Acapulco

Maybe You've Seen It on the late show: Betty Grable (remember her?) is a secretary from, say, Trenton, Ohio, enjoying one week's vacation south of the border. Before the first musical number is quite over (Carmen Miranda, in a hat made of bananas, avocados, a cheese blintz, hibiscus and parrot feathers, singing a lyric that seems to consist exclusively of the sound chee-chee-chee-chee), Betty is hopelessly enmeshed in an ambivalent relationship with a rich Latin gigolo played by Cesar Romero or possibly Don Ameche with gray stuff at his temples and an inappropriate George Givot accent. George Givot may be on hand, too, to provide comic relief, and José Iturbi is sure to pound out the Ritual Fire Dance on a lit-up piano, unless Xavier Cugat and Lina Romay happen to be operating that side of the street. By the final fade-out, Betty is in the arms of Romero/Ameche and the whole cast is singing, "If you're romantic, chum, pack up your duds and come to Acapulco ..."

Corn doesn't grow much taller than that, but in the case of Mexico's Acapulco (less than ten air hours from anywhere in the U.S.), you can safely swallow it – cob, husk and all – secure in the knowledge that Truth has not been too severely bent. For Acapulco, today, is a dazzling amalgam of half a dozen screen extravaganzas, unabashedly corny, gorgeously unreal, glossy with luxury, awash with Technicolor, athrob with Latin rhythms, inhabited by dark-eyed señoritas, Ohio cuties on vacation, and on-the-make operators from both south and north of the border. The song says "You put your cares in hock and throw away your clock in Acapulco," and that's no lie: Acapulcans swing around the sundial. The song further describes Acapulco as a place "where you can be as lazy as a daisy drifting in a blue lagoon": blue lagoons are indeed to be had and nobody frowns upon indolence. It claims "You're wide awake at night, because you do your dreaming in the afternoon": Acapulco night life is truly wider awake than night life anywhere else. And, finally, if you doubt that "when the moon is new, it's like a honeydew," you've obviously been having so much fun you haven't had time to look up at the sky.

The travel folders will tell you it is a land of magic landscapes sparkling like a jeweled setting around the rich blue crescent of its bay. It is. They will tell you that golden beaches glisten in the sun and rocky cliffs drop precipitously into the ocean. They do. We know, because we were there recently.

We arrived, as does most everybody, on the one A.M. Aeronaves flight from Mexico City. Acapulco, on the western coast, is a one hour hop by air, six smooth hours by luxury bus or, in your rented car, a pleasantly scenic 265-mile romp over good highways. Tooling into town via taxi from the airport, we caught our first view of the bay's curvilinear panorama. Those small lights twinkling on the water (our cabby informed us in impressionistic English) marked the dugouts of native fishermen luring pompano, red snapper and mackerel off the bay's bountiful bottom. From across the bay, sparkling neons promised non-stop good times.

"Oh, you will like Acapulco much, señor," enthused our cabby, a José Jiménéz type.

"¿Por qué?" we asked.

He turned around and flashed us a smile like a Wurlitzer accordion, complete with black keys. "Because," he said, "it swing, señor, it swing!"

"Watch the road," we advised – in English, because we didn't happen to know the Spanish for that useful phrase. While we're on the subject, let's dismiss the problem of the language once and for all. You don't have to speak it like a native – and unless you do, don't make the mistake of dusting off your high school Español and maybe getting laughed at. Most of the people you'll be hobnobbing with or who will be serving you speak some English, and it's best to let them practice on you rather than you on them. Of course, an occasional Buenos dias by day and Buenas noches by night will do you no harm, nor will Por favor for please, Muchasgracias for thanks, ¿Dónde está? for where is it, ¿Cuánto? for how much and ¡Muy buena! for dig that chick. So ends Playboy's Short Course in Functional Acapulcan.

(While we're at it, let's get a couple of other chores out of the way so we can enjoy the city without worrying about trivia. Mexican money: the peso is pretty stable, at twelve and a half to the dollar. Just remember that one peso equals eight cents. Tipping: follow the same fifteen percent rule you follow in the States; drop one peso for the smallest services. Mexican cops won't be offended if you tip them for watching your car. You won't have much use for coins – forget about them. Sundries: before leaving the States, you'd be wise to latch onto a six-month Tourist Card by visiting the Mexican Consulate nearest you or an office of the Mexican Consulate nearest you or an office of the Mexican Government Tourist Bureau and presenting proof of birth or citizenship plus three bucks. And, yes, you'll need a small-pox vaccination certificate. If you're a forgetful type like us, you'll be glad to know that, if worse comes to worst, you can get a Tourist Card at the border, and if you didn't remember the vaccination you can get the needle on the way back into the U.S.)

Meanwhile, (continued on page 120) Acapulco (continued from page 94) back in the cab, Jose's eyes returned to the road and ours took in the slope of pink bungalows to our right. These make up Las Brisas Hilton. To our left, the orange vapor lights down the shore cast a Dantean haze over the beach of El Presidente, the city's newest, poshest hotel. A delicious breeze was stirring about. The air was not like wine, however. It was much better – pungent and heady with the insinuating musk of pine groves, cup-of-gold bushes and vivid tropical flowers. Ordinarily, the coolness of the breeze might have surprised us in sun-scorched Mexico, but we had done some encyclopedia cramming before enplaning, and we knew the coolness was man-made. Acapulco ("place of reeds") was stumbled upon by the old peak-in-Darien chap himself, Hernando Cortes, about 1530. He and his troops called it tierra caliente, the hot land, and later settlers put it down (in both senses) as "a hot and sickly plate, an abbreviated inferno." What happened to de-infernize it? In the late 1700s, its governor, Josef Barrero (may his tribe increase), ordered a huge chunk to be carved out of the hills that then separated Acapulco from the sea. This gargantuan air-conditioning feat was accomplished, and Acapulco has been breezy ever since. These days, it is comfortably semi-tropical, the temperature seldom climbing above 80 during "the season" (December 15 through April 15). The off season (May to December) is generally rainy, and the city should beavoided then by all save sternly budget-minded visitors (hotel rates drop twenty to forty percent). Hay-fever sufferers have a ball all year round because the pollen count remains at zero, despite the lushness of the vegetation (all jungle, you see, no weeds).

Acapulco's ambiente – a word that can only be felt, not translated – had captured us from the moment we landed. From then on, the warm, sensuous, dreamy atmosphere got through to us, and we didn't fight it. In Acapulco, we learned, rushing around is out of the question, and anything as silly as being on time for an appointment is treated with scorn (the locals are often an hour or two late, and if you've left they'll figure you haven't even arrived yet). Sit back. There's always time for a drink or a bite, or a swim – or to make an acquaintance. "Mas tarde, padre" ("Later, dad") is the expression.

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Acapulco has two hundred hotels, with first-class accommodations costing about the same as they do in the U.S. The pleasantest to arrive at is, by all odds, Las Brisas Hilton, where you're greeted with welcome drink of gin and coconut milk, served in a fresh green coconut decorated with hibiscus. If this potation encourages further thirst, there's liquor in a cupboard of your casita, mixes and beer in the fridge. Las Brisas is that scattering of hillside cottages we saw on our way from the airport. They're reached by a network of private roads that wind among palms, vines, hibiscus and bougainvillaea ($20 double without pool, $32 with shared pool, $40 with private pool – including continental breakfast). If you have a girl to be alone with, ask manager Frank Brandstetter to reserve one of his most secluded casitas in the sky. Between the highway and the bay are the luxury residences of Las Brisas Estates, the ne plus ultra of Acapulco's American colony. The owners are an older, group, but their parties are definitely in, More winding roads take you down to the luxurious bayside La Concha Beach Club shared by the Hilton's guests and the Estates crowd. (The hotel furnishes chauffeured jeeps, free of charge, for going to and from La Concha; you can rent your own jeep at $8 a day, to facilitate getting around town.) If you're staying elsewhere, you'll need an invitation to the club, or a Hilton Carte Blanche credit card.

For the well-fixed traveler, Cesar Balsa's El Presidente is first choice as the place to meet people who know what's where. Be sure to reserve a terrace room with an ocean view ($28 single, $34 double, with two meals), from which you can see the whitecaps breaking along the beach through your view-wall of glass. Lounging on your private terrace, you'll quickly succumb to the song of the surf and the faint beat of cha-cha from Jacaranda, El Presidente's unique nightclub, with it's dramatic view of bay and sky. If you're not alone, share a suite ($52 single to $76 for four, with two meals) or check into one of the duplex penthouses with small pools. For an extra $10 a day, you can have a dressing cabana, complete with bed, bathroom and folding wall open to the ocean. If you're alone and on the prowl, Acapulco is definitely on your side. Around El Presidente's pool are the sun-washed lounges and thatch-shaded tables of the Palapa Bar, a favorite watering place for unaccompanied girls, some of whom don't even bother renting rooms for their weekend visits. They just take their chances on meeting a hospitable chap. Early in the day, the coolingest drink at the Palapa is a fruit-juice concoction called Conga; when alcohol is added, it becomes Rumba. A Presidente is the right blend of pineapple, orange and grapefruit juices, gin and apricot brandy. If you don't find anything – or anyone – to fit your mood, you can stroll up to Cocotal, liveliest of Acapulco's beach clubs and a hangout for entertainers, models and other fascinating fauna.

In Acapulco, they have a felicitous word for beach playa – and three major hotels own large stretches of private playa: El Presidente, Elcano and Pierre Marques. The others offer swimming pools, salt-water lagoons and access to the miles of public beach in and around the town. The water is always warm at Acapulco, but the breakers come in cycles and the undertow is strong enough to make you dig in your heels. Still, it's exhilarating.

The Elcano Hotel, a modern blockstyle beachfronter ($20 single to $30 double, American plan), caters to a larger proportion of Mexican guests than any of the other major hotels. During the season, its pleasant palm-fronted Bambuco bar and dining room are among the town's livelier hangouts. Between December 16 and January 6 especially, the holiday season, every night at the Elcano is fiesta – three weeks of unabated partying.

Hotel Pierre Marques, a corporate cousin of New York's Pierre, is owned by Jean Paul Getty, reputedly the richest man in the world. He has never seen the place, but Dwight Eisenhower has slept there, as have numerous other people of repute. The hotel ($26 single to $46 double, with continental breakfast) is on the beach, and ideal for a rest – isolated, beautiful and, incidentally, a favorite of New York's top callgirls with their patrons in tow. Each of the colorful rooms in the Marques' rambling two-story buildings has its own terrace fronting the beach. Two pools, a golf driving range and clay tennis courts are available, and so is Senora Carral de Palma, the hotel's social directress, who will lead you to whatever sport you fancy, be it wet or dry, indoor or outdoor. On the Marques, beach of a morning, you'll find callipygian cuteniks sipping drinks at the Tortuga (Turtle) Bar, in anticipation of lunch on the Marques Terrace. Besides serving the tastiest hamburger in town, the Terrace also boasts hard-to-find Yucatan-style pork tamales, chicken-liver omelet a la Caruso and native lobster-tail salad. Dining is elegant in the hotel's Silver Shell, with its tinkling waterfalls and tinkling music.

Oldest and most truly Mexican of the big hotels is EI Mirador ($12 single with terrace to $30 double for de luxe cottages, with two meals), a picture postcard jumble of flowering gardens and stucco cottages perched on the very tip of La Quebrada cliffs. Don Carlos Bernard built the first of these cottages more than thirty years ago to accommodate friends who shared his twin passions for Acapulco and deep-sea fishing. He's been building ever since for the growing clique of EI Miradorites who return year after year. EI Mirador's craggy ocean front has no beach, but a funicular sweeps guests down to a natural-rock, salt-water swimming pool. Every dining room in town serves seafood, but none of them can match EI Mirador for such rarities as sea-turtle eggs, agujon (a brilliantly green-boned needle fish), barracuda, dolphin and the tiny, delectable cilios. EI Mirador also houses La Perla, Acapulco's most spectacular supper club, whose tables are strung along terraces over the cliffs of La Quebrada.

If you can't go back home without a as six-foot-plus pez vela (sailfish), register at the Hotel Club de Pesca, the only hostelry with its own fleet of fishing boats. Favored months for the sport are November through January, although the International Sailfish Tournament is held during the first week of April and the marlin bite best in August. But you really don't have to fish to enjoy Club de Pesca: also available are speedboating, water skiing, skindiving and surfboarding. With its seven stories of ridged terraces, Club de Pesca ($20 single, $27 double, $50 for a suite, with three meals) looks like a great ship's bridge on the bay. Palms and tropical gardens ring the fresh-water pool and assure privacy to the patios of what are euphemistically called Honeymoon Cottages. The Mexican movie colony makes its Acapulco headquarters here, and when the starlets are in town for a location shooting or the annual film festival (November 18 to December 7 this year) the hotel is filled with tempting tidbits.

Before the postwar building boom, Hotel Prado Americas, overlooking the Pacific on the point of the peninsula which shelters Acapulco Bay from the west, used to be the place to stay. It's still a dandy hideaway with a complex of Mediterranean-style white-and-blue-columned courtyards and tile-roofed bungalows ($21 to $48 double, with meals).

Up in the hills you'll find Villa Vera, a collection of luxury bungalows with tennis court and pool ($20 to $40 double, with continental breakfast). Its owner, Swiss bandleader Teddy Stauffer, used to be married to Hedy Lamarr and Faith Domerque – serially, not simultaneously. If you like Hollywood-style living, you can have it here, along with some of the big names of then and now.

John Wayne's Los Flamingos ($20 to $32 double, with meals) overlooks the sea from its hilltop. Down below, on Costera Aleman, the main street, is the modestly priced Noa-Noa ($20 to $24 double, with meals) and the comfortable and informal Playa Hermosa ($4 single, $8 double, with continental breakfast).

Some of the American college crowd that takes a semester or two at Englishlanguage Mexico City College spends weekends at Motel Acapulco, which has its own swimming pool, restaurant, bar and easy tariffs ($4 single, $7 to $13 double, no meals).

Driving along the Costera out toward EI Presidente, you'll pass Condesa Beach and a small sign reading "Catalejo (Telescope) – the philosophical life."Down a flight of wooden steps you enter the world of Spanish painter Isidro Covisa and his family, who constitute Acapulco's art colony. For $2 a day you can get two big meals and a hammock slung between bamboo poles in the coed open-air dormitory. This is as primitive as Acapulco gets, with no electricity or privacy, but plenty of dedicatione to pleasure as well as art. There's lots of long belong to the beat set; Covisa threw the beatniks out when they tried to turn his simple scene into a south-of-the-border party pad.

The Acapulco Hotel Association (Apartado 334, Acapulco, Guerrero, Mexico) can supply a complete list of hotels with current prices. The town has no American consulate, but the Mexican Government Tourist Bureau information office on Costera Aleman can help with most problem. The unofficial good-will ambassador and most informed self-exile in Acapulco is a photographer-writer named Ronnie Luster, who can generally be found in the vicinity of EI Mirador.

There are twenty-one beaches in Acapulco, the brifest of bikinis are smiled upon at all of them, and there's no telling which beach will be the current favorite of the kind of people you want to play with. Caleta, the busy public morning beach, is the best place to start looking; it's informal, and you can say hello to almost anyone.

Of an evening, you can take a small boat over to the island of La Roqueta, which has its own beaches, an outdoor dance floor for nighttime partying, burros who drink beer (there's no water on the island) and a restaurant specializing in langostinos, delicious little crayfish served with garlic butter. La Roqueta is a good spot for skindiving, and a firm called Aqua Mundo (Water World) will pick you up at your hotel, take you out to the warm water in a sixty-foot boat, equip you and instruct you for 185 pesos. They'll also teach you spear-fishing, shell collection and underwater photography.

The winds and waters of Acapulco are Meant, for sailing and Cruising, and craft of all sorts can be chartered at the public docks. For shorter spins, the Barca de Oro, a large schooner, and the motor yacht Fiesta go out for three hours late each afternoon. Once aboard, you'll find music and free drinks, the panorama of Acapulco from the water, and a chance for a swim off La Roqueta. The young lady you may spy in the depths, incidentally, is not a mermaid but a submerged statue of the Virgin of Guadalupe protecting the harbor entrance.

Sundowns are fabled at Pie de la Cuesta (Foot of the Coast), a beach with roaring surf some miles out of town. You can lie in a hammock and sip the popular Mexican ron castillo, rum mixed with water, plain or sparkling, and coco loco, coconut milk and tequila in the shell. At the other end of town is the usually deserted Revolcadero Beach, a fine quiet place for picnics, nudeniks and such.

You can rent dugouts called pichilingues to take you through the lush lagoons of Coyuca and Papagayo, inhabited by frigate birds, flamingos, toucans and parrots and on the banks by iguana, deer, hare and jaguars. In the native village of Puerto Marquez you'll come across a group of beach stands proffering fresh and cooked seafoods. One Acapulco speciality is ceviche, morsels of white-fleshed fish, such as Spanish mackerel, marinated in lemon juice and Mexican spices.

Hansom cabs are for hire near the section of Playa de Hornos where the fishermen pull up their boats and spread their nets. Take one into the labyrinth of old Acapulco's lanes or to the stone ramparts of El Fuerte de San Diego on the bluff, with its ancient cannon still watching the bay. This massive pentagon, built to protect the Spanish settlement in 1616, has recently been restored and transformed into an outdoor theatre seating 2500. The entrance lies over a drawbridge spanning the moat, through a portcullis flanked, on performance nights, with flaming torches. Plays, ballets and concerts are performed here, including the Pablo Casals Festival, December 10-20. when enthusiasts will gather to hear the premier performance of Casals' newest work for cello.

Some of the world's finest matadors have fought bulls in Acapulco's Plaza de Toros Caletilla, which has a corrida at five p.m. during the season. The bullfight season varies from year to year, depending on past attendance and what promoters are doing what; but generally, there are probably more corridas during January, February and March than any other time of the year.

During the season Acapulco is a big party town, and you ought to be able to snag an invitation to a few of the affairs. Every Tuesday night, for instance, the Club de Yates (Yacht Club) has a buffet and dance for members only – but knowing someone or just looking respectable will probably gain you entry.

It's not difficult to look respectable, by the way. Unlike most plush Caribbean resorts, only a few people ever bother to get dressed up in Acapulco, even after sunset. But we suggest you take one lightweight suit for late dining and dancing, especially on weekends. Be sure to take, in addition to your sunning and swimming gear, plenty of sport shirts; cotton slacks and sandals. You can buy clothes or have them made in a day or two at any of a number of stores in the hotels or around town. La Noa on Hidalgo carries good-looking attire and Alfredo's on Costera Aleman (the broad avenue that winds along the beach) specializes in hand-loomed native fabrics.

Hotel bar-hopping is the sensible early-evening pastime for a young man in search of companionship and a smooth dance combo. The Del Monte bar is a good place to look for an opposite number and the bar atop the Palacio Tropical gets quite sociable too. Or you might try the Turquoise Room at the Club de Pesca, the Bohio Bar by the pool at Prado Americas or the Caleta Hotel Bar. Next to the post office on Costera Aleman is the Si y No, a drinking man's bar favored by Acapulquenos. El Presidente's snazzy Dali Bar, decorated with drawings by the Salvador of the same name, is always jammed.

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Since almost all the hotels are on full or modified American plan, you'll probably take most of your meals where you stay. Food is uneven in Acapulco. but you can eat well by choosing carefully. Locally caught fish such as huachinango, red snapper, robalo, sea bass, or pompano are excellent.

The hotels and better restaurants buy their food with a canny eye, and use only bottled water, so you need have little fear of the dread Aztec two-step (or Montezuma's Revenge), famed in song and story. But take it slow your first few days.

Unfortunately most of Acapulco's restaurateurs try to cater to their own impression of American tastes. Lots of steaks and baked potatoes, even though their beef is not the greatest for rare broiling and the potatoes don't bake well. If you can find well-prepared carne asada, a spiced, paper-thin seared beef dish, you'll know how good Mexican meat can be.

Funny, but Mexican restaurants are unknown in Acapulco. Not a single kitchen specializes in the great Indio-Hispanic dishes. You can get enchiladas, frijoles refritos (refried beans) or a Mexican combination plate at some of the hotels, but these are a concession to romantic palates and generally second rate.

For us, the most interesting place to dine well is La Rue, a French restaurant little frequented by tourists. Located in the top balcony of the jai-alai fronton, its first-row tables afford a perfect view of the Basque game. Play starts at nine P.M. and lasts until after midnight everynight of the week, almost all year round. One section of the balcony is a bar lounge where you might try the La Rue cocktail, which flavors gin with Pernod and cassis as well as with vermouth. The menu is primed with such starters as lobster bisque and burgundian snails with garlic sauce. As entrees the chef's suggestions (ours too) include frogs' legs provencale, chicken clemenceau or black pepper steak with cognac sauce. Don't resist the chocolate souffle for dessert. Although La Rue stocks French wines, we suggest that you also sample the Mexican vintages. Mexican whites and roses are very drinkable; the red table wines are not so hot.

People go to see and be seen at Armando's on the Quebrada. It's slick and chattery, with a tiny bar and a pianist from New Jersey rendering all requests. The food doesn't quite come up to the promise of the decor and menu, but the garlic soup is tasty and you can depend on artichokes vinagrette. Charcoal-broiled shrimp diable and the sea bass meunier are also worth your while.

El Presidente's Focolare is the most elegant dining spot in town. This is not the hotel's regular dining room (also excellent), but a separate establishment, with its own bar and terrace for before-dinner drinking. Los Calaveras, a trio of guitarist-singers in dove-gray charros and huge sombreros provide entertainment.

Langostinos a la Bordelaise, turkey tetrazzini, kidneys saute Armagnac Lawrence and carne asada Mexicana are among the better entrees, and game is served in season. Try the tasty Mexican cheeses for dessert and, if your appetite holds out, sample the superb selection of pastry. Follow it up with a pony of gentle Kahlua.

At the corner of Costera Aleman and Megellanos is the restaurant Fontana, where you dine on a New Orleans-style flagstone patio, Flamenco dancer Leonor Amaya, Carmen's sister and a fine artist in her own right, performs to the accompaniment of guitarist Jesus de los Reyes. The strolling Quartetto Iberia serenades your table with songs of sad Spanish love.

The hefty international menu includes huevos foo-yong and pollo frito estilo sur, otherwise known as southern fried chicken. There is a fine Mexican soup, caldo xochitl based on chicken with rice, avocado and hot peppers; and the fresh shrimps with coconut are delicious. The most soused dessert on the menu is platano caribe – bananas soaked in flaming rum and apricot brandy – and it's fun to watch as well as eat. Fontana is open only during the season.

Italian cuisine is authentically represented by Dino's, also on Costera Aleman and modeled on Alfredo's in Rome. And, finally, there are two simple sea-food restaurants right in town: Pipo's near the docks and San Telmo close to the Plaza on the Costera.

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Acapulco boasts two shows that everyone, excepting only the most blase, goes to dig – Holiday on Skis at the Club de Esquis, the town's water-ski headquarters, and the High Divers of Quebrada at El Mirador's La Perla. The ski show usually goes on about ten-thirty P.M. Reserve a front-row table, leaving your-self enough time to dine on the open-air candlelit terrace, overlooking the pool and the shimmering bay. It's a grand spot to set the mood for later that night. The complete dinner offers a choice of such entrees as oysters Rocke-feller, fillet of red snapper with brown butter and Mexican tenderloin tips. In the club's lounge, meanwhile, an Afro-Cuban band will be flaying away. Then, suddenly, the show begins. Colored fountains rise behind the pool; 28,000 watts of light brighten the bay; and the speed-boats and water skiers – forty-two of them international champions – flash by to stereophonic fanfares. At the climax, the star of the show soars silhouetted against the skyline, spread eagled under a huge white kite. (Ah there, Cypress Gardens.)

To glom the high divers, reserve a table on one of the narrow terraces at La Perla, set in the cliff below El Mirador. While you wait, pique your palate with Piyi, a small pineapple from which you sip rum mixed with fruit juices. For dinner, there's shrimp cocktail with champagne sauce, followed by red snapper fillet papillote, or curried chicken in coconut.

At La Perla there are nightly ten-thirty and midnight dives by the Clavadistas de Quebrada, a company of high divers headed by Raul Garcia, who in summer guards lives at an upstate New York resort. The performance begins with Raul, holding a blazing torch, running down a zigzag path to a narrow inlet, swimming it and then climbing the rock to the top diver's platform 136 feet above the water. He kneels to pray before a small shrine to the Virgin of Guadalupe, while his helpers ignite torches along the side of the cliff, illuminating the entire scene. The crowd is stony silent. The diver flexes his muscles – and off he goes into space. (When poetic Raul joined us for a drink later, he told us, "Every time I dive is the first time I kiss a girl. When I leave the rock I open my arms and when I enter the water I close her in them.") Minutes after his plunge, the clavadista stands at the entrance to the restaurant, palms outstretched for a tip.

The tides of night-spot popularity in Acapulco shift quickly by word of mouth. At Guadalajara de Noche, between Caletilla and the frontont, you can hear a mariachi with three fiddles, three guitars, a bass guitarron and trumpet. The hoarse, twangy, scratchy harmonies of the canciones rancheros and sones are enhanced by the snap-crackle-pop of an ancient sound system. A young lady wrapped in a flowered rebozo pulls on listeners' heart strings with Que Bonito Amor, while the bored charro-costumed mariachis play and talk to each other. Then, amid much hand clapping and yipping from the beer-drinking crowd, the troupe stamps out the jerabio tapatio and zapatado mexicano, the Mexican hat and shoe dances.

The Flamingos has the most carefully produced show in town, on at twelve-thirty and two-thirty A.M. The club is on the beach, and one opening number finds a group of near-naked dancers springing ashore from a primitive dugout, with ever-present torches aflame. The provocative dancing is reminiscent of Katherine Dunham – not surprising, since the show is directed and performed by her students.

Varadero boasts a variety show with a small line of misstepping chorus girls, corny comedians and an aging Mexican film idol who sings doleful songs. Los Cocoteros at Hotel Hamacas presents a group of jumping Mexican folk dancers at eleven-thirty P.M., and Club Bum Bum on Caleta Beach will be in action with a hot band and crowds of dancers.

Be sure to take the funicular from hilltop Prado Americas to dance at Club Cantamar, which serves dinner and has a floorshow during the season. Most hotels close their clubs by three A.M., but Chimy's Jazz Bar on Constituyentes, with Cuban drummer-owner Chimy laying down the beat, stays open until at least four A.M., and the Bambu on Costera Aleman carries on until all the customers have gone.

Remember Jose, the friendly cab driver who brought us in from the airport when we first landed in Acapulco? Well, we hopped into his cab a couple of nights later and asked him what he recommended in the way of offbeat night spots. He insisted we try Rio Rita's, where Acapulco's sophisticates go to see Real People. Most of the customers are working-class Mexicans, he said, with a jam of tourists arriving for the one-thirty-A.M. show. We went. At tables around the room sat dozens of girls of all colors and ages, waiting for someone to buy them a drink or ask them to dance or to retire into the cubicles behind the club where the major business of the establishment is consummated for anything from forty cents up. The band was off key, out of tune and too loud, but the rhythm section went wild and just watching the customers dance was a treat. Eventually spotlights pierced the smoky air, the dance floor cleared and the professional entertainers were on. "Anything goes" seemed to be the policy, as long as it was calculated to arouse. A Latin dance team, he in tight pants and vest, she in an undersized bikini, demonstrated how to make love during the rumba, mambo and cha-cha. The singer, an endowed and exposed young woman, bumped and grinded out her lyrics while circling the floor. With very slight encouragement, she stopped and shook out a few bars at our table while the crowd cheered and jeered. The star of the show was Talua, a tawny animal with black hair, black eyes and a wild body that went into leaping, writhing, shaking transport during the performance.

Casa Raquel, we later discovered, is a better-quality house up in the hills, where the madam herself, looking like someone else's mother, keeps her eye on the proceedings from her position at the bar near the cash register. There's dancing but no show – unless one makes private arrangements.

Moonlight cruises? They're called lunadas, and are yours for the hiring. Or, instead of cruising, you and your querida can anchor at tiny beaches like Playa Dos Amantes (Two Lovers) and swim, build a bonfire, eat, drink, dance, do whatever your brimming hearts desire.

When you take your leave of Acapulco, with your heart sinking slowly in the west, it may occur to you to analyze the unique charm of the place and try to pinpoint exactly what elements made you fall in love with it.

Could it have been that winning combination of tropical topography and Governor Barrero's excellent Eighteenth Century air-conditioning system? Was it the fishing? Was it the food? Was it the music and dancing in the wee hours of the morning? The swimming and lolling on bikini-brightened beaches? That moonlight cruise? The sensuous floor-shows in the clubs? The tropical dalliance and romance?

You may boil it all down to that single word, ambiente. Or you may simply and with a smile repeat to yourself, it swing, señor, it swing.