The taxi fare from the Manzanillo Airport is 590 pesos (approximately 58USD) for the 45-minute ride to town. A little on the expensive side especially if you’re traveling alone. The return trip by taxi from La Manzanilla to the airport is only 400 pesos. That’s a lot easier on the pocketbook.

Mal Agua which in Spanish means bad water, also is a term that people use to refer to jellyfish in Mexico

If you hire a taxi from La Manzanilla to Tenacatita beach, the taxis will encourage you to take a tour at the Raicilla Distillery near Tenacatita. Actually it’s a very interesting tour and you get to sample several varieties of Raicilla, a mellower and home brewed version of tequila. Cost for a bottle is about 28USD

The ice cream vendors at la Manzanilla Beach are now diversifying their repertoire – in addition to playing the famous Alley Cat Tune as they stroll down the beach, they also play Whipped Cream, one of Herb Alpert’s more popular tunes. If you watched the old Dating Game show with Jim Lange back in the 1960s, you may also recollect that Whipped Cream was the theme song for the show.

In the small Mexican beach town of La Manzanilla, you’ll see many people watering the unpaved dirt streets with their garden hose in the downtown area. Why do they do this, you may ask? Answer - to keep the dust down. I don’t know this for a fact, but I’m pretty sure that this is a relatively common throughout Mexico. In light of the worldwide water shortage, this sort of practice is really a waste of water to say the least. There is some discussion around town of paving the streets in the downtown area and installing a proper drainage system, as it would conserve a lot of water.

Mornings get off to a sleepy crawl in the small Mexican beach town of La Manzanilla - about 8:00AM or so, some of the local ladies set up an impromptu juice stand in the center of town, just down the street from Posada Tonala. Equipped with some fairly powerful juicers, they do a very brisk business during the few hours that they are open. Their specialty is orange juice and carrot juice but they offer several other mixes as well - for a tall glass of orange juice the cost is 12 pesos (1.10USD) and for carrot juice, the price is 15 pesos (1.40USD). A good and healthy start to the morning!

After juicing up, I walk around the corner to El Girasol Bistro & Café for breakfast. Their specialty is shade grown organic coffee and some very tasty whole grain - home made muffins and cinnamon rolls. The other day I treated myself there to a large soy latte with organic coffee - the cost was 45 pesos, although somewhat expensive (comparable to Starbucks in terms of cost), I am supporting sustainable coffee cultivation in Mexico. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention they have free wifi for their customer, that’s another plus. More and more of the restaurants that cater to gringos have free Wifi access for their guests.

Typically I will spend a couple of hours at El Girasol - writing articles for this blog and surfing the Internet for the latest sports news, then I am off to beach The beach is pretty much deserted at this time, although during the 2 week Easter holidays it jams with Mexican tourists mostly from Guadalajara. There are about 12 open-air palapa restaurants on a 600-meter stretch of beach. Two of these restaurants rent the traditional beach lounge chairs (the ones that recline) with attached umbrella for 110 pesos (10.50USD) for the day although if you buy some food or drink, they will not charge you anything for use of their facilities. Fair enough! The rest of the restaurants have conventional plastic lounge tables (with attached sun umbrellas) and plastic deck chairs. Most of them won’t bother you if you sit at one of their tables and do not order any food or drink.

I usually hang out at a place called El Rincon. The guacamole here, served with chips and salsa is muy delicioso (30 pesos) - I wash it down with an ice cold Negro Modelo (15 pesos). The rest of the afternoon goes by pretty fast as I alternately do some reading, snooze, take a swim in the lukewarm ocean waters or watch a variety of beach vendors trickling by. The beach vendors come out in force on weekends during the season or on Mexican holidays, but during the weekdays, their numbers are few. Oops 6:30PM, time to head back to Posada Tonala and get ready for dinner. Just another day in paradise….
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El Girasol Bistro and Café recently had a change of ownership and will be closed for the duration of the offseason (till the end of October).

I am guessing that many of you are familiar with the song “Horse without a name” as popularized by the rock group, America, in the early 1970s. Well, today I was taking a day excursion from the small Mexican Beach town of La Manzanilla to Tenacatita Beach, about 30 Kilometers to the north. When approaching a small roadside bridge, I saw a sign along the highway “El Puente sin Nombre” - in English that translates to Bridge without a name. In Mexico, all bridges along the highway have names but this one was nameless like the horse in the famous song. I made a remark in Spanish to the Taxi driver about this Bridge (and horse) without names and we shared a good laugh.

Back in the 1970’s, Hughes Air West (which is now defunct) had a special promotion to Mexico called Paradise for Pesos. Mexico was a very inexpensive destination in those days. Many Gringos from the USA and Canada flocked to Mexico as the dollar had a lot of buying power – hence the phrase Paradise for Pesos.

Flash forward to 2008, the cost of paradise has gone up. Although Mexico is no longer cheap and the dollar is no longer king, a holiday in Mexico is still relatively affordable compared to one of USA’s vacation playgrounds – especially when considering one of Mexico’s many all-inclusive resorts.

To give you an idea of the cost of a holiday in one of Mexico’s small beach towns, I have been keeping a log of my daily expenses in La Manzanilla aka My Secret Paradise.

• Hotel expense, Single occupancy at Posada Tonala (2 star hotel)…… $29
• Eating expenses (Breakfast, snacks and dinner)… $20
• Cerveza, drinks and snacks…. $6

Total daily expense…. $55USD

FYI, a Taxi from Manzanillo Airport to town (about a 45 minute ride) is $59 or $118 R/T

So, my daily expense is roughly $55USD day (give or take a peso). Now if you’re a heavy drinker (my average is about less than one alcoholic beverage per day), you will be spending more money of course. My hotel by the way - Posada Tonala - is the best hotel in town and an excellent value- clean, friendly, secure and comfortable. Highly recommended.

Bottom Line -while Mexico may no longer be Paradise for Pesos, it is still an affordable destination.