Mexico City Is Handing Out Free Health Insurance to Tourists

Mexico City is having an awfully tough time pulling in tourists. Why? Well, there's this little "Swine Flu" thing that people are all hung up on (you may also have heard of H1N1?) and it's keeping tourists away from the border.

But fear not, dear traveller, for the kind Mexico City Tourism Board has a solution for you: free health insurance.

That's right: as an incentive to increase tourism to Mexico, the city's tourism office teamed up with (well, "teamed" may be too nice a word) MAPFRE, a private insurance company.

Anyone staying at a Mexico City hotel is eligible for coverage, officials said, and can get help by dialing a call center, which will have attendants fluent in English, French, German, Portuguese and Spanish. A deductible will apply for some services, but officials did not provide details.

Obviously, in an ideal world, this isn't even an issue and everyone goes to Mexico City, doesn't contract H1N1 and gets to come home without having to pay any deductible or visit any Mexico City hospitals.

Well, actually, in an ideal world, my bosses call me into their offices and say, "Hey, you! You're great. Here's a two-week vacation to Cancun. Enjoy!" And then I go there and don't get H1N1 and actually get offered a job blogging about paradise from a cabana and never have to come back to America. But things don't always work out like we want.

So, um, yeah. The point I was trying to make is that it seems pretty clear -- based on the potential financial loss here -- that Mexico is safe now. Right? Or maybe not. Regardless, it's just the flu.

Japanese guy loves Mexico a little too much

My wife absolutely hated The Terminal. I mean, she wanted to walk out of the movie when we went to see it. Apparently, Hiroshi Nohara loved the movie so much, he decided to live it.

Nohara (aka, guy who apparently doesn't have a job back home) has been parked in the Benito Juarez International Airport for the last two and a half months living off donations. Why, you may ask? Well, the answer doesn't reside with Nohara.

"I don't understand why I'm here," he said through a visiting interpreter originally hired by a television station. "I don't have a reason."

There are the obvious drawbacks of living life in a Mexico City airport terminal, but at least he could've squatted in Terminal 1, with its Dunkin' Donuts, Cinnabon, 7-Eleven and Burger King. I know I could probably survive at least 120 days on some DD coffee, Whoppers and Slushees. Oh well, at least he can munch on Papa John's and Sbarro in T2.

Image from AP