzanillo and it only opened on a Friday and Saturday night. The place had only recently opened too. Sim explained that a lot of places had a tendency to open up for a couple of months and then close down, move to a different venue and re-open. Something to do with taxes I think. Anyway, our evening kicked off with some drinks at the house with Sim, Jamie & a friend of theirs, Omar. Jamie & Omar declined an invitation to join us so Sim and I went to get some food at a place called Caramelos. It was another place that you would probably not venture into unless you were local. Sim and I were the only non-Mexican people in there. The tacos were amazing and ridiculously cheap. Our whole bill for two huge tacos with beef and chorizo and two drinks came to about £5.

As we walked over to the gay bar Sim told me that Friday night was not a big night out for the locals. Most of them saved their partying until the Saturday night. The place was pretty empty with maybe two dozen people inside. We grabbed a table and a waiter came over to take our order. We got a bucket of beer – 10 bottles for the equivalent of £10. Despite the relative quietness of the venue there was still ample people watching. A couple of guys came in, dressed in jeans and t-shirts but with full on makeup on. Sim pointed out that they would be the drag acts who would be performing later.

Let your darker side give in

As we sat enjoying our beers and chatting about the various gay scenes I had been to on my trip the lights in the club all went out. The music was still blaring out and there was one strobe light providing a bit of illumination. The fuse had blown or someone needed to put a few more pesos in the meter. Nobody seemed too bothered by this turn of events. I guess they were used to it happening. It turned out that we were sat next to the fusebox as a couple of people came to check it out. In order to see what they were doing one of them produced a lighter, lit it and held it near the fusebox. I looked round to see where the nearest fire exit was, just in case. I’m no health and safety expert but checking a fusebox with a lighter didn’t seem like the safest thing to do. A couple of half made up drag queens came out of the room at the back to see what was going on. One tried valiantly to do his makeup while his friend used his phone to provide some light.

Eventually the lights came back on, the drag queens finished getting ready and put on a show. It was fairly amateurish in comparison to some of the shows I had seen but it was entertaining nonetheless. As the final act started a girl sat next to me got very excited about the song that was about to be performed. She turned and spoke to me in Spanish. I explained I was English and could only speak a bit of Spanish. It didn’t deter her. She switched to English explaining what the song was and who the original performer was. She tried to get me to get up and dance with her. I managed to avoid that despite her grabbing my hand & trying to pull me up on to the dancefloor. I mouthed “Help me” to Sim but he just sat there chuckling. Bastard. We took the opportunity of the crazy lady being on the dancefloor to head home. It was 3am after all.

Saturday was pretty much a repeat of the day before. The day was spent relaxing and swimming. The evening we had tacos again and then hit the gay bar. It was much busier than the previous evening and the music they played was great. It even took a few hours before they played an Adele song. Sim introduced me to a couple of his friends and we danced for a while. The club was very hot and loud. I didn’t even try speaking Spanish knowing that I would have little chance of hearing the response, let alone understanding it. Dancing with people you don’t really know and just smiling at them every now and again can be a very strange feeling. We finally left the club around 5am. Sim and his friends had a drink in the pool watching the sunrise. I went to bed.

“Let the dream begin, let your darker side give in” 
Lyrics from Music of the Night from the musical Phantom of the Opera

Almost paradise

Almost paradise, how could we ask for more?

Almost paradise

After sleeping soundly I woke to the sound of waves breaking on to the beach in the bay down below. It was a great way to start the day. I got myself ready and Sim took me to Margarita’s, a place down on the beach for breakfast. The breakfast was huge and a bargain at 60 pesos. The view over the beach and the Pacific made it even more of a deal. We were the only people in the place too. After breakfast we drove over to met Jamie, Sim’s ex (but still his best friend) and Sim’s cousin Miriam. I made plans to go to the beach with Miriam as Jamie was working and Sim wasn’t a beach person.

View at breakfast

Miriam and I made our way to the beach. It was the one I had seen from my bedroom balcony that morning. The beach was practically deserted which meant that we could relax without having to listen to screaming children or other beachgoers music blaring out. We settled ourselves down on to our beach towels. I covered myself in suntan cream. Despite it being the end of rainy season there were only a few clouds in the sky and it was a warm day. I asked Miriam how she was finding Mexico. She had moved down from Canada not long after Sim had moved over from the UK. She had quit her job in Toronto and taken the plunge to move somewhere warmer. As we chatted I realised that we had both gone through similar experiences. Both quitting good jobs to do something a little different, both leaving a place we had lived in for a long time and both leaving lots of friends behind. It was nice to be able to talk about how that felt with someone else who had been through it.

We went for a swim in the sea to cool down and the conversation turned to the topic of men. I said that Mexico was probably not going to be a great place for me as I prefer my guys on the tall side. Miriam said that when she first moved down she wasn’t that taken by the local Mexican men but that her tastes had evolved. Miriam is pretty and blonde so I am sure she has no shortage of admirers. After our swim we went back to our towels to lie in the sun and dry off. Miriam told me that the beach we were on was used in the film Ten with Dudley Moore and Bo Derek. It was used for the scene where she is running along the waters edge, braided hair and Dudley is running towards her. I suggested to Miriam that she should get her hair braided and we could recreate the scene. She didn’t seem to be up for it.

After a couple of hours of talking and tanning we were both ready to head back. We walked along the beach and then up the steep winding road back to Sim’s place. It was quite a hike and it made me realise that after 4 months of travelling, not running regularly and going out eating and drinking so much I was a little out of shape. By the time we got back to the house I was sweating like a whore in church so I had an ice-cold beer in an attempt to cool myself down. It did the trick and I followed it with a shower and a siesta before dinner.

After a good snooze I got up and got ready and was downstairs waiting five minutes before the time we had said we would go out for dinner. It was only my second day in Mexico so I had yet to learn about getting on to Mexican time. We headed out of the door around 45 minutes later. Sim, Miriam and I went into town for some dinner. We ate at El Vaquero. Despite the fact that we were sat outside on a balcony overlooking the street it was still really warm. I used it as an excuse to get through a couple of beers with dinner. The food was great, and it was nice to have something spicy. After dinner we headed to a nearby bar for a nightcap. As I scanned the menu I saw they had Amaretto, which is a favourite after dinner tipple of mine. The serving of Amaretto was huge – it came in a massive polystyrene cup filled with ice. There was enough Amaretto for Sim and I to share and have two rather large measures each. I slept well that night.

How could we ask for more?

The next morning we were up early. We had arranged the night before to meet up with Miriam and take a bus to a place a little way along the coast called Barra de Navidad. The journey took us about an hour. We took a first class bus which meant it didn’t stop en route to Barra and it had seats and windows. Miriam, Sim and I got off the bus in Barra and headed into the main street. It was a very small seaside town and the shops and restaurants were clustered on two small streets along the beach. Miriam had been to Barra before and told us of a good place to go get breakfast.

The remains of the restaurant

We headed towards where Miriam thought it was. We stopped outside a place, Miriam saying that she thought this was it but that it looked a lot different to when she was there. We sat at a table. We were the only people there. As we sat down Miriam said she now knew why the place looked different. The terrace we were sitting on was right next to the sea. Miriam said that she remembered sitting on the terrace when she visited before but the restaurant also had an inside area in the building next to it. The building was no longer there. Instead a pile of rubble marked where the restaurant had once stood. The kitchen was now located under a makeshift roof at the side of the terrace. A woman brought us a couple of menus and asked if we wanted a drink. We ordered coffee and juice. Sim asked (in Spanish) what had happened to the restaurant. The reply back was “It fell down”. No further explanation or details, simply “it fell down”. She seemed very laid back about the whole thing. It must be good to be that relaxed about your restaurant falling in to the sea.

After breakfast we walked along the sea front. We were asked by a guy if we wanted to hire a boat for the day, which we didn’t. We were then offered a ride over to a small island which he pointed out to us. It was in a sheltered spot where the river emptied into the sea. The island looked empty but there was a bar and restaurant over there. The price for the trip was pretty cheap so we took him up on his offer and made the short crossing once he had managed to get his boat to start. We made our way to where the bar was and settled in at a table. We ordered a round of drinks. The spot was paradise. It was as though we were on our own private island. There was nobody else over there other than the two woman staffing the bar and restaurant.

We made a half-hearted attempt to play volleyball as there was a net a little way out in the warm water, paddled, drank and chatted. I even managed a snooze on a sun lounger that I dragged down to the waters edge so that the waves could lap gently against my toes as I relaxed. I could quite easily have stayed there for days. At one point we were besieged by four children in a big canoe who picked a spot a few feet away from where I was laying out to land the canoe and run around screaming on the beach for a little while. I wasn’t impressed but a couple of glares at them and they soon got back in their canoe and paddled off.

When it was time for us to head back Sim asked the woman in the bar to call our boat man to let him know he should come and pick us back up. He soon arrived and we thanked him. Sim chatted to him about his boat and how much something similar might cost to buy. The man said he would get some prices for him and give him a call in a week. The bus back was time for me to get in another nap. I was definitely adjusting to the speed of life on the Mexican coast. The people all seemed very laid back and there was no sense of urgency in anything that they did. Sim and I grabbed some dinner on the way back to his and then it was a dip in the pool, a gin and tonic and an early night for me.

“Almost paradise, how could we ask for more?” 
Lyrics from Almost Paradise from the musical Footloose

Unpack the luggage

Unpack the luggage, la la la, hi-ho, the glamorous life!

Unpack the luggage

I arrived into Mexico City in the early hours having managed to get a bit of sleep on the plane overnight. When I booked my flights I had allowed myself enough of a buffer to deal with any delays before my flight to Manzanillo. It was a sensible option as the queue at Immigration was rather long and having finally cleared it I still had to wait to collect my suitcase. Having retrieved my luggage I made my way to check in for my next flight. I had lounge access so having cleared security I made my way to the lounge. As I signed in the man behind the desk asked where I was from. I told him. He told me I had a nice accent and nice eyes. I wasn’t sure what to say so smiled politely and went in to the lounge.

Several coffees and a couple of hours later I boarded a small plane for the short hop over to the Pacific coast. I was off to meet Sim, a friend of my Chicago gay who had heard about my travel plans well before I had set off and had contacted me to offer me a place to stay at his. We had exchanged emails before I had left and then sorted out me visiting once I was into my trip. Sim was an ex-pat from London who had recently made the move over to Mexico more permanent having spent quite a bit of time living over there. I knew we would get on well when he sent me a suggested itinerary for my stay in Manzanillo, broken down by day in an Excel spreadsheet. He also told me he had a bottle of gin waiting for me.

The flight was quick, the small plane was only about a third full. The views of the Pacific coast as we came in to land were spectacular. Manzanillo airport was tiny, probably one of the smallest I have ever been through. I got off the plane, walking down the steps and across the runway to the small terminal building. The ground crew already had the side of the plane open and were unloading our cases. I walked right by mine but didn’t think they would be happy with me taking it off the trailer. Once inside the building I headed to answer a quick call of nature. When I got back out the terminal building had emptied out and there were no other passengers in baggage reclaim. There was an information screen informing me that my luggage would be on carousel number 1. There was only 1 carousel. My case was the solitary piece of luggage on the belt. I collected it and headed out to get myself a taxi.

The glamorous life

The pool (without the Mexicans)

I sent Sim a message to let him know that I was on my way to from the airport. The reply I got made me laugh out loud, making my taxi driver look at me in his rear view mirror. The message read “There is gin and tonic in the fridge and I appear to have laid on two Mexican boys for your arrival”. A few messages later he assured me that he wasn’t some sort of playboy. It turned out that a couple of his friends had arrived earlier that morning to visit for the day. Within half an hour of arriving I was in the pool with a gin and tonic and two Mexicans. I was introduced to Sim’s friends, Cristopher & Alejandro. Cristopher explained that Alejandro didn’t speak any English. Suffering from a bit of jetlag and a couple of drinks I couldn’t cope with speaking Spanish so as Cristopher chatted to Sim, Alejandro and I just smiled at each other for a while.

Sim suggested that we should go get a late lunch so the four of us headed into downtown Manzanillo. Sim took us to a place that you probably wouldn’t notice was there despite it being on the main road. From the outside it didn’t look like anything special but we got a warm welcome from the owner who Sim obviously knew. It was a small town and as a tall white Brit I guess Sim stood out a little so people remembered him. I was told I should try the local seafood cocktail. I did and it was great. After lunch we dropped off Cristopher and Alejandro at the bus station so that they could catch a bus back home to Colima and we made our way back to the villa so I could have a siesta.

The view from my room over the bay

A couple of hours later there was a knock on my bedroom door which woke me. I had asked Sim to make sure I didn’t sleep late, knowing that if I did then I would run the risk of sleeping straight through and wake up at some ridiculously early hour in the morning. Sim asked if I wanted a gin. I declined, saying a coffee was probably better for me. We sat out on the back patio overlooking the pool and the bay as we drank our coffee. I had missed the sunset, Sim told me it had been stunning but there would be other nights for me to see for myself. Over coffee we had a really good chat, putting the world to rights. Sim said it was really nice to have another English person to speak to for a change. Despite having only met him that morning I felt really relaxed in his company, as though we had been friends for year. I didn’t say anything as I wasn’t sure if it would sound weird saying it aloud. I didn’t need to worry about it sounding weird as shortly after I had thought it Sim turned to me and said it felt like we had known each other a lot longer.

It got me to thinking that I had been immensely lucky with the people that I had met on my trip being so kind and welcoming. Staying with someone who I didn’t get on with could make for some interesting blog material but so far I had got on really well with all the gays I had stayed with. I figured that the sort of person to open up their home and life to a stranger on the recommendation of a friend would have to be an outgoing and friendly person to start with but there was still a risk that we wouldn’t get along. I wondered whether being gay gave me an advantage on this type of trip. A couple of different friends had said that they were envious of my trip and that they didn’t think they would be able to do a straight version. Long live the gay mafia!

“Unpack the luggage, la la la, hi-ho, the glamorous life!” 
Lyrics from The Glamorous Life from the musical A Little Night Music