Friday, May 30, 2008

Bombed Out Beach Town

A typical street in Cuyutlán, in Colima, Mexico.

We ended up in Cuyutlán because it was starting to getting late and we needed to get off the road. An expat American living there called it a "faded beach town." That's putting it mildly: it's so badly maintained that some buildings and streets looked like they've been carpet bombed.

In some places the decay was so bad that it was almost beautiful.

Entire sections of streets have fallen apart and not been repaired. There are piles of trash drifting in the breeze, street lamps fallen or with wires hanging out, and literally everything crumbling. Nobody seems to care or even notice the mess.

Thousands of beach chairs lined up in Cuyutlán, and not a single person using them.

On the beach there were thousands of chairs in front of every hotel and not a single person sitting in even one of them. So strange. I can't quite figure out what's going on, but I wouldn't want to go back to find out.