Manaña Doesn’t Mean Tomorrow

About the time David Kindopp was fleeing Mexico and its crazed bureaucracy, I was making my first babysteps into that magical, mysterious country. Nearly 25 years later, I remember little of that experience and the rest of my journey around the outskirts of the United States. However, I do remember the near comedic border crossing adventure in a taxi from Del Rio, Texas to Ciudad Acuna, Mexico and that was just a day trip. I can only imagine the immense patience that David must have had to use up during his two years trying to start a business in the country.

Manaña Doesn’t Mean Tomorrow

In 2011, Kindopp put the journals of his adventures in Mazatlan to good use and authored Manaña Doesn’t Mean Tomorrow. This is an amazingly exciting book that, in David’s paraphrased words, reads like a novel but is the true account of his trials and tribulations during that time.

The story begins in 1989 when the author sails his 40 foot sail boat (in the book it’s 40 – on his website it’s 50), or ketch, to Mazatlan, Mexico on the shores of the Sea of Cortes, by way of San Diego and Cabo. On previous visits, Kindopp is promised help in starting a charter business catering to tourists. The two doing the promising, and falling through at every opportunity, are Federico and Jorge.

Kindopp starts running charters right away but soon the Mexico Bureaucratic Machine catches up with him. Two years later, he abandons all hope and heads back to the United States. Along the way, David provides us with an entertaining look at life in Mexico and his love life in paradise.

His boat, the Cosas Buenas (Good Things) is parked at the Flota El Dorado, a marina owned by Jorge. Often, Kindopp lives in the parking lot of the Flota in a trailer he dragged down from the U.S. on one of two return missions to obtain forged paperwork. The Flota is mismanaged and is often without water and electricity.

It’s not all bad. David befriends Roberto, son of Federico, and the two find ways of extracting money from tourists without alerting the bribe hungry authorities. Tours to exotic beaches, sales of self made Mazatlan tourist guides and even visits to brothels are all on the docket.

However, it’s Kristi, a beautiful tourist from Utah, who steals Kindopp’s heart, and many pages, through most of the book. This romance is an interesting side story that doesn’t quite take over the book entirely.

My Take

I bought the Kindle version of Mañana Doesn’t Mean Tomorrow: A Wild & Crazy True-Life Adventure In Mexico for just $7. The book is worth that price and more. Don’t forget, that is just $7 with Kindle – no delivery charge (delivery is immediate), no taxes and no gas and time driving to the book store. It was simply a story I couldn’t put down.

The Amazon reviews were mostly favourable but some still didn’t understand that back in 1989 there was no household internet access in the United States, let alone Mexico. Kindopp states at the start of the book that most of his issues with the authorities in 1989 would probably easily be solved today with a simple e-mail.

What this book did for me, and probably does for a lot of readers, is started the adventure gears spinning in the back of my mind. This is a regular guy, in his 40’s, with little money in his pocket, that sailed to a foreign country and did everything he could to survive. All the while, despite the failed attempt, he was living in paradise and living in the moment. What is there not to like about that?

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