Cruise ship employee tells his favorite “dumb passenger” stories

by Aaron Hotfelder on

I recently spent some time in the up-and-coming port town of Mahahual, Mexico, and had the opportunity to speak with an assistant cruise director for one of the Big Cruise Lines. Because I am always interested in the ways stupid tourists manifest their stupidity, I asked the man (let’s call him Miguel) if he had any entertaining stories of people doing dumb things on his cruises.

Ten hours later, when Miguel was about halfway done telling me about all the dumb passengers he’d encountered over the years, I decided to write down a couple of my favorites. Here, in no particular order, are three of Miguel’s most memorable “dumb cruise ship passenger” stories:

  • A woman came up to the reception desk and told Miguel she had a problem. “I can’t get my coffee cup out of the microwave,” she said. Miguel was understandably puzzled for a moment, then asked her if the hinge on the microwave door looked broken. “No, I don’t think so,” she said. “I’m pulling on the door as hard as I can but it won’t budge.” “Well, I’ll come to your cabin and take a look at it,” Miguel said. As soon as these words left his mouth, Miguel thought to himself: “Wait, these cabins don’t have microwaves.” As he walked with the woman to her cabin Miguel tried to think of what could possibly be going on. When they arrived, it was just as he suspected– the woman had tried to heat up a cup of coffee in the safe.
  • An older man walked up to Miguel and asked, “Why don’t they use salt water in the toilets?” To which Miguel replied, “How do you know they don’t?”

  • The passengers had just boarded the ship when a middle-aged woman approached Miguel and asked, “Do the workers stay on the ship at night?” Miguel, thinking the woman must be kidding, asked the woman to repeat herself. “Do you stay on the ship overnight during the cruise, or does another boat come and get you, or what?” she asked. Miguel didn’t tell me what he did in response, but I can tell you what I would have done: Repeat the conversation to all those within earshot then assemble a mob and throw the woman overboard. (This is why I do not have a future in the cruise ship industry.)

First-time scuba diving for under $100? Where in the world?

by Aaron Hotfelder on

I’ve wanted to go scuba diving for as long as I can remember. To be able to inhale and exhale underwater while swimming near schools of brightly colored fish and jaw-dropping coral– how could that possibly not be a Top Ten Life Experience? My desire to go diving was only intensified on my recent trip to Mexico by the scores of other travelers who told me, “You must go scuba diving before you leave!”

“Believe me, I’d love to,” I always thought. Unfortunately, shelling out hundreds of dollars for a PADI-certification course, the multi-day training program wannabe scuba divers usually must enroll in before their first dive, was not in my meager budget.

So how did I get around this rather formidable financial obstacle? How did I go scuba diving for the first time for less than $100? Through a PADI-approved program called Discover Scuba Diving, an introductory course available at most dive shops throughout the world.

I enrolled in this $90-dollar course at Dreamtime Dive Resort, a well-run dive shop in the town of Mahahual, Mexico, located on the southern part of the Yucatan Peninsula. Dreamtime’s owner, a French expat named Yama Saad-Zoi, is a former member of the French Special Forces and, in addition to being a divemaster, also used to work as a skydiving instructor. Despite his small frame, Yama appears to be a man who not only ignores fear but seeks it out just to spit in its face.He’s also one hell of a determined guy. When Hurricane Dean damaged Dream Time in August of 2007, Yama and his dedicated staff began shoveling the sand out of his shop only days after the storm hit. “There was about one meter of sand in here,” Yama told me during a brief tour of his clean, obsessively organized shop. “The hurricane threw scuba diving equipment everywhere. We were digging out and it was like, ‘Here’s a mask, here are fins… Oh, here’s a dead body,” he joked.

Yama and his crew got the shop up and running in October, 2007, only two months after the hurricane hit Mahahual. But just when Dreamtime was getting back on its feet, swine flu arrived in Mexico, scaring away millions of tourists and thousands of would-be scuba divers. Having heard about all the bad luck to hit this particular dive shop, I felt a little bit like my enrollment in this course was my “good deed” for the day. (Clearly I do not set the bar for what is a “good deed” very high.)

The Discover Scuba Diving course itself was brief and relatively simple. After my diving instructor Victor spent about an hour of “classroom” time explaining to me the physics and fundamentals of scuba diving, we hopped into the boat and began a pleasant fifteen-minute ride to a great diving spot called Caracol. I strapped on the fins, mask, air tank, and weight belt, and plunged backwards into the water as I had been shown just moments before. Victor and I spent several minutes in shallow water so that I could become accustomed to breathing into the regulator and practice some other basic scuba diving skills, like how to clear the mask of water. Despite having to absorb a lot of information in a short amount of time, I was more than ready to begin my first dive.

We swam to a depth of about twenty feet and I rose and sank in the water like the newbie scuba diver I was, while Victor attempted to pantomime some tips from a few feet away. The dive lasted about thirty minutes, which was plenty of time to see some amazing fish and beautiful coral formations in the clear Caribbean water.

“How was it?” Yama asked when I hopped back onto the boat. The only word I could think of was the only word I needed: “Wow. Just… wow.”

On the way back to shore, Yama, the divemaster and former skydiving instructor, told me, “There are two things every person should do in their lives– skydiving and scuba diving.”

“I guess I’m halfway there now, huh?” I said.

And halfway, I could have added, is far enough for me.

For more info about Discover Scuba Diving (including the fact that it will make your PADI course cheaper if you complete it within a year of your introductory dive), go here. For info about the professional, highly-recommended Dreamtime Dive Resort, check out their website

Three for Free promotion at 18 Hyatt hotels

by Alison Brick on

If you’re staying at a Hyatt hotel this fall and you want a little extra pampering, you’ll want to know about their Three for Free promotion.

What’s included? A free night, room upgrade, and daily breakfast. The free night is based on either a three-, four-, or five-night stay, depending on the specific hotel.

Unfortunately, it’s not available at all of their hotels–only 18 of them. Two international hotels are available, though: Aruba and Cancun. The other domestic locations range from Kauai to Chesapeake Bay.

And if you become a fan of the promotion on Facebook, you can get an additional welcome gift as part of your stay.

The promotion is valid for travel from September 8th to December 18th, 2009.

[Thanks, NYTimes.com]

¡Micheladas! The perfect recipe for Mexico’s (unofficial) national drink

by Aaron Hotfelder on

“Want to order some micheladas?” my Mexican friend Gustavo asked me as we sat down for breakfast one morning in the beachside village of Mahahual, Mexico.

“What’s a michelada?” I asked.

Gustavo gave me the look a school teacher might give a student after he asks a particularly dumb question– a looked which seemed to say, “Don’t you know anything about Mexico?”

“Mexican breakfast,” he told me. “Let’s get two.”

After the first sip of my michelada— a disturbing-sounding but great-tasting concoction of beer, Tabasco sauce, and Worcestershire sauce– I was hooked. Like a soccer mom sampling a delicious casserole at a dinner party, I just had to get the recipe.

So here, without further ado, is a simple recipe for the perfect michelada:

Ingredients

2 tsp. Tabasco sauce (more or less to taste)
1/2 tsp. Worcestershire sauce
half of 1 lime
pinch of salt
1 beer (I prefer Negra Modelo or Dos Equis, but most lagers work well.)

Rim a glass with salt. Squeeze juice from the lime into the glass and add a pinch of salt. Fill the glass with three or four ice cubes. Add the Tabasco and Worcestershire sauces. Finally, pour in as much of the beer as will fit into the glass. Give it a stir and enjoy your breakfast.

There are dozens of michelada variations– a popular one uses tomato juice or (yuck) Clamato as well as the ingredients above– so feel free to experiment with any of the recipes found here.

After all, there’s no wrong way to get drunk in the morning.

Mexico City offers free health insurance to tourists

by Katie Hammel on

After near-hysteria over Mexico’s outbreak of the H1N1 (swine) flu virus crippled the country’s tourism industry and resulted in record low hotel occupancy rates, Mexico City’s tourism is slowly rebounding. To help get tourism back to its pre-“aporkalypse” levels, the Mexico City Tourism Ministry is unveiling a new plan that officials hope will help convince people that it is safe to visit.

Any tourists who stay in one of Mexico City’s hotels will receive free health insurance. Under the plan, tourists are covered for not only treatment of the H1N1 virus, but also for any other disease or accident they suffer from while staying in Mexico City. Prescription drugs, emergency dental care, hospital stays, and ambulance transportation are also covered. There’s even assistance in case of robbery, luggage loss, or the delay or cancellation of a flight.

Mexico City normally welcomes around 7 million (international and domestic) visitors each year. When news of the H1N1 flu broke, tourists began to disappear and hotel occupancy rates plummeted, reaching as low as 5% in April, according to USA Today. Now they are around 59%, but the industry is still feeling the pinch. Officials hope that the offer of free health insurance may help sway those who were considering a trip to Mexico, but were concerned about the risk.


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[via Los Angeles Times]