In January we were in the Puerto Vallarta area for five nights, three of which Julian spent with his friends Gage and Leif (and their parents Steve and Roma) on Trinity, their 46-foot sailboat.

The weather was nice for the most part, though a little cloudy in the afternoons. We got ourselves a great deal on a condo on the beach via the Internet and spent relatively little money apart from some dinners out and taxi fares.

We had good food in Bucerias and downtown PV, played in the pool, walked on the beach and at some point ended up in an enormous Wal-Mart (maybe they're all this big, I never go into them) and learned that everyone in PV, including the staff of Wal-Mart, are part-time condo timeshare sales reps. ("What can I help you find? Where are you from? Do you have any activities planned?...") More on that later.

Gage and Leif are home-schooled on the boat, so Julian joined them with his assignments for three mornings. Steve reports that he worked well on his math projects (better than here at home, it seems). Satomi and I were grateful for the break, and it was good for Julian to see that school doesn't always involve a classroom.
 

We had brought our snorkel gear (and I had hoped to get in a dive or two off Steve and Roma's boat) but the conditions didn't cooperate on the day we cruised out toward the Islas Tres Mariettas. No matter which way we sailed, the wind was on our bow. We had a late start anyway, and the water was a bit rough (wouldn't have been much visibility in the water) so we gave up on that trip and sailed instead to Punta Mita, on the northermost section of Bandaras Bay. Satomi and I left Julian there and took a very long bus ride pack to Nuevo Vallarta. I was starting to feel a little sick (I had a fever the previous night) and wanted a good night of sleep before the ordeal that Satomi had signed us up for the next day...
 

The Timeshare Ordeal

"Nunca mas!". I've refused to do these things many times over the years, telling Satomi that I didn't care what kind of reward we got, that I wasn't going to waste two hours (ha, were it only two hours!) of my life sitting through a hot-box sales pitch. But we had not worked out our last night of lodging, the weather was looking less than perfect and I was getting this cold, which would probably preclude diving anyway. So I relented, thinking perhaps we could get a free room someplace out of the deal.

Satomi and Roma were in Puerto Vallarta on Sunday (while Steve, me and the boys were at a water park) and they struck a cash deal with one of the timeshare agents. These deals (which really amount to bribes) are supposedly illegal, but very common. I can categorically state I will never go through this again, but in hindsight it was a good story. Here's how it went down:

On Sunday, Satomi and Roma stepped into a small shop (cigars, I think) to ask for some simple directions. The young guy behind the counter chatted them up, tipping his hand that he was a timeshare agent on the side. These agents are everywhere in PV. The timeshare companies pay them a bounty to bring in qualified prospects -- qualified meaning anyone who can pass themselves off as potential buyers of an absurdly-overpriced weeklong slice of some resort.

Satomi and Roma short-circuited his sales pitch (normally they try hooking you in with tour discounts, etc) by going straight to the bottom line: cash. $250. Up front. And the taxi fare each way. The guy agreed, signed an "invitation" with the terms written down, and gave his phone number. (This surprised me a bit when I saw it, because he had written down his supposedly-illegal bargain for anyone to see. Huh.)

On the morning that the deal went down, Satomi called the guy (who we will call "Oscar") to make double sure that the cash would be paid up-front, in theory meaning we could cut and run after 90 minutes if we got sick of the presentation. We waited on the road, and at 12:00PM sharp a little Ford Fiesta came squeeling around the corner with three men in it. I decided instantly that we were in no circumstance getting into that car. Fortunately they didn't have that in mind. What I pieced together later was that "Oscar" (the cigar guy, who was now dressed in a black leather jacket and gangster-style sunglasses) was the money guy, but was most probably already on the timeshare company's blacklist. What he did was call over a cab, which Satomi and I got into with one of his friends, who was a nice, older guy who liked talking about his kids. This guy, "Federico", filled out a new invitation with a made-up incentive gift (a discount on a painting or some such), taking away the one that "Oscar" had given us. I noticed that Federico looked often out the rear-view mirror to make sure Oscar and the third guy (and the money) were actually following behind in the Fiesta.

When we were within sight of the condo complex entrance, Federico asked the taxi driver to pull over to the side of the road. Federico left the cab, walked back to the other car and got the cash from "Oscar", bringing it to us. He then said something like "Remember, for my sake, this never happened". We got the message. And while we listened to the condo pitch I fumed quite a bit about the whole deal, working out what had happened. "Oscar" was a swindler, and most probably he was taking advantage not only of the timeshare company (which bothers me not one bit, as they are making hundreds of millions in timeshare revenue on these properties) but on guys like Federico, who do his dirty work for him, probably with no alternative. Any time in the first 30 minutes of that presentation Satomi and I could have walked with the cash, slipped out the back and denied Oscar his bounty (which was probably $500 or $600). But we didn't dare, because we knew who would likely be punished for it: "Federico". Maybe "Federico" owed "Oscar" money already... who knows?

Anyway the whole thing stunk, especially when I sat and debated the numbers (what's the point?) with the series of five or six increasingly pushy salespeople who assaulted us. I pointed out to the last one -- a big guy who looked like a bouncer, huge-shouldered and scar-faced with a fat gold chain -- that he was peddling one-week shares at $30K (the number started much bigger, but got smaller with each new sales person), which multiplied by the stated maximum number of weeks per room (40) and the number of rooms (300) meant that they were valuing the complex at a staggering $360M dollars. Never mind that fact that the timeshare "owners" actually owned nothing except a lease-share for 25 (or at best 100) years, and that there were maintenance fees to the tune of $350 per week (with no future cap... can you say tsunami?), and that the real timeshare owner (the huge corporation) still had those other 12 weeks to market in any way they wanted, not to mention owning every restaurant and shop in walking distance... etc.

While we were waiting for our taxi fare (the last barrier before the exit, for a sum that at that point I would have happily given up) I fell into conversion with an older couple, also waiting. "I'll never do one of those again," said she, making a shuddering motion. "Hey," said he, winking beneath his golf hat and patting his breast pocket, "Three hundred bucks is three hundred bucks!"

Anyway, we got out alive, and spent our illicit gains on another night at the same condo, plus a fine dinner with the Swensens. Just don't ask me to do that again!
 

(The above picture was the point at which Satomi jumped up from the table with the camera and said, "This is just too entertaining, I have to take a picture." It was also the moment we bolted for the door.)