Desde Zih con Cariño

The first week of the Semana Santa / Semana de Páscua vacation period apparently didn't deliver the expected results. Although beaches were overflowing with tourists, many weren't spending any money here because they apparently brought all their foodstuffs with them. Even the local restaurants are saying sales were way down from the previous year. While hotels in Ixtapa were full, thanks to their mostly All-Included packages most of their guests made no purchases off the hotel property, if they even left it at all. This is a yearly pattern that has gone on for too long, and even though, at least to me, the problem appears easily identifiable and remediable, I see almost no one discussing it beyond a very few locals. So I'm not expecting things to get better in this respect for the foreseeable future. And that's a damn shame.

The city's workers have been working hard to keep the streets and beaches clean, and so far so good. As far as I know there's been one drowning rescue in Zihuatanejo at Playa La Madera and two at Playa El Palmar in Ixtapa.

Apparently the pier will be left operating until the end of the Torneo Internacional de Pez Vela. According to calculations by "folks who know" that would mean that at the earliest it could be finished by next December, though personally I think that's an extremely ambitious projection. If the short stretch of the Paseo del Pescador took over a year then I tend to believe a pier the size of ours will also take at least as long. And if they push it just to meet a deadline for the politicians to get their photos taken then I fear the work will be somewhat shoddy and possibly dangerous, and we need a sturdy well-built pier able to last at least another 50 years, IMHO.

This is the view practically right out our front door of an Amate tree that's shed all its leaves growing by the beach in front of the Plaza del Artista. Soon it will be full of fresh green new leaves, a color we call verde tierno.

The bay has mostly emptied of traveling sailboats and cruisers, but local fishermen were busy this morning trying to put food on their own tables.