The State of Beaches

Well, here I am. We've been back from our honeymoon for almost three weeks now, and I'm finally running out of things to keep me busy. There's only so much bread a girl can bake!

Puerto Vallarta was AMAZING! And I don't mean that in the "ten rolls of toilet paper for only $1!" type of amazing, I mean it in the traditional sense. It was the first vacation I've ever taken when I was absolutely not ready to go home at the end of it. That could be partially due to the lack of annoying siblings, but I think it had more to do with how refreshingly different it was from home. I guess I'll just take this issue by issue. First thing's first:

FOOD: Even at local dive restuarants, the food was wonderful. It took me a few days to figure out why, but it hit me eventually: nothing is fake. Nothing we ate had anything in it that was unpronouncable (well, at least to locals, anyway). No nitrates, no artifical flavors, no preservatives... nothing. Here's a prime example. If you saw something in a store called "banana milk", what color would you expect it to be? White or unholy yellow, right? Why is that? Dyes, preservatives... all in all, there's probably no bananas anywhere to be found in this mythical banana milk. I was thrown off by the brown milk I saw at our hotel's buffet. I thought it was chocolate milk and, curious to see if it tasted similar to America's chocolate milk, I got myself a glass. Boy, was I surprised! I should've read the label! But doesn't it make sense that banana milk would be brown? Bananas turn brown, end of story. Same story for the watermelon juice at the buffet. I was shocked that there were ground-up seed in the bottom of my glass! And this juice actually tasted like a watermelon, not watermelon-flavored chapstick! I was tickled for the first few days, but then it started to bother me that this was such a novel idea. Why do we even have watermelon-flavored things? Why does everything have to have such a disgusting color, like it was part of a Barbie DreamHouse? But it didn't stop at the buffet, everything was fresh at every single place we went, which is not something we were expecting in a place as touristy as Puerto Vallarta. But if that's the way things are in the whole country, then it's just going to be a little Americanized in the touristy parts.

We were also absolutely disgusted with the presence of several awful American hell-holes in our little paradise. Right after we got off the plane and in to our taxi, we were assaulted with McDonalds and Starbucks and Wal-Mart. Thank Moses I never saw a Taco Bell, or I think I would've ripped somebody a new one. I found myself apologizing to natives constantly for our piggy companies infiltrating their unsuspecting little town. Most times, they laughed, said no natives ever went there, they were mostly for tourists, but I still felt bad. Not that it's my fault, personally, I'm just ashamed of the companies that we're imposing on other people. I mean, Disney is one thing, but why McDonalds and Wal-Mart? Then again, I suppose Wild Oats expanding to Mexico would be extremely pointless. I also realize that it's not all bad. At least those companies have provided jobs for several people and that's good for the economy and those peoples' wellbeing. Ah, the eternal ying and yang.

PEOPLE:  I live in a big city and people around here are always cranky. Nobody smiles at you for any reason (unless they're being verbally appreciative of the way you look), nobody is ever nice for no reason... it's so depressing! Life around here is what it must feel like to be cattle. Get to where you're going, do your job, then get out of the way. And if you're not up by 5:00 AM, you're career is going nowhere ("career" is also interchangable with "life"). So, escaping for a week and finding ourselves without a schedule was daunting at first, but we happily got used to it. And no matter where we went or what we told people trying to get us to go to time share presentations, everybody was so nice. I wish this place could be more like that. I mean, seriously, if you can't look around you and find at least one thing that makes you smile, you have got to reevaluate your lifestyle.

BEACHES:  Every beach we went to was great! I couldn't believe it! We actually made it to several beaches with tours and stuff, and all of them were beautiful. The whole week we saw one piece of trash in the water. One. I don't even think that's possible in the Everglades, and that's a national reserve. The beaches were immaculate as well, even if there were hotels nearby. Mostly they looked like an untouched beach that just happened to have a building up the shore (I say "mostly" because the beach at our hotel was about 5 feet wide, but that's what you get for staying in the hotel district!). Even when we went snorkeling, the water was so clear, we could see every single fish within a 10 foot radius. I don't know if you've been recently, but it's a rare beach indeed that you can say any one of those things about in the States. I grew up on the beach, and with the way things are today, there's no way I'd take my kids there. There's needles, trash, the water is cloudy and God knows what's in it. It's absolutely repulsive. The things we have done to this country. Good grief! And it becomes more and more apparent how much that Americans just don't care about anything but their own butts and how far they have to move them to get what they want. I am so sick of seeing great American passtimes getting crapped all over. What are we going to have left to share with our kids? Does anybody even care about them any more? Professional athletes are under fire for using steroids, so I'll catch flack for taking my future son to baseball and football games and supporting drug abuse. I can't take my kids to the beaches I grew up going to because they'll probably get sent to the E.R. with puncture wounds, mercury poisoning, and a burger wrapper on the lung.

I guess everybody needs a reason to fight for our environment, as if it being the environment wasn't enough of a reason. My reason is my health, the health of my family and friends, and the health and safety of my future family members.

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