Acapulco is the coastal setting of a brief interlude in Perry Smith and Dick’s Mexican journey: a place where their projected life of fishing and freedom seems, for a few days, almost attainable. They arrive after traveling south from Mexico City through Cuernavaca and Taxco, meet Otto and the Cowboy, and spend their days aboard the Estrellita. Yet the stay has a fixed limit. Otto is due to return to Germany, and Dick insists that the pair must go back to Mexico City as their money runs out.

Route and Arrival

After spending a week in Mexico City, Perry Smith and Dick drive south, passing through Cuernavaca and Taxco before reaching Acapulco. The itinerary gives the city a place in a larger journey rather than presenting it as an isolated destination. Their travel is sustained in part by money and possessions acquired earlier: by this point, they have disposed of much of the property obtained during their Kansas City check-passing spree, and they have also sold binoculars and a gray Zenith portable radio to a Mexico City policeman.

Acapulco is where Dick meets Otto in a jukebox bar. Otto is a wealthy, middle-aged German lawyer vacationing in Mexico. He already has a companion, the young local man known as the Cowboy, who brings Perry and Dick into his circle. The Cowboy finds them a room in his uncle’s house and helps Perry improve his Spanish. Through these connections, the travelers enter a short-lived social world organized around hospitality, company, and days on the water.

The Fishing Circle

Each day Otto hires the Estrellita, a deep-sea-fishing boat. The Cowboy skipers the craft; Otto sketches and fishes; Perry baits hooks, sings, daydreams, and sometimes fishes. Dick, by contrast, generally does little aboard: he complains of the motion, lies down, and says he feels ill. His recurring discomfort makes the excursion a shared activity without making it an equally enjoyed one.

Perry sees the arrangement as more than a holiday. He tells Dick that this is how life ought to be, and his idea accords with the larger plan they had discussed: going to Acapulco, buying a fishing boat, and taking tourists deep-sea fishing. In Dick’s account of their earlier conversations, this projected business was part of what made the Mexico plan attractive. At the city itself, however, they are guests on a hired boat, not owners of one. Their temporary access to the life they imagined therefore depends on Otto’s money and generosity, not on a business they have established.

The clearest moment of shared excitement comes when Perry hooks a sailfish. The catch occupies the group for more than an hour as Perry reels it in, while Dick, Otto, and the Cowboy join in the excitement. After the boat returns to harbor, Otto commissions an old local photographer to take six portraits of Perry beside the fish. The photographs turn out brown and streaked, but the account singles out Perry’s expression of complete fulfillment. For a moment, the catch and the portraits give visible form to the happiness he had associated with the sea and with a different life.

Images and Unfulfilled Possibility

Otto also sketches Perry while he sings aboard the boat. The drawing notices an aspect of Perry’s expression that is not immediately apparent to others: a mischievous, almost childlike quality. Otto records Perry’s tattoos and gives him the sketchbook as a parting present; it also contains several nude studies of Dick. The portraits and drawings make the Acapulco interval unusually tangible. They preserve Perry and Dick as subjects being observed by someone outside their partnership, and they give Perry personal keepsakes from a stay that is already ending.

Perry’s participation in the sea remains limited. Although he daydreams about the water and talks about skin-diving, he does not swim. He is self-conscious about his legs and fears that others will react negatively to their appearance. The contrast is consequential: Acapulco offers a setting for his aquatic reveries, but his own discomfort prevents him from entering the water. His attachment to the imagined life is real, yet the episode does not erase the bodily and practical limits that separate the dream from its realization.

Departure and Narrative Significance

The end of the stay is apparent before the boat trip is over. Otto is leaving for Germany the next day, while Perry and Dick are to return to Mexico City at Dick’s insistence. Dick argues that their money is nearly gone and that selling their car will leave them with little. He proposes returning north, selling the Chevrolet, finding work, and saving money; he also imagines getting a garage job. Perry doubts that this plan will last. He expects Dick to spend any money from the car quickly on drink and women, an expectation that exposes the difference between Dick’s proposed practical future and Perry’s distrust of his ability to sustain it.

Acapulco therefore functions as both a temporary refuge and a test of the pair’s ambitions. Perry experiences the hired fishing boat, the catch, and Otto’s portraits as an unusually complete interval, while the circumstances that make it possible remain borrowed and temporary. The city brings the Mexico fishing plan into close view but also reveals its distance from reality: the travelers have neither their own boat nor dependable funds, and the people who make this interval possible are about to depart. Their return to Mexico City turns the apparent promise of Acapulco back into another passing episode on the road.