Fun To Look Back At Prices

Don't forget the Especial had a nice living room, separate bedroom with a double bed, a shower and a bidet!

Ferrocarriles Nacional stated a couple of times in the last ten years that any thought of carrying rigs on flat cars is "absolutely off the table". For laughs I priced shipping a car by freighter from Ensenada to Salina Cruz.

Three weeks minimum. No passengers $4,200 dollars NOT including loading and unloading. No damage insurance. Then Aduana demands an existing valid TIP.

Mexico's ferries are flat bottom Black Sea Danish hand-me-downs. In any sort of sea they ride like an LST with the aft end corskscrewing and bow slamming.

Mexico sez Pemex is holding down the price of DIESEL MARINA, but we'll have to wait and see. Almost all rural grids are powered by ancient railroad locomotive engines pushing one megawatt generators.

Looking for what Conasupo morphed into after ten transitional phases?

TIENDAS DICONSAS

Franchise markets with apoyo (help) with taxes and utilities and mass buying prices from proveedores (warehouses).

CABINA ESPECIAL. Up toward the bow. Several bunks, big writing table. B-a-a-a-a-d-d-d-d ride in choppy seas. Diversion -- the bar, the restaurant, and and watching dolphins cavort in the bow wake...

We used to ride the ferry (with a VW Squareback) from Cabo San Lucas to Puerto Vallarta on a very regular basis. It was SO cheap, we once scored the Especial cabin, and with the VW it was less than $20. We'd think nothing of going to PV for the weekend while staying in San Jose del Cabo. Now???? Same boats, way different pricing!

In the 60's there were three principal grades of gasolina

Gasolmex (Green Pump)

Mexolina (Red Pump)

Pemex Cien (yellow pump) 45 US cents per gallon and = to regular grade US gasolina

Diesel price was = to US seventeen and 14/100ths per gallon

Only VOCHITOS 36 & 40 hp Volkswagen engines could tolerate Gasolmex. Mexolina wasn't much better, the VW engines had FIVE and ONE HALF to one compression ratio. The fuel was barely tolerable interior Mexico at 5,000 + feet altitude.

At sea level the distributor ignition timing had to be set back so far that the engine thought yesterday was tomorrow. Overheating, poor mileage or face nickle size holes in pistons.

In the sticks even impoverished hippies had coins jingling in their pockets because rural tiendas had little to buy. Hippies and surfers blew their money on tsunamis of cerveza....and other intoxicants...

Buy a quarter inch thick "bifsteak" then beat it to death with a hammer because the meat was tougher than a Goodyear sidewall.

Buy a MARQUETE of ice (about 80 pounds) for under a dollar. Reeking of ammonia.

The ferry trip aboard the Puerto Vallarta cost me eqvt of 51 dollars. Truck, 17' trailer and a cabina. tax included from San Lucas BCS to Puerto Vallarta. Jal.

There was no road from Cerro de Ortega Mich to La Mira Mich then. Just a 4WD grade brecha for a few KM to the X villages. Travel from Tepic to Morelia, back down to the coast then southward to Acapulco took 4-5 hard driving days. A hundred billion baches (potholes) no topes they would have been ridiculous when dodging pothole at 20 mph.

Roadside restaurant. Comida Corrida about sixty cents. Scrawny chicken leg in sauce. Rice, beans, saucer of shredded cabbage, onion and maybe carrot. Agua fresca to drink. Enough food for 1/4th of a person. Everything on the plate got rolled up into tortillas. Tortillas the filler-upper.

Nescafe was dark brown bitter powder. Mixed into waster so hard it could stand upright without the cup. It went down h-a-r-d even laced with La Lechera sweetened condensed milk. You stomach a 2nd cup -- refills were unknown. You had to buy a 2nd cup. That's when I learned the secret of eating chocolate for the morning shot of caffeine.

First trip to Puerto Angel towing a trailer...

Hippies pounding on my door.

"Hey can we score like a couple of pounds of beef and like lettuce and stuff if you have it?"

Bacon
Eggs
Cheese
Csndy
Whisky, beer, gin, vodka, tequila, black pepper,

Know anything about Volkwagen generators?"

Say, that sure dmells g-o-o-d,,,

In the 50's and 60's Diesel fuel was cheaper, if I remember correct high octane gasoline was one peso per liter, the next lower was 85 cents and Diesel was 65 or 75 that I am not sure since my dad and sister had gasoline vehicles, I do remember that you did not want to go behind a Diesel powered bus or truck, those fumes stank and sometimes you would get a fine black spray from the exhaust on the windshiel that had to be cleaned with gasoline, otherwise you ended with a nasty smuged window the Dollar was steady at 12.50 pesos for one Dollar until the 1982 devaluation, today it is quotedd in the news at 20 pesos per dollar, and everything is going up in price.

navegator

I'll go back even farther, the 60's. In the Air Force in Abilene, Texas, they where having gas wars back then, 0.17 cent per gallon. And now, here we are up in Utah paying #3.15 per gallon. And some little towns are even higher. Like $3.26 where I'm at right now.

Remember in the mid 1970's driving a diesel Peugeot all over Mexico. Fill up under $2. Yes, fill up, not per liter or gallon.

I used to pay one peso for one liter of premium fuel, since it was my dad's borrowed car or sister's and the 75 cents fuel would cascabelear (knock) just accelerating on a level street and going easy on the gas pedal, they always used la gasolina buena, today one litro de gasolina is 20.10 pesos at the BP station down the road, a lot of things have changed some for the better others have gotten worse.

navegator

Time to take you back to the 70's. I had just joined the Air Force (drafted), pay was 288 per month, gas was 45 cents per gallon, and I just bought a brand new 1973 Dodge Tradesman 200 van for 4200 dollars and proceeded to deck out the van inside and out. Custom vans were the thing in the 70's. I don't know how I survived, never had money, ate at the chow hall, and slept in a barracks room. Now I have a wife, kid, house, three paid off cars, and gas is 2.63 per gallon.

Yep. Stuff in the mid sixties was embarrassingly cheap. In agricultural area it was quite possible to buy fruits and vegetables for two for a week for forty cents.

Gas. "I don't trust it" one Zapoteca told me as she dumped an armload of firewood on the table next to her clay stove.

Beer. Gallo from Guatemala is now in many Mexican supermarkets. I am not a beer drinker but on some especially torrid summer afternoons I will chill a six-pack of Leon Negro to the verge of freezing then let it trickle down the back of my throat, burning and tingling. Anything from the USA these days is exotic therefore foreign beer is becoming common. Michelob Light, yuck.

Trucks parked off highway asphalt have always gotten my attention. Possible to encounter costales (sacks) of superb oranges from Veracruz, cabbages, and saladita tomatoes at incredible prices.

About the best thing to creep south of the border is Kirkland Signature toilet paper. I used to laugh at Petalo and Regio. Crack rude jokes. "Docena Revoluciones" 12-revolutions of 1/4" thick "papel para impaques (gasket paper) and the roll was done. Loading my RV I used to throw in cases of USA single layer toilet paper. Jeez they were heavy and lasted forever. Pass them out as gifts. Talk about raised eyebrows. But like my gifts of Tabasco sauce, at the end of my stay there would be the inevitable "Bring More!"

Jesus well remembers the success I had with CHEVRON TECHRON gasoline additive. Our area has not seen extraneous regular gasoline only the now much more expensive Pemex Premium. He wants me to ship a case via ESTAFETA but I cannot imagine the cost. For the summer I'm hiding out within day travel to my US specialists MDs. It is a different world up here. Mexico yes. Traditional Mexico, absolutely not.