Ixtapa, Mexico with Greta

After dating a woman for a year and a half, you think you know her well. Her name is Greta; she's mellow and easy going. Then, you take a trip together and her true character surfaces. That’s what happened when my girlfriend and I went to Zihuatanejo and Ixtapa, Mexico, for five days in February, 2001.

Zihuatanejo and Ixtapa are small cities four miles apart on the Pacific Coast of Mexico, located about 120 miles north of Acapulco. At this time of year, the temperature is around 87 degrees and it seldom rains.

From the planning stage, Greta had a positive attitude. Using the Internet, we selected Mexicana as our airline and the Continental Plaza (Ixtapa) as our hotel. She said, "Book ‘em."

We flew from LAX to Mexico City, where we changed planes. When we arrived at the Zihuatanejo Airport, we were surprised no one asked to see our passports. We weren’t given tourist cards, nor did anybody in Mexico ask for any.

Greta was game for everything. To travel between Zihuatanejo and Ixtapa, people can take a taxi or a 4-peso (44 cents) bus ride, which is what the locals do. She always insisted we take the bus.

Our hotel was Five-Star ($135 per night). We could have loafed all day around the ocean-adjacent pool and ordered margaritas from the swim-up bar.

Instead, she insisted we explore the beaches where the natives go. That meant we had to take small boats, sometimes over-filled, to beaches twenty minutes away.

She’s a so-so swimmer, but she donned a life jacket and said, "Let’s go for it."

For dinner one night, some tourists from Saskatchewan told us to go to Emilio’s Pizzeria (Ixtapa)--an open terrace with a few tables and an outdoor brick oven. They said it was the best pizza they’d ever had.

The pizza was tasty--about $10 for a large. What the Canadians failed to tell us about was the number of cockroaches that roam the terra-cotta after dark.

I gained even more respect for her when, despite a two-inch roach taking refuge under the base of our table, she didn’t complain and managed to finish her share of the pizza

Guess the pizza in Saskatchewan isn’t that great.

When we checked out of our hotel, they tried to stick us with a 430-peso bill for the in-room honor bar. We never touched it. Greta firmly let the desk clerk know that we weren’t paying that bill.

The only thing she hounded me about was being careful to always drink bottled water. We avoided ice and salads. We had no stomach problems.

When we checked in for our return flight, the Mexicana agent wanted to see our stamped tourist cards. We didn’t have any; we didn’t know what he was talking about.

He said we’d have to visit Immigration in the Mexico City Airport before boarding our plane to LAX, as he handed us boarding passes for both flight segments. That’s where I saw a different side to my soft-spoken girlfriend.

"No way," she whispered to me, "am I going through Immigration with such a tight connection between flights. This was Mexicana’s screw-up. I’m getting on that plane to LA and that’s that."

The connecting agent in Mexico City was angered, but still let us board the plane. Had we visited Immigration that day, we wouldn’t have made the connection in Mexico City and wouldn't have gotten home that night.

Greta's true character surfaced; I liked what I saw.