The Time-Share and Market 28

It was time to pay for the free pyramid trip and low-cost SCUBA. The hard-sell time-share lecture started at breakfast. The food took a long time to arrive. This gave a sales guy plenty of time to try his magic on us. What he didn't know, is we've been to a lot of these. They don't work on us because we want the freedom to go to places on this planet were time-shares don't exist. You can't use a time-share in Cambodia, or in Tanzania. Time-shares just aren't for us. Even though we told people this, they still wanted to give us free stuff just for sitting through their sales pitch.

I don't write about My Lovely Wife much because she's a private person. But what you should know is she is very smart, and a math whiz. She ran the numbers and showed the closer what the real cost was going to be including loss of income from the purchase price. The real cost of this time-share was significantly higher that the closer's number. It was as if the closer had be slapped with a dead fish. Game over! We collected our complementary cloth bag, bottle of Tequila, and went over to the activities counter to arrange our pyramid trip and SCUBA. The time-share game had taken all morning. It was time for lunch and a siesta.

Later, we took the bus downtown. The local bus is very good. We paid 7 pesos apiece and asked the driver to tell us when we got to Market 28. The market was mostly closed. The triple threat (bad economy, drug wars, and swine flu) had so reduced the number of Americans going to Cancun, a depression had hit the biggest market in town. We did manage to find some coconuts for My Lovely Wife, and met a fella name Maurice who claimed he had come from Canada to solve all of Cancun's Macintosh problems. I'm a bit of a computer person myself, and found his story... amusing. Maurice struck me as a grade A BS slinger. But he was fun to be around.

We talked about time-shares. I showed Maurice the promise the time-share from the airport had given us. His mouth dropped. He thought we had been taken because the promise was way too generous. There was no way anyone was going to stay in business with incentives this good.

Maurice called in some friends who were also surprised. The promise had to be honored if we attended the time-share pitch. But the hook was the property was a very long way away, and we would be stuck there until they drove us back to the resort. I decided to pitch the 50 bucks we were out. I wasn't interested in blowing more of my vacation on time-shares. The locals had a laugh, so at least we provided some entertainment.

After getting back to the hotel via the bus, we had dinner at the more fancy restaurant in the resort. I wore clothes I had tailored for me in India when I attended my friend's wedding in Mangalore.