Mark had been so excited to go to Las Hadas, he said it was the crème de la crème of resorts for Mexicans. The movie “10” with Bo Derek was filmed there years ago. Five star resort, a pool, swanky facilities – we were so looking forward to it. When we arrived, it seemed nice enough. We quickly realized – it’s a ghost town.
Built in the mid 1970’s, the gray hair is showing. The waterfall in the pool is broken, the showers for cruisers are disgusting and inoperable, its landscaping is not kept up as a resort of this caliber should be. The new Marina port captain was confused and incompetent, each day we’d stop by his office to pick up our paperwork – which took about 15 minutes at all of the other ports. Each day he said to come back the next day, but 4 days later it wasn’t done and we had to leave without it.
Everyday we’d watch the restaurants prepare for the evening dinner crowd. Waiters busy putting red and white checkered table cloths and candles on the tables out on the sidewalk near the Marina – but we never saw anyone sitting at the tables at the handful of restaurants lining the marina.
Around the pool, no guests or only a few lounging about or swimming, but several waitresses and bartenders were waiting to serve non-existent patrons. One bar/café advertised free wifi and a happy hour special: 2 for 1 margaritas or beer. We stopped by for beers but they said they ran out – for the entire four days we were there!
A few days later we stopped in at a Marisco Restaurante across the street from a major supermarket after we’d done our shopping. They were very busy so we shared a table and Michaladas (a salted, frozen mug of beer severed on the rocks with lime juice) with Angelo, a Manzanillo local who teaches English. We told him about Las Hadas being so dead and asked him what was going on. He said that they had acked up their prices and drove the Mexicans away. They apparently just cater to foreign guests, but they’re not coming either.
I have a theory about places like this. Knowing quite a bit about business, most legitimate businesses can last without customers. Could it be that the Cartels own Marinas and high end resorts and they don’t really care if they are full or not, because they are used as a vehicle to launder money? The business claims income from the business, then it pays taxes (and likely mordita) so the local government is happy. Claim your business is booming even when it’s not – how interesting.