From 11/04/06


Back from Cancun

My doctor recently gave me two choices: either get away from work and relax, or have a stroke. I chose the first option. Admitedly the run-up to the November election was part of what was raising my blood pressure. I have never in my years seen such a bunch of lying morons as the current crop of Republican candidates. Does the RNCC actively recruit sniveling lying suckups as their candidates? I have not seen one of them that has an I.Q. higher than that of a pissant.Anyway, I decided to go where I would be away from all the crap for 10 days, and not have to put up with Bush's lying, grinning, hyena like face. (Apologies to hyenas I mean them no disrespect.)I decided to go to Cancun because airfare from Texas is pretty cheap. After researching hotels on the internet I found that if I stayed away from the hotel strip, I could stay in Cancun fairly cheaply. I packed my bag, grabbed my trusty guidebook and took off for my adventure.It is strange walking out of the Cancun airport. You are surrounded by tiny, cramped, leased compartments manned by "travel service experts". The hotel booking service books ONLY hotels in their resort pool and the taxi services offer a private taxi for $40.00 or shuttle service for $9.00. One guess as to which I took. The interesting thing about the shuttle services is that once they get your name and destination, they immediately want to schedule another branch of their service to meet with you to sell tours.Talking about a tourist trap. Wow. I have traveled a lot, but never seen anything like this. I will give them credit for one thing. They do attempt to treat the visitor well, and at least one of the services has an ISO 9001 rating. At least everything is clean and well organized.Anyway, back to the shuttle. Because I was staying in downtown Cancun I was the last to be dropped off after traveling the length of the hotel strip. Everything looks like time shares instead of standard hotels so I am not sure what is going on. One thing I did notice is that every brand name of crappy fast food American restaurants is there. I hate that the only thing the United States exports as "culture" is crappy fast food. The other thing I hate is that the mass transit tourist goes to Cancun, stays on the strip, and thinks they went to Mexico.Ok, back to my trip to the hotel. I had picked one particular small inexpensive hotel and the driver of the shuttle kept insisting that I stay at a different hotel. I am pretty stubborn so I kept resisting. Finally he pulled out a map and showed me that the hotel I had chosed was off the beaten path, and that the hotel he suggested was on the main street, was cheaper, and was nicer. I relented and he hand delivered me to the front desk of the hotel. I was pleasantly surprised. The Hotel Colonial (C. Tulipanes 22 x Av Tulum S.M. 22 Mz. 3 Centro, telephone <01> 884-1535) is set back off the main street on one of the pedestrian walkways that cuts through to the area known as Palapa Park. It was spotlessly clean and had I think, about 30 rooms. You have a choice of a room with air conditioner, or fan, so I chose the a/c. It was only $35.00 per night so it was a dream. The room was spotless and had a bed that was more comfortable than many $150.00 per night hotels that I have stayed in. The a/c was nice and cool so I was set. The picture at the lead to this entry is of the central "lobby" which has a nice fountain and tropical garden setting. The hotel is within walking distance of several restaurants and many other shopping places. They offer tour services for those who want to sample the typical tourist adventures. Since all I wanted to do was read and rest it was perfect.Since my vacation was totally uneventful, on purpose, I would like to relate some conversations I had with another Cancun visitor I ran into.This traveler shall remain nameless because she DARED to defy the travel embargo that we have had on Cuba for decades. I will do my best to remember the highlights of her story.

She had been in Cuba for 10 days staying mostly in Havana studying the architecture of the city. She showed me photos of various areas of Havana and I was mightily impressed with the looks of the city. The United Nations has declared Havana some type of special conservatory, and has devoted millions of dollars to help restore the older buildings, many of them dating back to the Spanish Colonial era. Of course, many of the areas are newer since Cuba had a building boom right after World War II and into the 1950's. Many of the buildings that are now residences look like some of the Miami Beach hotels.Havana was home to an architectural school that turned out many famous architects, who left their impressions on the buildings they created. Buildings run the gamut from Art Moderne to Art Deco and beyond. She gave me pictures of the Edificio Bacardi that I believe was opened in the late 30's and is one of the finest samples of Art Deco construction in this hemisphere.After we discussed her purpose for being there we talked a lot about the people and their relationship to the government. As I figured everything that we hear from our government about Cuba is 99% bullshit. The people of Cuba love Americans but hate our government. That does not surprise me. The people are very protective of the revolution even though they obviously want more freedoms than they have now.One thing that our government needs to realize, is that even after Castro goes, there is no way in hell that the Miami right wing Cubans are going to be accepted in Cuba. The Miami Cubans have caused way too much havoc with their funding of various attacks through the years on Cuba. We need to get over our sucking up to Miami Cubans, and start talking to the Castro government, so that there can me a peaceful transition of power.Our embargo does very little to hurt the government of Cuba, but it deepens the poverty of the people. My new friend pointed out in her pictures all the new investment that the Europeans are putting into Cuba. There are Spanish hotels going up everywhere. Canadian, German, French, Norwegian, Polish, and Russion tourists are running around all over the island spending money. There are French and Japanese car dealerships opening. The U.S. is the only country losing out on this because of our stupid policy of sucking up to the Miami Cubans for a few votes.Cuba is no enemy of ours. We do more trading with Communist China than we should, and China is one hell of an enemy, as far as their human rights policies.She told me of a recent Cuban government program to save the country energy. The leadership decided that Cuba was spending way too much of its foreign exchange to buy fuel to burn for electricity generation. They decided that they could save lots of energy by switching to flourescent bulbs. Students were recruited to go house to house and ask the residents how many incandescent bulbs they used. Depending on the type of fixture they then TRADED OUT FLOURSCENT BULBS ONE FOR ONE FREE OF CHARGE! Now that is an energy policy. What was Cheney's energy policy? Invade Iraq and enrich the oil companies.

Who is our enemy, Cheney or Castro? I will relate more of my conversation tomorrow.