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The gay community in Vallarta is organizing a collection of basic necessities for fellow Mexicans affected by the disastrous flooding in Tabasco State. As you may have heard, 80% of the state is under water. The residents are in dire need of food, medicines and other basics:

• Non-perishable items such as canned tuna or other meats, canned vegetables
• Rice, beans, sugar
• Ultra-pasteurized milk – non refrigerated type
• Baby formula
• Basic medicines including antibiotics, anti-diarrhea medicines, aspirin, skin creams (skin infections are common in flooding situations), etc.
• Cash donations are not recommended for this effort, but the banks all have accounts set up to accept donations if you prefer to donate cash.

Please bring your donation to:

Hotel Mercurio
Calle Francisca Rodríguez #168
Colonia Emiliano Zapata
(click here to see location on map)

Questions? Call Hotel Mercurio at 222-4793. Anyone on staff will be able to assist you.

No later than MONDAY NOVEMBER 5, at 3 PM. The residents of Tabasco need help TODAY!

They will deliver the collected items to the local Red Cross (Cruz Roja) in the name of the local PV Gay Business Community and Supporters, on Monday afternoon.

This effort will be communicated to the local media, and we will ask reporters to publish a short article listing the businesses who donated to this important project. This will be an opportunity for our local Gay businesses to do something worthwhile to help people outside of our community who are in serious need NOW, while gaining some positive local media exposure for Gay businesses and the Gay community of Puerto Vallarta.

Here’s what they had to say:

If Caribbean adventures don’t suit your taste, check out one of Mexico’s most beautiful western beach destinations — Puerto Vallarta. This seaside town has a deep Mexican culture and beautiful landscape that will captivate your senses. In addition to its laid-back beach attitude, Puerto Vallarta also offers wonderful local art and some of the best in traditional Mexican dining as well as other eclectic food options. The city is full of galleries and five-star cuisine from chefs around the world.

But then we knew that didn’t we?

If you’re curious what the other beaches on the list were, you can check out the full article at Earth Times.

José Alfredo Torres, better known as Tartín, makes a mean ceviche in a small restaurant by the waterfront in La Cruz de Huanacaxtle, Nayarit (locate it on map), a fishing village on the north shore of Banderas Bay near Puerto Vallarta .

But his own experience with being lost at sea for 38 days in a small boat make him doubt the survival story of others from nearby San Blas who were picked up last August after drifting 5,500 miles and were picked up near the Marshall Islands.

The story is interesting and will give you some survival tips should this ever happen to you: Man who drifted 38 days doubts survival story.

 

It’s starting to take on the feeling of a trade war or a World Cup match (if Canada was ever competitive in World Cup soccer).

Yet another story (see my article from March 30) with a lurid headline about a Canadian victim of crime in Mexico: Gunned down in Mexico, Local Man Shot Three Times; Lives to Tell Harrowing Story.

Although I do note that this story was actually in the The Star Phoenix rather than in the Canadian Media.  Although maybe the Canadian media just hasn’t picked up on it yet.

There’s starting to be some anger on the boards from people living in Mexico about how their home is being portrayed. While they would no doubt agree that crime and the justice system in Mexico are problems, that seems to be the only thing that is reported, giving gringos a very warped view of Mexico.

This year seems to have been a year of terrible PR for Mexican vacation spots in the Canadian media. The murder of a couple in Cancun last February continues to receive attention. The apparent hit and run of a teenaged Canadian tourist in Acapulco in January. In both these cases, the family in Canada have strongly disagreed with the conclusions of Mexican police who have come off as trying to play down the crime or push it away rather than really solve it.

The latest incident receiving coverage was the recent drowning of a 72 year old Canadian swimming at the beach in front of the Palladium resort in Punta Mita just north of Puerto Vallarta. It wasn’t the drowning per se that was the cause of the media frenzy. Again it was the response to the events - neither the hotel or emergency officials were at all helpful in searching for the man. The man’s son, Gordon Zimmerman, was quoted as saying that “the assistant manager, the person in charge, informed me there was no ability for them to go out on the water, or any ability to search for someone in the water. No boat. The Jet Ski they had was broken, and had been broken for two years.”   The hotel apparently rather than helping with the search seemed more interested in playing down the whole event and not alarming other clients on the beach.

On CBC radio today, a travel “expert” today suggested people traveling to the “developing world like Mexico” should bring lots of cash and wave fistfulls of cash at people when an emergency occurs to get the help.

Clearly Mexico is developing a PR problem. Does someone need to tell them the first rule of public relations in a disaster is to come clean not to try and cover it up with more lies? Or does this run counter to Mexican culture?

Locate it on the map: Palladium Vallarta.

With global warming so present in the news and in our minds, I’m feeling uncomfortable about how much flying I do. Getting back and forth from the US and Canada to Mexico and beyond creates an awful lot of CO2 emissions. Here are some examples of what a non-stop flight to Puerto Vallarta will generate (figures from an online calculator):

USA Departures:

Los Angeles: 0.6 tonnes of CO2
San Francisco: 0.8 tonnes of CO2
Portland, Oregon: 0.9 tonnes of CO2
Chicago: 0.9 tonnes of CO2
Minneapolis/St Paul: 0.9 tonnes of CO2
Detroit: 0.7 tonnes of CO2
New York: 0.8 tonnes of CO2
Boston: 0.9 tonnes of CO2

Canada Departures:

Vancouver 0.8 tonnes of CO2
Edmonton 0.8 tonnes of CO2
Toronto 0.8 tonnes of CO2
Montreal 0.9 tonnes of CO2

Europe Departures:

London 2.0 tonnes of CO2
Amsterdam 2.1 tonnes of CO2

I recently wrote an article entitled Going Neutral on my personal website which gives an outline of the issue and what you can do about it including purchasing offsets to make your travel carbon neutral.

Yesterday I reported about a Delta plane from Puerto Vallarta that had a near miss in LA. Today, the media is reporting about a Continental flight coming from Puerto Vallarta in which the pilot died during the flight, apparently of a heart attack.

Passengers were first given a PA announcement asking if there was a doctor on board. A few minutes later this was followed up with an announcement asking if there was a pilot on board!

The co-pilot diverted the plane to McAllen, TX and landed the plane without incident.

Straight to the sources: KGBT Channel 4: Plane Diverted To Valley After Pilot Has Heart Attack, Houston Chronicle: Pilot dies in-flight; co-pilot lands jet. 

There was a close call for some Delta passengers returning from Puerto Vallarta to LAX on Tuesday when their plane was forced to veer off and abort the landing just before touching down when an Aeromexico plane pulled onto the runway.

Straight to the source: International Herald Tribune: Errant Aeromexico jetliner on Los Angeles runway forces Delta pilot to abort landing.

As on January 23rd, travellers to the USA arriving by air from Mexico and Canada will need a passport for the first time. This of course means that Americans will also need a passport to travel to Mexico and Canada since otherwise there’s no getting back in!  Despite the fact that this was announced a helluva  long time ago, expect chaos in the airports the next couple weeks ago travellers who weren’t aware of the rules get turned away for their flights. Maybe some Americans will just take the opportunity to stay in Puerto Vallarta forever. Hell, why leave such a beautiful place?

Meanwhile the lines at passport offices in the USA, Canada and Mexico have been growing round the block with huge numbers of people realizing at the last minute they better get their applications in. The US State department issued a record 320,000 passports in the first week of January alone. In Canada, there’s a double hit because passport expiries are only five years and the last rush for passports was after 9/11 so all those people are now renewing. One friend said a trick was to apply online. He did so even though it seemed pointless since you then have to print the application and print it in anyway but when he got there he was put into a special queue presumably since his data was already ready and saved hours of waiting.

Straight to the sources:

CNN.com:  Record numbers seek passports in U.S., Canada

Cambio de Michoacán: Expide la SRE 650 pasaportes al día

CBC.ca: Passport lineups getting longer as U.S. deadline looms

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Vallarta's Top Picks! Hotel Mercurio  Gay owned, friendly, near gay beach! Casa Cupula  Luxury gay/lesbian boutique hotel

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