Mayhem In Mazatlan

In early 1995 my late partner and I purchased a home in Ajijic. We figured, since we were now both retired that we would become part of the “six-and-sixers,”  living 6 months of the year at our home in Portland, Oregon and 6 months at our new home in Ajijic. In the spring of 1995, we decided we would drive to Ajijic from Portland. The trip would take 6 days and we had our itinerary planned out and hotels booked so that our last night would be in Mazatlan. The first five days and four nights went well. When we arrived in Mazatlan, we were surprised by hundreds if not thousands of young people in cars, on cars, walking in the street, walking on the sidewalks, etc. We gradually inched our way through the traffic and people,  finally arriving at  the hotel.

At the check in desk, we asked what was going on and the receptionist said that the Arizona universities were on spring vacation and each year many of them come to Mazatlan to party.  Evidently a lot of them drive the 16 hours or so straight through from Arizona to Mazatlan. That would explain the hoards of college age people and cars crowding the streets. We got to our room on the 8th floor, which was very nice and overlooked the beach and ocean. The first thing we noticed was the blaring music coming up from the beach. We looked out from the balcony and there were hundreds of young people in swim suits dancing and drinking on the beach.  We hoped it wouldn’t go on all night….it did. 

Deciding  to go out for an early dinner, we found the restaurants close to the hotel generally had large cocktail bars attached and were very crowded and rowdy with the young revelers.  We walked a couple of blocks off the main street and found a quiet restaurant that offered food we enjoyed. On the way back we decided that before we turned in, it would be nice to take a walk along the beach. The sun had just set, but there was enough light to make our way along the shore. Our walk had just started when we noticed this entangled couple lying on the beach and realized they were having sex on the beach (I’m not talking the vodka cocktail “Sex on the Beach.”  We hurried by only to come upon another couple and then another couple all engaged in various stages of….well, you get the picture. At that point we decided to head back to the room. 

Sleep was almost impossible. There would be bursts of shouting, laughter and music with the occasional few moments of semi-quiet. About 3:00am it quieted down and we managed to just about get to sleep. That is  until about 3:30 when there was a loud pounding on the door and a young man screaming, “Open the door damn it, I don’t have my key.”  We shouted that he had the wrong room, but within seconds he was pounding on the door again and hollering for it to be opened, evidently unable to hear us from all the outside noise. This happened a third time followed by many expletives. Just as I was getting up to go holler through the door that he had the wrong room, the door frame suddenly flew off the wall and the door crashed open. Into our room burst a very tall, very blonde, very drunk and very naked young man. 

“Oh (expletive).” He said multiple times.  “I’m sorry.  I’m so sorry. Oh God I’m sorry. I thought this was my room.”  We informed him that obviously it wasn’t and that he should go and find his room. He staggered into our room and then collapsed into a chair. “This whole trip has been so (expletive)  up.  Right before I left, my girlfriend broke up with me for no reason. At least she wouldn’t tell me why. So my roommate came down with me at the last minute and he’s been a real (expletive). “At this point the guy is sobbing and blubbering and says “I think I’m kinda drunk.”  No point in telling us the obvious. 

I hop out of bed, go into the bathroom and bring back a towel and told him to wrap it around him, which after several attempts,  he did. Now we were going to try to get him to his room, which of course he wasn’t sure of his room number, as he thought our room was his. My partner asked  him his name and he immediately became paranoid, wondering why we wanted to know his name and if we were going to call his parents. “They’re gonna (expletive) kill me about this” as he surveyed the damage to the door. My partner informed him we weren’t going to call his parents. All we wanted was his name so we could call the front desk and inform them that we had a young man in our room who was confused about which room was his. We called the front desk and they said would send hotel night security up and escort him to his room.

The night security guard arrived and he spoke very good English. He looked at the door, looked at the young man and said. “Come on, I’ll take you to your room. Your are in 706. This is 806. Now apologize to the gentlemen.”   “I’m so so sorry.” He seemed genuinely sincere. As they were leaving, the security guard said he would try and find us a different room, since the door would not close or lock. Within seconds the young man came back with the security guard close behind and took off the towel. He folded it very neatly and said, “Thank you very much for the towel.” His parents must have taught him some manners. Out the door he went as naked as when he had come crashing into our room. The night security guard rolled his eyes and went after him.

It was about 4:00am when  the security guard came back and we informed him that moving us to another room wasn’t necessary as we had decided to get a really early start on the last leg of our road trip to Ajijic. He apologized and said that spring break weeks are always crazy in Mazatlan and they seem to get a little worse each year. “Good to know” we said. We found a place open for breakfast and were in Ajijic by mid-afternoon. 

On our trip back to Portland, about six weeks later, we stayed at the same hotel in Mazatlan. Spring vacation was long past. It was quiet, relaxing and we enjoyed it so much we stayed an extra night. 

There is a line at the end of the movie “Casablanca” when Rick (Bogart) says to Ilsa (Bergman)  that goes “We’ll always have Paris.” My partner and I used to laugh and say, “We’ll always have Mazatlan.”