Yes, you really can’t drink the water

The Murphy who coined Murphy’s Law may have been an Irishman, but his is the one law that knows no national boundaries. If I hadn’t believed that before, a recent vacation to Mexico was all the proof I needed that — as Murphy’s Law states — if anything can go wrong, it will.

It began deceptively smoothly. Along with a couple of hundred others, I boarded a charter flight at Logan one early spring Monday morning. The weather in Acapulco was sunny and warm, unlike the 40-degree temperatures I’d left. The representatives of the tour company met the flight on its arrival, along with scads of unsanctioned Mexicans eager to carry our bags 20 feet to where we were to wait for buses to our hotels. I wanted to carry my own bags, but the man who met me was insistent, and I acquiesced. When he put them down, he demanded a tip.

“I have no pesos,” I replied.

“Take dollars.”

“All I have is a five.”

“I have change.” He pulled out 500 pesos. Five hundred pesos is roughly equal to 50 cents.

“Not enough,” I said.

He dug in his pocket and came up with three dollar bills. Sighing, I handed over the five, and he handed over the singles. “And the 500 pesos,” I said. He handed it over and ran to catch the next sucker. It was only then I remembered the fee I paid to the tour company was supposed to cover tips.

The Twin Dolphin Hotel in Acapulco was my home for the next week. My neighbors were college students on spring break, intent on the annual rituals of beer and partying early in the morning and late at night. The room itself was fine — almost. It lacked only a toilet seat. When I complained to the front desk, the clerk looked properly sympathetic. Yes, many of the rooms were missing a toilet seat. They didn’t have the parts. When they got them, they’d be sure to give me one.

Our first night in Acapulco came with an orientation lecture by the tour company’s representative. She treated us to a rum punch, the first of a seemingly endless stream of drinks during the week, and a slide show of the optional tours offered during the week. “You’ve probably all heard, when you go to Mexico, don’t drink the water, and you want to know if it’s true. Well, they do have strange bacteria here, but all of the hotels and the major restaurants serve purified water. If you stick to them, you can drink the water.” She was a native Bostonian, just like me. I believed her.

Silly me.

The Acapulco climate offers plenty of sun in the springtime. A little haziness in the morning burns off before noon. By 2 in the afternoon, it’s too hot to sit in direct sunlight. The hotels on the beach provide umbrellas under which you can park your chair or towel.

After a cold and snowy winter, this New Englander was a little out of practice with his bottle of sunscreen. A little too much coverage in some places and not enough in others led to interesting red, white and tan patches all over my back.

After two days of cooling my tropical thirst with rum punches, tequila punches and pina coladas, I decided to go on the wagon for a while. I drank the water. Just to hedge my bets, I also bought a small bottle of Pepto- Bismol at a pharmacy downtown.

At another pharmacy, I almost bought a bottle of sunscreen, but I changed my mind and put my wallet back in my backpack — I think. I rode with some friends back to their hotel and ordered a drink at the poolside bar. When I dug in my pack for my wallet, I couldn’t find it. I emptied out the pack — beach towel, paperback novel, camera, but no wallet. Fortunately, most of my funds were in travelers’ checks back at my hotel. But $50, my Visa card and the new wallet itself were gone.

I explained my predicament to my friends. They suggested contacting American Express for help. American Express, once informed I was not staying at the hotel where there office was located, was not very helpful, but did give me a phone number to report my credit card missing. My own hotel told me to report the wallet to the office of the Secretaria al Fomentario del Turismo, only a block away.

The secretaria is a small air-conditioned office full of unhappy Americans and lackadaisical employees. One of the latter heard my story and gave me a form to fill out. He told me it had to be typed up. I said I’d go back to the pharmacy to see if they’d found a wallet while the employees typed.

My high-school Spanish began coming back to me in my hour of need. I was able to have a nice little chat with the taxi driver, to whom I could give only the vaguest description of the pharmacy in question. He got me to it, and got the biggest tip I handed out that week.

It took me 20 minutes to communicate with the counter clerk at the pharmacy. I was crippled by his lack of understanding of English, and by my inability to recall the Spanish word for wallet. My Spanish was 10 years old, and rusty enough to squeak.

“The thing you put money in.” I made folding gestures and mimed putting something in a pocket.

“Yes?”

“Was there one here two hours ago?”

“Yes?”

I could see I wasn’t getting anywhere. The breakthrough came when the pharmacist understood my pantomime, and supplied the Spanish word for wallet. Once he understood what I was asking, he was able to tell me — no, no one had found a wallet. I left my name and hotel, and went back to the secretaria.

It was shortly before 3 o’clock, at which time the secretaria closed for a siesta. They hadn’t typed my report. I was told to come back at 6.

Instead, I went for an evening cruise around Acapulco Bay. I returned after 7. This time, I was served by a young man who seemed intent on proving that I had lost the wallet, that it hadn’t been stolen. “Does it make any difference?” I asked. I didn’t care, as long as it was gone. I just wanted to report it, in case someone turned it in. “Well, I should really send you downtown,” he told me, as if he were doing me a big favor, “but I’m going to help you.”

He made me repeat my report, a copy of which was in front of him. He asked some intelligent questions, then wrote a Spanish version of my story. I then followed him out of the office, down a corridor, and out the back door of the building, into a dark back alley. What now, I wondered? By this time, I was taking on a fatalistic attitude. Being mugged by a government official didn’t seem too far-fetched.

But my worries were groundless. We went across a side street to another office full of a babble of Spanish and three more Americans making similar reports. My interlocutor told me that filing the report was free, but I could tip if I wanted to. I didn’t need a translator for that one — if my wallet was ever found and I ever wanted to see it again, I would tip. Now I understood why he’d wanted me to think he was doing me such a favor.

Eventually, a young typist copied my report in sextuplicate on an old manual typewriter. I signed all six copies, and received one to take away.

The next morning, the Mexican bacteria, having bided their time until the moment was ripe, attacked my digestive system like so may little Pac-Mans. I downed slugs of Pepto-Bismol and bemoaned the missing toilet seat. Determined to enjoy my vacation, I eventually hit the beach, but stayed close to hotels. I pulled out my paperback Travis McGee novel, “Nightmare in Pink.” How appropriate, I thought, taking another swig of Pepto-Bismol.

Meanwhile, I had to report my credit card missing. The number American Express had given me to call was busy every time I dialed it. When I finally got through the next day, a man who spoke no English told me I couldn’t report the card missing without the credit card number, which I did not have. I could either call a long-distance number in Mexico City, or visit the local Bancomer, a bank that issues Visa cards.

My hotel couldn’t put through a call to Mexico City for me, so off to Bancomer I went. A professionally attired woman behind a desk remarkably like the one in my neighborhood bank at home informed me, again in Spanish, that unless I had the number of the card, there was nothing she could do. I tried to converse with her in my pidgin Espanol about limiting my liability, and about 24-hour phone numbers, but to no avail. She just shook her head.

Later, lying on my towel on the coarse sand of the beach, I thought back on the last few days, and smiled wryly to myself. So many things had gone wrong. What could possibly happen next?

That’s when we had the earthquake.

Oh, it was only a small tremor. The beach just jumped a little. The level of chatter rose and took on a worried tone for a moment. A nearby coed with a Long Island accent asked her girlfriend, “Was that an earthquake?” A trio of male collegians came out on the balcony of their hotel room and began screaming in mock panic.

It was the perfect capper to the week. Mother Nature attacked me from inside and out. By the time I returned home, I was never so glad to see a cool and damp Boston.