On my way to Tenacatita Beach from La Manzanilla, my taxi driver asked me if I wanted to take a tour of the distillery. I thought he was taking me to a tequila tasting room, but when we approached the place, I saw the sign and I realized that that this was not a tequila tasting room but a Raicilla distillery (whatever that was). I learned later that Raicilla was a less processed, more organic relative of Tequila.

A docent by the name of Tony led the tour. Native of the New Mexican highlands, Tony was quite an interesting character – as a snowbird, he lived half of the year in Tenacatita, returning home to New Mexico during the hot summer months. Wearing a flowery Hawaiian shirt, with his dark swarthy looks he could have passed for an Indian chief, a Samoan or a Hawaiian. In fact, his mother was a Native American Indian and his father was a Spaniard.

Tony rattled off the history of Raicilla - it seems that the Native Aztec Indians were the originators of this potent concoction, and the Spanish conquistadors and their descendants pirated the basic recipe to jumpstart the large scale production of tequila. Tequila is produced in large factories and is highly processed - many additives are added to the final product. Raicilla on the other hand is a homemade product and consists of all natural ingredients - it has a taste similar to Tequila but is a lot smoother. For a long time it was considered moonshine or bootleg liquor; not too long ago, the production of Raicilla became a legitimate business and some of the former bootleggers in Jalisco formed a collective to produce and market it. According to Tony, drinking Raicilla gives a man a lot of power, strength and feelings of euphoria without any hangover. Very interesting - too bad I didn’t buy a bottle or two.

My most recent visit to the small Mexican resort town of La Manzanilla coincided with the tail end of the Semana Santa (Easter) Holidays. Predictably the beach was throbbing with activity as many Mexicans - especially from the nearby cities of Guadalajara and Colima – flock to this small resort during this holiday. From my shaded lounge chair, I watched an endless parade of beach vendors walk up and down the beach. Besides the traditional offerings such as hammocks, serapes and trinkets, there were vendors who specialized in tattoos or in mango and pineapple sticks. I got a real kick watching the vendors who were selling peanuts, pepitas (salted pumpkin seeds) and a variety of mixed confections from a small wheelbarrow. I would be remiss not to mention the ice cream vendors – to announce their presence as they stroll on the beach with their portable cart, these vendors usually play two catchy tunes on their tinny loudspeakers, the legendary Alley Cat or Herb Alpert’s Whipped Cream, a tune which became world famous as the Dating Game’s theme song.

Thank God, I didn’t come across any vendors who were asking people if they wanted their picture taken with an iguana. I understand that this is very common on the beach in Puerto Vallarta.

Most beach resorts that cater to tourists usually have their fair share of vendors. Basically there are two types of vendors - those that are mobile (they walk up and down the beach) and those that are stationary (they man a concession). Now, I’ve been to a variety of tropical beach resorts - Mexico, Caribbean, Costa Rica and Thailand – and from my experience, the mobile beach vendors can either be very aggressive and annoying or relatively harmless. In particular, the beach vendors in the Caribbean can be quite pushy as many of them will not take no for an answer - Jamaican beach vendors are notoriously persistent. To give you an idea of the variety of services and products that are available at your typical Caribbean resort, in Negril - a popular “hip” beach town on Jamaica’s north coast – the offerings range from water sports, hair braiding, necklaces and jewelry to woodcarvings, sex tonic, marijuana and full body massages. In contrast, the beach vendors in Mexico are for the most part very cordial and do not linger. If you let them know you’re not interested – this could be with just a shaking of the head or a simple no – they simply move on.

While swimming about a ¼ mile offshore at Tenacatita Beach in Mexico, I happened to observe through my goggles some small semi-transparent floating creatures that looked like minuscule jellyfish. Not coincidentally, I felt a mild burning sensation on my arms, legs and upper torso as I navigated through these waters – apparently these creatures stung me repeatedly. Getting back to shore, I examined myself - it seems that a rash (small red bumps) had developed in the affected areas, especially on my arms and legs. After telling Raquel at Posada Tonala what happened to me, she said that the Spanish word for these little creatures was Mal agua, which literally means ‘bad water’. She suggested that I squeeze lemon juice or apply human urine to the affected parts, but I only laughed at her suggestions and did nothing. By the next morning, the rash disappeared. Just another day at the beach…

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.

The last several days, I have been playing the part of a ‘beach bum’ and ‘hack journalist’ in La Manzanilla. To many gringos, this small Mexican beach town is Paradise. You’re probably wondering how’s the weather there? Well, it has been quite pleasant and a little on the cool side (at least for me). I would estimate the temperature to be no more than 80-82F (27C) during the day and somewhat breezy. At night, it feels like it is a bit on the chilly side with the temperature hovering around 65F (18C). I understand that it really heats up during the heart of the summer with the temperature getting into the mid 90’s with humidity. If you haven’t guessed it by now, I’m a person who loves tropical heat and I’m more comfortable with temperature readings in Fahrenheit.

La Manzanilla is located on Mexico’s Costa Alegre, a popular resort area on the Pacific Coast between Puerto Vallarta to the north and Manzanillo to the south.