The Sleaziest Hotel in Chacala
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We told her. We told her. Never
again is she allowed to pick the hotel.
“The owner is really nice,” she
said.
“Yes, the owner is a nice man; his
wife is nice, his three-year-old daughter is cute.” The hotel is sleazy.
Not sleazy in the way of an immoral
business conducted in a hotel on the outer edge of town posting hourly rates,
but sleazy in the way of shabby, dirty, sordid, inadequate and unpleasant.
In her defense, she didn’t know and
none of us checked it out before we booked.
I suppose we’ve all had an
experience like this, if we’ve traveled. I remember a motel off the highway on
the way to Phillipsburg . . . but that is a different story.
Lani, her husband, Ariel, Carol and
myself drove to Chacala on the coast in Nayarit. If one has a large enough map
and a magnifying glass, one might find Chacala north a bit from Puerto
Vallarta. We went seeking a three-day holiday to scout out the town as a
possible destination to flee next year’s colder weeks in January.
We chose Chacala, a tiny fishing
village, carved into the mountains on the edge of a small bay, for its
isolation and quiet. The setting is beautiful. The townsfolks welcoming and
friendly.
Our hotel perched two blocks above
the main street along the beachfront. Straight up the hill on a street covered
with ankle-turning rubble. The hotel office is a cell phone in the owner’s
pocket.
Built onto a narrow lot, the two floors each contained three
rooms. My room required a precarious climb up a
curving narrow staircase littered with construction debris.
Sparse. Dirty white in color. A cell with two
beds, a bathroom, and one dollar store plastic chair. No shelves, no dresser,
no tables. One bedside wall lamp had no bulb. The other lamp had a bulb but didn’t
work. The bathroom bulb had burned out and not been replaced. There was not a
spot of color. White sheets covered the beds.
I made the best of it. I emptied my suitcase onto one bed,
converting it to closet, drawers and shelves. For a mere three day trip, I had packed
my two down pillows and my blue plush blanky.
We all made the best of it. After all, what’s to complain, we
did have hot water for showers.
Did I mention construction debris? Work men were building a
third floor to the structure, adding three more rooms above. Seven in the
morning until dark, hammering, hammering; dust and noise prevailed.
I speak but a minimum of our collective complaints. To say
the hotel is “bare bones” might be complimentary. Why didn’t we move out? I
don’t know. We grumbled. A lot. We had prepaid, in cash. Perhaps our room fees
paid this week’s construction costs. Perhaps hope of a refund was long gone.
Chacala, a lovely jewel on the sea. Chacala is not a tourist
destination, not a high-rise resort town. We popped into several hotels, peered
into empty rooms, inquired about rates. We
poked our noses into hotels with a dozen rooms. We checked out others with
twenty or thirty rooms, all clean, all colorful, all reasonable in price, all
along the beachfront, none perched precariously on the hillside.
We ate seafood at a different restaurant (or street stand)
every meal. We found the best coffee in town. We spent hours on the beach,
lingering over every meal. We talked. We read books. We lounged. Carol and Lani
swam. Ariel and I shared a dozen oysters on the half shell, in ecstasy over
every bite while Carol and Lani grimaced with disgust. We had good times.
Then we trudged back up the hill to our hotel.
Sondra
Ashton
HDN: Looking
out my back door
March 28,
2019
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