Mexicans--not all as svelte as this one Having just returned from two weeks under the palapas of Baja California Sur, I find myself planning my return vacation already. Besides the relative closeness and affordability of Baja, numerous other qualities of the place appeal to me.
If you resent a lot of the nanny state regulations with which the US is afflicted, Mexico is your refuge. If you want to wash down donuts bulging with trans-fats with 44 ounce soda after 44 ounce soda, go ahead. While Mexico acknowledges that smoking is harmful by putting graphic pictures of diseased organs on each pack of ciggies sold there (making it necessary to rip the pictures off the pack before the cigarettes inside can be safely smoked) and smoking inside restaurants is frowned upon, Mexico does not forbid smoking in the Earth's general atmosphere, which California is fond of doing. Here you cannot smoke on Mount Whitney, for example, the highest peak in the continental US, regularly whipped by brisk winds and surrounded by millions of cubic miles of thin, pristine air, lest a single molecule of your secondhand smoke infect the lungs of a fellow mountaineer.
Mexican politicians are much too busy enriching themselves, their families and their friends to enact regulations as pointless as that. That Mexican politicians are generally for hire does cause the country problems, but you can sit on the beach and smoke a cigar while thinking about ways to solve them, if you want.
Mexicans speak Spanish, which is a language other than English, but is close enough to it that it is a temptation to mangle. I caution you against merely adding a final 'a' or 'o' to an English word in an attempt to manufacture Spanish. You may, for example, be trying to say apologetically "I am embarrassed by my bad Spanish," and actually succeed in saying "I am pregnant by a nasty Spaniard." Especially if you are male, this will produce the look of polite puzzlement Mexicans give you when you are being incomprehensible. My Significant Other got it last week when she and the waitress at a fine dining establishment in Loreto were discussing their families. "Why was she looking at me like that?" she asked after our order was taken.
"You just told her your daughter was eighty years old," I replied.
If you are good at charades, it will help your ability to communicate. If you remember more than ten words of your high school Spanish and run into a local who remembers more than ten words of his high school English, you can make yourself understood in a combo language that is comfortable for both of you. Or you can just Ugly American it, speaking constantly in English to an audience of blank stares until someone gets somebody else who is bilingual to deal with you.
But the best reason to visit Mexico is that it was recently discovered to be the second-fattest nation on Earth by one of those Internet surveys. The US is number one, naturally. What this means for the average American is that Mexico can be safely visited without fear of not being able to see a person whose body type he or she can feel superior to. Contrast that to Asia, where throngs of stylish Asians are living proof that rice contains no fat grams, or Europe, where slender, androgynous people wearing tight shorts and spooning wheat germ into their yogurt while leaning on their bicycles are common at all major intersections. In Mexico, you will see none of this nonsense. Ample Mexicans are reassuringly common. So if the foreignness of Mexico is somehow starting to sour your vacation instead of sweetening it, just look around for a guy who's a lot more sit-ups than you from flashing six-pack abs.
You won't have to look far. It's just like home that way.
If you resent a lot of the nanny state regulations with which the US is afflicted, Mexico is your refuge. If you want to wash down donuts bulging with trans-fats with 44 ounce soda after 44 ounce soda, go ahead. While Mexico acknowledges that smoking is harmful by putting graphic pictures of diseased organs on each pack of ciggies sold there (making it necessary to rip the pictures off the pack before the cigarettes inside can be safely smoked) and smoking inside restaurants is frowned upon, Mexico does not forbid smoking in the Earth's general atmosphere, which California is fond of doing. Here you cannot smoke on Mount Whitney, for example, the highest peak in the continental US, regularly whipped by brisk winds and surrounded by millions of cubic miles of thin, pristine air, lest a single molecule of your secondhand smoke infect the lungs of a fellow mountaineer.
Mexican politicians are much too busy enriching themselves, their families and their friends to enact regulations as pointless as that. That Mexican politicians are generally for hire does cause the country problems, but you can sit on the beach and smoke a cigar while thinking about ways to solve them, if you want.
Mexicans speak Spanish, which is a language other than English, but is close enough to it that it is a temptation to mangle. I caution you against merely adding a final 'a' or 'o' to an English word in an attempt to manufacture Spanish. You may, for example, be trying to say apologetically "I am embarrassed by my bad Spanish," and actually succeed in saying "I am pregnant by a nasty Spaniard." Especially if you are male, this will produce the look of polite puzzlement Mexicans give you when you are being incomprehensible. My Significant Other got it last week when she and the waitress at a fine dining establishment in Loreto were discussing their families. "Why was she looking at me like that?" she asked after our order was taken.
"You just told her your daughter was eighty years old," I replied.
If you are good at charades, it will help your ability to communicate. If you remember more than ten words of your high school Spanish and run into a local who remembers more than ten words of his high school English, you can make yourself understood in a combo language that is comfortable for both of you. Or you can just Ugly American it, speaking constantly in English to an audience of blank stares until someone gets somebody else who is bilingual to deal with you.
But the best reason to visit Mexico is that it was recently discovered to be the second-fattest nation on Earth by one of those Internet surveys. The US is number one, naturally. What this means for the average American is that Mexico can be safely visited without fear of not being able to see a person whose body type he or she can feel superior to. Contrast that to Asia, where throngs of stylish Asians are living proof that rice contains no fat grams, or Europe, where slender, androgynous people wearing tight shorts and spooning wheat germ into their yogurt while leaning on their bicycles are common at all major intersections. In Mexico, you will see none of this nonsense. Ample Mexicans are reassuringly common. So if the foreignness of Mexico is somehow starting to sour your vacation instead of sweetening it, just look around for a guy who's a lot more sit-ups than you from flashing six-pack abs.
You won't have to look far. It's just like home that way.
RSS Feed
