Tequila and Shopping Cozumel

Here is another post best categorized under philosophic musings rather than tech tips.

I’ve had a epiphany! Shopping while buzzed is more like partying than shopping. A recent cruise I took stopped at Cozumel. If you have no interest in Mayan ruins or uninsured adventuring (snorkeling, parasailing, motorcycles, dune buggies), you are left with drinking or shopping or in the Cozumel market place shopping while drinking.

I have never, ever walked into a jewelry store and been asked, “Water, beer or tequila?” I suspect that the last time I had a beer at 10 in the morning, Nixon was President!

Cozumel is a long stretch of store after store with alcoholic beverages available gratis with great frequency. If you accept all offers, you will be buzzed in two blocks and bombed in four. It provides a totally different view of shopping and explains why several of the stores have multiple outlets along the street. If they don’t get your money in the first store, they give you a drink and you proceed down the street. The sales theory seems to be that before you can get back to the ship; your inhibitions will be reduced to a buying frenzy preferably in one of the ubiquitous jewelry stores.

One rather persistent sales clerk, followed me down the street reducing the price of the $400.00 silver and onyx ring to $45.00 in spite of the fact, I kept telling him I don’t wear rings.

As an aside, inhibitions in the bars seem to be even less than those on shopping. Bikinis, booze and hard rock provided sufficient eye candy for a revision of the movie American Pie into Mexican Pie. Although I did not see any mature women displaying inappropriate behavior, I can’t say the same for some of the “gentlemen” in my age category. There is no fool like an old fool, unless it is a drunken old fool, trying to dirty dance with a bikini clad child the same age as his college age granddaughter. It goes to show you that tequila supersedes embarrassment.

All in all it was an entertaining shopping experience.

In fairness to the rest of Mexico, you don’t have to get too far away from the beach dominated cruise experience to see a totally different Mexico. The Mayan ruins were impressive and the fact that practically every shrub covered mound was an unexcavated ruin demonstrated the sheer magnitude of the Mayan culture.

Provided you either have the strength of will to “just say no” to all the offers of free booze or the superior unmitigated gall not to be embarrassed over your behavior if you succumb to the pervasive offers; shopping Cozumel is entertaining.