In general, what you own with a (non deeded) timeshare is a non-cancelable 40 years or so contract. Which yes you can rent, or sell, but since you are not a real owner of the property the resell value is always very low.

In general that contract gives you the Right To Use 7 nights in the resort every year, in exchange of a mainteinance fee that you are obligated to pay every year for 40 years!

Since none really wants to spend it’s holidays in the exact same place for the following 40 years, timeshares usually need to be accompained by a membership of a Timeshare Exchange Company, which of course has a membership fee, and an exchange fee.

So, how much does a time share cost?

Lets remove the ads and the fancy words, what you really buy is resort nights at bulk:

7 days for 40 years are: 280 nights paid in advance plus annualities.

Lets do the math. I’m going to take as an example the info they gave me ina recent sales presentation in Vallarta:

-Upfront payment 10,800USD (that is once they reduced 40% off the original price).

-Issue of the contract 540USD

Now what they didn’t tell me untill I asked for:

Every year you have to pay:

-Mainteinance: 350USD

-Interchange Company membership fee: 75 USD

-Exchange fee: 160USD

So the total you have to pay is: 10,800+540+40x(350+75+160)=$34,725USD

I did stay on that resort for $139usd, so for the $34,725usd I can get: 250nights!!!!!

That means that in real terms I’m paying 250nights and I get 280nights in return

That is 10% discount over the retail Price!!!! for buying 280nights bulk paid almost in advance!!!!

That is just insane.

Please do the math before you buy a Timeshare

A desktop or even a laptop is not competly needed for the daily average use today, let’s inspectmy daily activities:

-Emailing can be done from any of the excelent webmail services that exist today, I have been using Gmail for the last 4 months. It’s fun to see how the world is upsode down, I rememeber some years ago when we were trying to use webmail service like hotmail from the desktop email client like Outlook in Windows… Now I do the opposite, I fetch my messages from my domains to Gmail, and manage everything from the web.

-Productivity Suites: Lots of people uses Microsoft Office, many have moved to OpenOffice.org (LibreOffice), and some other use many other options, Now this huge applications are NO LONGER NEEDED, Most of the daily work can be done in the excelent Web Applications like http://www.zoho.com or of course Google Docs (http://docs.google.com).

-Photo Management can be hosted on free services like FLICKR or http://picasaweb.google.com

-Many Diffrent files can be hosted on free services like Dropbox or UbuntuOne.

There will be of course several caveats -that I’ll be bloggin here-, but the benefits are huge:

-I can relay on inexpensive -very light- hardware, In fact one of the resons for this movement is to prepera myself for the adoption of a tablet next year, now it does not matter wich one, because anyone will be compatible with what I need (maybe even the iPad).

Let’s move on.

But I had a headache with all this traveling issue, so let’s better move from the airport to the City.

Relax and take it easy.

In the morning I bought a bottle of Tequila Don Julio Añejo in a High-End  Supermarket in Mexico, which I’m taking to a friend during this trip. I paid a total of $32.50USD, which includes $2.50USD of Value Added Tax and $10.00USD of Special Liquor Tax.

So the Tequila without taxes was just $20.00USD.

Well, I’m in the airport right now, the same bottle is priced $49.00USD !

OK, they charge no Tax and Duty but they just double the price.

Guanajuato Tunnels

Last weekend I went to Guanajuato.
It’s a small mining city in the state of the same name, it’s been recognized as World Heritage Site by the UNESCO.

The city has a complete network of underground roads. And the main one was originally a river.

On top, there is a very rich architectural collection from the Colonial  Spanish era.

Some of the more famouse sites in Guanajuato are:

• The University of Guanajuato
• The Alhóndiga de Granaditas
• The Juarez Theater
• The Plaza de la Paz
• The Santa Cecilia Castle
• The many mining sites…

And one it’s main attractions is the Mummy Museum, but the mummies here were created by a natural mummification process derived from the elements an temperature conditions of the zone.

The city holds many cultural festivals, including the world famous Festival Cervantino, and as a turistical town is full of good places to eat and drink.