Acapulco adventure

Today finds us docked in Acapulco for the day.  We were up early, once again and caught the sunrise coming up.  We decided to hire a taxi for a couple of hours to tour us around town a bit.  It is another hot day and my knee is just not cooperating. 

Mayan Palace resort

 

Acapulco is much larger than I thought

We arranged to have a 2-hour tour of the area, seeing a bit of the new area, the art area, and the old Acapulco.  The guy we arranged the ride with, looked pretty decent, but when he called the driver over, we thought …Oh... Oh…, what did we get ourselves into?!!  The driver Pepe was polite and personable, but the car was a bit sketchy looking.  Dents and scrapes all over, not very clean, it had the colour of the official taxi’s but I was not sure that it was legitimate.   This is an adventure right!?  So, we just went with it. 
Downtown beach area

 The ubiquitous street/beach hawkers

Pepe was pretty good; we didn’t get into any accidents or add any dents or dings to the car.  He even stopped at a pharmacy for me, so that I could get some lozenges for my sore throat and came in with me when I purchased.  Thankfully he did.  I thought they were $24 USD, a bit pricey, but beggars can’t be choosers.  They were 24 Pesos so under $2, and I got a good deal, because Mondays are 25% off medications day in Mexico, well at least Acapulco.   

It was amusing riding in the car, every time we had to get a boost of power to go up a hill, Pepe would turn the air conditioning off till we picked up the power.  Then there was another point when the engine wouldn’t turn over.  Not a problem, just a little bit of fancy clutch work and she was purring like a kitten…well....she was running, and we were moving. 

 Our ship at anchor across Acapulco Bay

 An iguana sitting on the treetops

We toured the new resort area, then my favorite part, by far, was our tour of the old area.  We got to see some lovely views of the city and the area.  I love traveling around the parts of towns where people live and work, to get a truer understanding of what life looks like for them. 

We went up to a lovely old hotel called Hotel del Monte (hotel of the mountain), it looks like it has been there for a long time, lovely balustrade balconies with large ferns and palms to further enhance the shading from the sun and had an amazing view over the city and the Bay. 
Looking over the cit fro Hotel del Monte

We toured past where the cliff divers do their thing and he took us up to Los Flamingos, the hotel where all the Hollywood who’s who used to come and party in the 1950s – 1970s.  Things certainly have changed; you would not find any Hollywood A-listers partying there these days.
Cliff diving spot

 An octopus hunter, not sure how he was doing it because he seemed to be floating in a big inner tube, with all kinds of things attached to it.

 Pelicans on the rocks - all that white area is pelican guano.

Looking out from Los Flamingos

Something I forgot to mention – there were military personal EVERYWHERE – standing in groups on the streets, by the truckload on the roads, all carrying semi-automatic rifles.  Our driver said it was because of the mafia or cartels. Apparently the cruise ships had stopped coming to Acapulco because of this, and it has only been recently that they have started to return again. I certainly would not want to be walking the streets after the sun went down and would have even give it lots of consideration during the day as well.