At the end of our tour of the Hacienda Doña Engracia Distillery a couple of years ago, Jeanna, Terri, and I bought “Mexican” margaritas, each consisting of a generous shot of tequila poured straight from the bottle over ice, then filled to the brim with Sprite. So you can imagine my surprise when Stephanie Elizondo Griest
One of my favorite contemporary writers is my daughter, Reiley, who recently had to write about a “trip.” What follows is HER version of our Mexican Riviera cruise last fall. I know it’s long, but SO worth it 
.
Last October my mom told us that my brothers and I would all be going on a cruise to Mexico. She also told us that our aunt Jeanna, aunt Terri, grandpa, and Nancy would be coming too. We were all so excited because we had never been on a cruise.
The day before the cruise, we picked up our aunt Terri at the airport in Ontario. After we picked her up, we headed home to start packing. As soon as we got home, my older brother Quentin and I got down suitcases or duffle bags from the rafters in the garage. Then, because we hadn’t used them in awhile, we had to clean them. Actually, my little brother Parker cleaned them while we get our clothes and other stuff we needed for our weeklong trip. As soon as all of the bags were dry, we packed. My mom and aunt still hadn’t packed. Because my mom and aunt weren’t done packing , we had to watch my little sister Olivia and make dinner. After dinner, I went back upstairs because I noticed my bag was too heavy, so I had to take stuff out. Then finally we were all done packing and we went to bed at 10:00p.m.
On the morning of he cruise we had to wake up at 6:00 am. I was so so excited! Finally it was the day of the cruise. We ate breakfast. We all had a fast breakfast. While we were eating, my dad packed up all of he bags in the back of our car. In total, there were more than 10 bags. On the way to the , my brothers and I played our DS’s and my older brother and I listened to his Ipod. Before we got to the port, we had to go pick up my aunt Jeanna at a parking lot a few streets up. When we got there, it was only about 10:00 am. and everybody was getting off the boats so we had to turn around. My mom got some fries at Jack in the Box while we waited. Then my grandpa called us asked us where we were. We said we had to wait because people were getting off the ship. He said just tell them that you have to pick up someone and it worked.
Right before my dad dropped us off, my brother reminded us to get our swimsuits because our bags wouldn’t get to our rooms right away and we wanted to swim. When my dad dropped us off, there was this guy picking up luggage. We didn’t know if we should give it to him because there were other ships and he could be taking them to a different ship. We asked our grandpa and he said to give them to the luggage guy and tell him what ship to take them to.
When we saw how long the check in line, was we thought it would take forever, but it didn’t. My older brother stood in line, then I did, then we all did. We finally got to the front of the line. All we had to do was show them a paper, then we got to the check in. At the check in, they had to take a picture of you. The only way we got to have two rooms is that we told them that my two aunts and I would be sharing a room and my mom and brothers would be sharing another room. The reason we did that is because there has to be at least one adult in each room. But the adults were actually going to share a room and we kids were going to share a room. When they gave us our boarding cards, one of the corners got cut off so we could not have alcohol. My brother thought it was unfair because I had the only card to our room (his card actually opened my mom and aunts’ room). After that, we went through security. Then we got on a bridge that goes across the ocean a few feet. Then we are finally on the boat.
When we got on to the boat, I was so excited. My mom said each one of us had to have a buddy. My brother Quentin got my aunt Terri, and my brother Parker got my mom, and I got my aunt Jeanna. The boat was really huge. The first thing we had to do was to look for my grandpa and Nancy. We found him. His cabin was on the 12th deck out of 14. When we saw them, my brothers and I dropped our backpacks with them, and then we asked where the food was and got some lunch. After we were done with lunch, our grandpa told us that there is free ice cream on the ship. So we went to go get some, and then we went back to where we got lunch and there was even more ice cream!The cool thing is that we got to bring all of our dishes to our cabin\room and the stewards would pick them up.
After we came back from getting ice cream, we asked our mom if we could go swimming she let us only if our grandpa would to watch us. Our grandpa said, “Yes.” My mom and aunts went to go get a membership at the spa. So we went to get our swimsuits on in the bathroom. The girls’ bathroom is on the side with the ocean and the guys’ wasn’t. HA HA. We only went swimming for about a half hour because my grandpa had to go somewhere. When we got out, my older brother and I noticed that there was current. The water in the pool was from the ocean but it was clean. By the time we got out it was about 2:00 pm.
We saw our aunts on the way down stairs to our floor: the 5th floor. We followed my aunts to their room. In the room, my mom was resting because at 3:00 we had a life jacket drill. After they told us that, we wanted to see our room, so we did. There were three beds. One of the beds was just a normal bed with no bunk. I got to sleep on that one. And my two brothers shared the bunk bed. There was a small closet, some dressers, a coffee pot, and the bathroom was really small.
After the drill, my mom wanted us to go to Versailles. All of the restraunts besides 2 of them were all free. After the lifeboat drill, we went dinner and my aunt Terri asked us “Don’t you feel the boat rocking?” After she said that, we all started to get dizzy and had to take motion sickness pills. Then my grandpa said, “If you go inside of the bathroom you can see the toilet water moving.”
Every day on the ship, we did the same things. We played in the pool, went to see our mom and aunts at the spa, and ate a lot (especially ice cream). Also, every night there were two shows and some activities. Some people slept during the day and were up at night. We went to bed at 10:00pm. My little brother got scared, so he slept with my mom and aunts in their room for the week. The stewards brought a pull out bed for him to sleep on.
On the last day, we got off the ship. We could get off any time between 7:00am and 1:00pm. We got off at 8:00am. It was freezing. We got breakfast before we got off the ship. I took 5 packets of hot chocolate and 10 whole grain muffins. After we ate, we went back to our rooms to pack. Then our mom and aunts came to our room to make sure we didn’t leave anything. Then we had to stand in a line that was from the 5th story to the 6th floor. Nobody offered to help with my extremely heavy bag that everyone put their stuff in because there was room. Finally, we got to the top. I made it because some guy helped me with my bag. Then my aunt Terri got stuck so they wouldn’t let her off the boat. I did not know why. So she gave me her bag. Another heavy bag. Great! I really needed that. I mean my bag was already heavy enough. We had to show a lady our passport and paperwork. Because I was the last one out of our little group, my mom had to wait for me and show the lady my passport. Also, my mom took my aunt’s bag for me (thank goodness).
When we got to the little waiting area, we saw a baby owl. My mom let us use her camera to take pictures. While we were waiting, my aunts got really hungry. They asked when my dad was going to get there because they wanted starbucks. Then I told them about my muffins. So then they started to yell at me because they wanted them. So I gave 1 to everyone and then I had 5 left. After we were done eating, my dad was still not there, so I took more pictures and I rested on my suitcase.
Finally, my dad was there. He packed up our stuff in the back of the car. I still wish I could go on another cruise because there were a lot of things I couldn’t do because my brothers wouldn’t let me. Last, on the way home, we told my dad every thing.
“On my first cruise to Mexico, I liked almost everything. It was hot, though. The first two cities [Cabo San Lucas and Mazatlan] were burning hot like my head was in an oven for 20 minutes! The thing I liked least about my cruise was our trip to Mazatlan because it was burning hot. And my head was on fire. And it smelled like fish in Mazatlan.”
Parker’s Essay
Yeah, it WAS hot and sticky in Mexico in October! But my sisters and I LOVED getting OFF the ship anyway. Even in Mazatlan, where we spent nearly our entire day there on benches in the back of a pick-up truck along the coast between the port and the “Golden Zone” of resorts, pristine beaches, pools and waterfalls, high-end shopping, and complimentary sodas and margaritas. Unfortunately – especially for Parker, who just wanted to go in the water – we couldn’t get in without a credit card, and all three of us had opted to go ashore with just identification and a little cash.
Cabo San Lucas was much better – nowhere near as hot, in part because we took a BOAT tour that day, and it was BEAUTIFUL, and free of fishy smells. Cabo San Lucas is Baja California’s largest communities and one that is becoming a popular vacation spot for many Americans. We joined our Dad and Nancy for beers and margaritas on a boat tour narrated by French ecologist Jacques Cousteau. Our only disappointment, other than the HORRIBLE trip to a CLOSED ITALIAN restaurant after the tour (we were supposed to enjoy the view while literally MELTING?!), was that we didn’t see much more of Cabo from the boat than we could from our seats in the ship’s spa 
.
“In October, I went on my first cruise,” Parker begins his essay on his experience on the Norwegian Star. He continues, ”I went with Jeanna, Terri, Quentin, Reiley, and my Mom. Also, my Grandpa and Nancy came.”
It was actually the first cruise for all of us, except Jeanna, who joined my dad and his long-time companion Nancy. What we three sisters (yes, I’m hearing this line to the tune of “We Three Kings”; must be the season) regarded as an opportunity to spend time with our father, Parker and his older siblings saw as grand adventure.
Parker concludes the first paragraph of his essay, “We went to Mexico. And it was fun.”
I’d have to agree, it was fun – even considering the cramped room and excruciatingly monotonous final two days at sea. In fact, that tiny stateroom was the site of a great deal of our fun. I think the peak moment was our competition to find out who could get out of the bunk bed most gracefully, in the dark. While the kids fought over who would get the top bunk (Quentin, the oldest won out), we jockeyed to get one of the other two beds (I got the single bed; Jeanna took the bottom bunk; and, you guessed it, “baby sister” Terri was stuck with the top bunk). Unfortunately for all of us, her route off the bed in the wee hours of the morning when she woke up involved falling over the railing, squealing, and stepping on toes, and heads, as the case may be.
So she challenged us to a contest, which she lost. The “most graceful,” not to mention quietest and likely also safest, technique proved to be climbing off the HEAD rather than the FOOT of the bed onto the window ledge and then stepping between the bottom bunk and Parker’s bed (in the end, he was afraid to sleep down the hall with the kids, and ended up on the trundle between us). The ladder? Oh, yeah, we had to move that in order to see the t.v., and then used it as a clothes rack.
Parker and his sibs hardly spent any time in THEIR room, it seems. In fact, when they did “crash” to watch t.v., snack, and/or chat, it was in OUR room! Everything (else) the kids liked about the cruise was outside of our staterooms. According to Parker, “The things [he] liked best…were the pool [the slides, actually], the food [especially the Italian], and the magician [Murray, who gave us the creeps].”
As for us, while we did SEE the pool, we never went in it – way too hot, sticky, crowded, and loud on that deck! We did find the adults-only spa, though, on the first day. Our first trip followed our hot stone massages; thereafter, we went daily – to shower after working out in the adjacent fitness room, or simply to relax after the exhausting shore excursions. In addition to a lap pool, where Jeanna attempted to teach us to freestyle with correct form, and TWO jacuzzis, there were lounge chairs that provided ocean views from behind tinted windows (no humidity and no need for sunscreen), and the “drink of the day” was delivered to us poolside.
The food? Let’s just say that aside from the “fine” dining, which we had to pay for, we’d advise packing snacks. Although the large quantity of hot dogs Parker devoured on our trip suggest otherwise, he says the kids’ favorite restaurant was La Trattoria. It was okay; the pizza and pasta were made to order and the staff “spoiled” the kids. One actually treked six flights down and back up – twice – to bring chocolate milk. But the Tex-Mex place – Endless Summer – was easily the most appreciated. We were on a Mexican Riviera cruise, and there was not a tortilla to be found, so we were thrilled to find somewhere that served chips and salsa with COMPLIMENTARY margaritas. And Cagney’s Steak House had the best food – more steak than we could eat, fresh asparagus, and desserts to die for!
I already mentioned that the magician was creepy, but the kids loved him – as did a whole lot of other passengers who filled the theater the ONE night we went (I think the kids caught EVERY show!) But they also couldn’t stop laughing over the “fountains” sketch. You know, the one where the members of the cast dress up in togas, pose with pitchers of water after taking a big mouthful, and then spit on each other in turn. Yeah, gross. They were busting up!
Oddly enough, the things we liked best, other than the spa , were among those Parker, at least, could have given a miss. More on that in another post.
THIS post is about the TEQUILA.
In the spirit of opting for an educational excursion that promised to include air conditioned transport – we learned it is REALLY HOT & STICKY in Southern Mexico in October – and “samples,” we embarked on the “Town, Country, & Tequila” Tour. Learning how tequila is made started while we were still in the “country,” when our guide – Arturo – pointed out a blue agave plant in its natural environment. (Mexico’s government requires that “tequila” be made from blue agave grown and harvested only in the Mexican states of Jalisco, Guanajuato, Michoacan, Nayarit or Tamaulipas; we were just outside Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco.) The remainder of our tour took place at the Hacienda Doña Engracia.
The Hacienda Doña Engracia Distillery, Restaurant and Bar is one of the nicest working haciendas in Mexico: http://www.haciendadonaengracia.com/aboutus.htm. A hacienda is a large estate or land holding that originated with the land grant system used by Spanish conquistadores. Comparable in size and function to an American plantation, Mexico’s haciendas usually focused on the production of a single product. Doña Engracia has produced 100% blue agave tequila since 1927, when Senor Jesus Ramirez began supplying this distilled spirit to the Cristero Rebels. With few obvious modernizations, Doña Engracia continues to produce tequila just the way it did then – over 80 years ago.
Although the details of the tour itself are available online: http://www.haciendadonaengracia.com/tequilatour.htm, the site does not provide pictures; we’ve added our photos to enhance YOUR experience.
The process of making tequila begins with a ripe blue agave plant, which requires at least eight years. The jimador uses a long sharp blade, called a coa, to strip the leaves from the agave, leaving only the core or “piña.”
These “pineapples” typically weigh 40 – 80. The piñas are taken to the distillery and roasted for eight hours, and then cooled to allow the plant’s sugars to hydrolyze. The roasted, softened piñas are shredded and pressed to release the sweet juice.
The agave juices are left in a vat with residue from the agave skin and yeast to ferment for five to seven days, producing alcohol. Then the alcoholic juice is distilled twice to remove harmful by-products (such as ethyl alcohol and methanol) associated with fermentation.
The result is ordinary, white tequila, which is good for everyday use, according to Arturo.
Tequila Reposado (“rested,” or left to stand in wooden barrels for 2-12 months) is smoother than white tequila with a smoky wood flavor; Arturo explained that it is for use in “special” margaritas or even sipping. Tequila Anjou (“aged” by storage in a white oak barrel for more than 12 months) is dark and very strong – perfect for “premium shots,” Arturo told us.
Note that while Parker and I attended to the tour, which included sniffing the fermenting agave juice – whew!, Jeanna, Terri, Quentin and Reiley explored the shops, restaurant, and bar. Good thing, too, because we were the ONLY ones on the tour to have fresh, hot, and “home made” flour tortillas to eat before the tequila tasting!
After the tasting – a process all three of us were very engaged in – and the shopping – t-shirts for our guys at home and 10 bottles of tequila – Jeanna followed the other tourists to the bus, kids in tow. Terri and I headed to the bar for margaritas and street tacos.
While Jeanna was fretting about us missing the bus, we were chatting with Arturo and the bartender – in our best Spanish, no less. Arturo held the bus and the bartender delivered our drinks to us at our seats! Yum! Jeanna forgave us after one bite out of her taco, washed down with a really powerful, smoky margarita* in a complimentary clay mug. Our fellow tourists just glared.
Yeah, that was our BEST MEAL of the entire trip. *Just for the record, that margarita recipe: 1) drop a few ice cubes in a glass; 2) pour lots of tequila reposado without measuring over ice; and 3) fill to rim with sprite.
Yes, after the tequila, we were all speaking Spanish.
I recently logged on to complete my survey re: our recent NCL Mexican Riviera Cruise, and was “kicked out” because I wasn’t responsible for selecting the cruise destination, dates, accommodations, etc. Our thoughts on the cruise are slowly making their way online. As for the kids’ (who are 13, 11, & 7), here are their lists of the BEST & WORST things about our vacation:
Best:
“Mexicola”
Bingo (even though you have to pay)
Buffets
Desert Bar, open 12-5 PM (No joke, the kids consumed 6-7 ice cream cones a day?)
Flea Markets
Hot Dogs every day (Parker)
Mexico
Movie Theater
Murray the Magician
Running through halls, sliding down the staircase
Slides (the pool wasn’t that great)
Smoothies
Steak for dinner (Quentin)
Street Tacos in Puerto Vallarta
Watching navigation from Spynnaker Lounge
Worst:
Hand Sanitizing
Heat, especially in Mazatlan
Kids’ club
Nancy catching Quentin running down the stairs
Paying for soda. (That’s a rip off. Kids should get free drinks)
Salt Water
Teen club (no one showed up for nightclub event and the video game system didn’t work)
Or so we thought…Actually, it was the English speaking Mexican Tour Guide, Arturo, we had trouble with. He explained that, as a professional Futbol Player, who had seen a lot of the world, he would tell us about the town, the country, the people, and the Tequila in and around Puerto Vallarta. (We promise, we’ll get to the tequila..in another post.) What he didn’t tell us was that his entire spiel was unapologetically intended to convince us to return to Puerto Vallarta and tell all of our friends and family to come too.
He talked about the much-coveted houses on the hills that were bought cheaply by poor Mexicans in the 1970s. The beautiful homes downtown with the courtyards and SUVs parked outside, he told us, were lower valued properties owned by Mexicans and rented to Americans and Canadians for extended vacations. (We actually saw one older white man walking his dog.)
This monologue covered the 30 minutes it took us to reach our first stop: a small village church, which sits at the end of a dirt and cobblestone street lined by run-down storefronts – including a combo vet and pharmacy and a florist – and assorted street vendors. He told us that the simple, white adobe church was built in the 1960s to look as if it were built 100 years earlier. It WAS beautiful. And the people we interacted with, including the woman who sold us a bracelet and a bottle opener spoke English and WERE very nice.
But all our fellow tourists remembered was the rebar sticking out of the top of the buildings, the children on the streets, and the obvious poverty of the area. When asked about the rebar and the poverty and why the children were not in school, our Tour Guide had ready answers:
1) The rebar is actually savvy retirement planning. Mexicans build a first floor and live there until they can build a second floor; then they live on the second floor and open a business on the first floor. The rebar sticking out of the roof is the basis for a third floor to let for rental income when they retire.
2) The children were not in school because, in Mexico, children go to school EITHER in the morning OR in the afternoon. Obviously, the children we saw were afternoon students. (Adults go to school in the evening.)
3) As for the poverty, Mexicans, especially impoverished farmers around Ixtapa, are some of the happiest and healthiest people on the planet. What they lack in money, they make up for in good, organic food and few if any visits to the doctor and/or pharmacy. In addition, the streets are intentionally not paved to ease the collection of ground water and maintain the region’s ecosystem.
As residents of Southern California, we are very much aware of tensions between the United States and Mexico, which might account for Mexico’s Board of Tourism’s strong endorsement of popular vacation spots and ports for Cruise ships. (Puerto Vallarta remains one of the top two tourist destinations in Mexico.) Still we couldn’t help wondering if Arturo really believed all of this, or was taught how to respond to tourists’ questions.
Such skepticism is not uncommon. There are over 1,000 Internet links for “rebar protruding from roofs in Mexico,” some of them specifically addressing our concern. According to one home-builder in Mexico, the rebar represents people’s dreams: “As long as the rebar is there, they have a dream to reach for” (http://achaessawrites.wordpress.com/2008/04/20/building-dreams/). Posts to the Lonely Planet suggest it’s also possible that protruding rebar permits home-owners to avoid taxes: “As long as the building is unfinished then taxes are not paid upon the property” (http://www.lonelyplanet.com/thorntree/thread.jspa?threadID=1454535&tstart=0&limit=1000).
There has also been a great deal of press and online discussion concerning public education in Mexico, where the duration of compulsory education was recently extended from 6th to 9th grade. The catch is that “compulsory education” requires only that each of Mexico’s 31 states provide education for children 4-15 years old; however, not all Mexican states have compulsory school attendance laws. Children who do attend public school in Mexico spend less time there than most American children. According to Chris Hawley (http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2008/04/28/20080428mexicanschools0428.htmll), there is typically a morning shift and an afternoon shift, each about five hours long, compared with the seven or eight hours that American students spend in school.
While Arturo’s thoughts on Mexico’s building codes and public education system are arguably supported, his spin on poverty is sketchy. 50% of Puerto Vallarta’s economy depends on tourism, with some portion of the remaining economic activity occurring in the agricultural sector, meaning that many of the available jobs are considered “inferior” and/or “seasonal.” Thus it is far more likely that the city’s unpaved roads (up to 90% in some parts of the city) are due to lack of money, not ecology. The natural environment and public health unquestionably pose serious challenges throughout Mexico. Yet in the absence of readily available potable water, modern sewer systems, and sewage treatment facilities, it is unlikely that the direct absorption of rain and waste water into dirt and cobblestone streets is good for the environment or the public’s health. And if the happy, ecologically blessed people of Puerto Vallarta do not visit the doctor IF they do become ill, it may very well be because, as Gustavo Arellano’s “Ask a Mexican” column suggests, they are simply too busy and poor to do so.
This is the first in a series of posts about our recent Mexican Riviera Cruise with our Dad, his Girlfriend, and three of Juliann’s children. The setting is lunch time at the Versailles restaurant on the Norwegian Star, nearly two days from Puerto Vallarta.
Okay so it took all three of us to understand this one.
We’re waiting for lunch; the ship is rocking like it never has before; and we are HUNGRY, tired, and irritated with being locked up on a boat with three children for nearly 48 hours and counting. And the kids start sharing jokes from their Bingo game and the 9:30 PM shows that we missed because we were already asleep.
Jeanna had earlier noted that the Cruise Director was telling racy jokes during Bingo. (Jeanna opted for Bingo with the kids, who couldn’t win without an adult, over the treadmill at the Fitness Center.)
Parker says “Oh yeah, the one about the peanuts,” and he starts in about a guy who goes into a bar and there’s no bartender and he hears someone say, “I like your shirt.” (Terri and I are trying to put peanuts and penis together because this is, after all, a racy joke.) Parker continues, after asking Jeanna if it was the shirt first, “And he hears someone say, ‘I like your pants.’” (Now Terri and I are wondering who else is in the bar because Parker forgot to tell us there was no else there.) “And then he hears,” Parker goes on, “’I like your hair’…and the bartender comes back and the guy says, ‘there’s something wrong with your bar’…and the bartender says, ‘The peanuts are confidential.’” (Terri is no longer listening and I look at Jeanna with a blank stare.)
Over Parker’s laughing, Jeanna explains that there is no one in the bar and the peanuts are talking. The bartender actually says, “I told you, the peanuts are complimentary.” (Yes, I am still thinking about that penis.)
Parker, on a roll, yields the floor to Quentin, “Tell the Yee Haw Joke,” which Quentin tells us is not only racist, but also one that he made up. (Note: it’s the one we all remembr about “pee pee in your coke.”) At the end, a cowboy responds, “Me cowboy; Me shoot fast; Me put bullet up your ass.”
Yeah, there’s no “Yee Haw” in that joke. Jeanna’s sure that Parker said “E-haw.” And I can’t figure out where the “Yee Haw” is. Thank God for Terri, who says, “Duh. You know, ‘cowboy,’ ‘yee haw.’?”
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