golden leftovers

At my work, I talk to a variety of people about traveling abroad. Most are somewhat leery of Mexico. They hear stories about drug cartels or gang violence and shudder away from our southerly neighbor.

What I wish I could tell these doubters is that people make things pretty in Mexico. Alongside the litter and portable toilets are bright murals and bougainvillea. Taxi radios pump out cheerful reggae, while babies and men alike sport golden earrings and bracelets. Concrete houses are painted Pepto-Bismo pink and the Virgin Mary gleams on a dirty wall. Even death is gussied up in sharp mariachi suits and springy dresses. Things are colorful and happy despite the guys smoking pot on our doorstep or the Kevlar-clad policemen bearing AKs. I want to tell them that Mexico may not be tidy, but life there can be bright.

on the rocks

Boxing Day saw... Telum. It looks so demure, that word sitting there like that, when it's pronounced Tuh-LOOM, with that big BOOM ZOOM DOOM-sounding syllable. There were about ten iguanas (in an hour) and one thousand tourists.

I believe it was this day I started smacking Sam for photobombing.

Telum is Ruins By the Sea, which is all I really have to say about that, and ridiculously pretty, with aquamarine water and tropical but manageable vegetation under the big blue sky, plus rocky ruins.

*

It also hosted more than usually aggressive iguanas and peeps piling into the sea.

*I apologize for all the photos, I can't hardly help myself. The blue! The green! The rocks!

an homage

My mother invited her brother on our venture as a RM-Spanish speaker-other driver (Mom, who dislikes driving on a good day on safe stateside roads, flat out REFUSES to get behind the wheel in Mexico)-easygoing sort of travel companion. The downside? Muter now had an impeccable example of a patient, polite, ideal fellow traveler/guest to hold up to our weary, slovenly, familial-sort-of-lazy-bickering idea of travel.

But other than that, it was great having him along. He listened to everyone's rants and raves and long-winded opinions and offered easy miniature Spanish lessons, anecdotes from the mish ("Speaking of Mexico and something crazy happening..."), translation, and overall gameliness.

The guy was up for whatever whenever. He gave us thoughtful Christmas gifts and treated us to churros. He was quite entertaining and an interesting counter to our inside jokes and modus operati. He'd read to us about Cain and barter very poorly.

Being an entirely different color than the rest of us, he never touched the sunscreen. We marvelled when he ate bagfuls of cheddar-jalapeno popcorn and "Limon"-flavored chips single-handedly. We admired his scope and depth of football knowledge and enjoyed his delight at BYU's bowl game success. (Meanwhile, the Mexican announcers gamely tried to narrate this bewildering American sport and showed a single replay nine times straight.) We wondered that a statement so meaningless to us (e.g., "Urban Meyer is quitting") could elicit such an excited response from the ordinarily calm guy ("Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa?!?!")

On the whole, we enjoyed having him very much and feel bad for taking advantage of his amiability.

simply having

Christmas Day was Cozumel. I haven't the faintest idea what Cozumel
actually means, but I do know that it's about an hour ferry ride east of
Playa, if by ferry you mean boat. For some reason when I think ferry I
have this mental image of a SF streetcar on the water, but that's probably
not correct; I've ridden five ferries now, and they were all just boats.

At any rate I felt it was a good-sized boat-ferry until we pulled up in
Cozumel alongside the hulking, behemoth atrocities that are cruise ships.
Oh my word. Huge. They are the skyscrapers of the sea.

At length we rented a Secret Service suburban with a dashboard reminiscient
of the Enterprise's. It purred past yellow and teal shops to drive south
through the jungle until we came upon our own private beach.


Conch shells, sun-tanning (or burning in my pale case), wading, sleeping,
reading, snorkeling... our only interruption was a man telling us not to touch
the coconuts. Oh, and the peacocks.

Harken, all you doubters: I went snorkeling. In the actual ocean. (Within
buoys, granted, but it's true.) I paddled about on the surface of the Atlantic
getting stung by tiny jellyfish and peering down through the green at
ridges of sand and seaweed. And, occasionally, clusters of FISH, who chill
at their metal hangouts with their stripey friends, bobbing with the tide.
(Rumors of an eel proved unfounded.) No sharks, and I only freaked out
once. SUCCESS.

Then I ate about a dozen shrimp fajitas under chameleon lights for
Christmas dinner, and also pickled jalapenos with chips. And then
CHURROS on our way to catch the ferry-boat back. More like queue to
catch the ferry back, actually, because the 7:00 Playa trip is a popular
one, and the blustery line stretched the length of the dock.

We should have realized then that this was a very special edition of the ferry:
the Choppy Waters Packed with People Ferry, where they hand out blue
plastic barf bags into which you can empty the contents of your stomach
free of charge. (The man directly behind us took advantage of this opportunity
more than once.) Our party, thanks to Dramamine, declined to participate in
this unexpected extra.

However, still having our dinners with us did not deter us in the least from
getting another round of churros once on shore, and the holiday crowds
were thick and lively as we wandered home.

Best Christmas ever? I think so.

in a cave with a box of scraps

Apparently a decade or so ago they found a big ceynote in Playa (courtesy
of the dinosaur-killing meteor!), which they promptly turned into a restaurant
called Aluxe. After finding it on a billboard, we just called it Ze Cave, and
decided to spend an evening underground.



And so it's a CAVE, that you can eat a candlelit dinner in. A cave, with
genuine stalagm/tites and pools and fossils and darkness. You feel like
Gollum and secretly expect dinner to be half of a wriggling fish, but no,
it's all crystal wineglasses and jenga fries.

C'est awesome!

ruined

Another day, we went to Chich'en Itzá.




I took: one million pictures and a half.



This is a very cool if sweaty place. We hired a Mayan (but English-speaking)
guide who showed us around, explaining religious symbolism to us and
calling us "amigos."

He stowed a binder of pictures in his back belt, which he occasionally
pulled out to show us a picture of Ceynote Sagrado or something. He
was very nice and informative and helpful as we traipsed about embroiled
in a photo war, the results of which can unfortunately be seen on the Book
of Face.

I like the idea that these stone structures have stood in the jungle for a
thousand years or so, watching equinox after equinox go by. Weather and
lives and civilizations have all blown through, but here these rocks are still,
and someone put them there. Some things we do are so fleeting, but the
work of one stone cutter has lasted a millennium.

Eventually, it too will erode away, overtaken by ocean or earth. For now
though the ruins echo another time, another life, and people come from
all over the world to listen.

christmas... eve? ish?

Another day, we went to ze beach. I accumulated about a pound of sand
in my suit and hair (as per usual) and wore SPF 50 sunscreen. It was
about this day that my hair started being ridiculous, and it persisted in
its beserkity for the remainder of the trip. I for the most part let that
mess atop my head be, but it looked like crap. Just a disclaimer.

Anyway, that day is being very vague for me at this time, but I do seem
to recall eating at an Argentine joint where Tim's lemonade left and nary
a few empanadas were consumed.

And in case you are unfamiliar with Argentina, the restaurant provided
a collage of All Things Argentine: the country that brought you Che,
Maradona, and mate all.

¡ xelha !

First full day, we went to Xelha. Nothing like an X to make pronunciation
intimidating, but no need to worry, it's "Shell-haw." Xelha is a massive
ceynote (or maybe lots of leetle ones) that eventually became acquainted
with and overcame by the sea.

*Note: A few weeks later, during a rare conscious moment in my Biology
class, I learned that the ceynotes were formed by a giant meteor colliding
with the earth! But not just any meteor, oh no. It was in fact the very
same meteor that killed the dinosaurs! That massive dinosaur-slayer of
a meteor formed the ceynotes of Xelha!*

65 million years later, Xelha is a snorkel-fest of tourism and iguanas. 22,
I think the day's final Iguana Tally was. As for the shnorkeling, I should
not have worried my phobic little head about it. Sea life was scarce and
small, and after the first few inhalations of seawater, I was flippering around
the inlet, grinding my teeth on the snorkel and peering through foggy goggles
at the turquoise murk.

Snorkeling is very quiet, the only sound your own Darth Vader-like breathing.
I mostly just kind of floated there, bobbing with the waves (unless there wasn't
a fellow snorkeler in my immediate line of goggle vision, in which case I panicked).
I saw some sand, a rock, and a lot of water, as well as four fish. I did not drown,
nor did I get eaten by a shark, so it was all in all a very successful morning.

I may or may not have spent most of the afternoon in a hammock, but later we
went tide pooling as well as to ogle the manatees. I've always loved manatees.
In real life they're very snuffly and whiskery and HUGE, and prompted many
a manatee joke the rest of the trip.†

It was a lovely day, and then we drove back to Playa, dueling with our takeaway
snorkels, and got rained on roaming Fifth after Media Luna dinner.
____________________________________

† Sean Manatee, The Manatee in the Iron Mask, He-Manatee, Oh-the-Hugh-
Manatee, A Manatee For All Seasons... I'm sure you can only imagine.

no habla español. no.

As someone who as of last week spoke negative Spanish, the Mexican
adjustment was difficult. Upon arrival, my brain went promptly into
Chinese. (Where were you Thursday during the final?!) This resulted
in a tangle of Changlish every time I opened my mouth. The first day
there I asked Jay, "你 tango huestra 吗?" and thanked the Mexican
waiter with a "谢谢!" Absolutely no good at all.

Needless to say, I learned no Spanish whatsoever. However, I didn't let
that get in the way of watching telenovelas! We watched them without
a clue what actors were saying and "translated" at our leisure the
stranglings of Diego the Stalker. I aspire to grow a lady-mullet per the
likes of Veronica Castro's. 非常 bonita!

and then...

We stayed in Playa del Carmen ("The Beach of Carmen?"), maybe an
hour south of Cancun, driving Mexican-style. It is the land of Beetles,
tequila, and corrugated metal. The buildings are all concrete and painted
in vivid shades of yellow, pink, orange or blue, with shops declaring their
wares from scripted walls ("Tacos y Internet"). Cities are surrounded
by a dense brush--if I threw a rock at this jungle wall it would undoubtedly
come bouncing back. And of course there is the ocean, but more about
that later.

We stayed in a Canadian's condo and occasionally ventured out to wander
Fifth Avenue with the throngs of other Christmas tourists in various stages
of beach wear and skin cancer.

I don't know why we tourists persist in wandering Fifth Avenue in face
of all the harassment we receive. "You want to buy jewelry?" "Almost free,
amiga, almost free." "Come see my shop--best prices in town!" I've been
addressed as miss, senorita, hermana, lady, ma'am, amiga, and once,
unforgettably, as a honeymooner, which gave my brother a minor stroke.
BUT. It is fun.

There is so much to see: restaurants of all types, from Libanese to Mayan;
the other tourists, in all their beachy glory; the body-painted Mayan in
front of the cigar shop, decked out in feathers; the WorldWalk PeaceTour
twins, the artisan spray-painter who finishes his masterpieces by setting
them on fire;

the shops full of blankets, kitschy jewelry, lewd T-shirts, jersey knock-offs,
figurines... the list goes on and on and on.

We'd go haggle for Barce kits or stuff our faces at a sit-down, explaining
our teetotaler ways to the maitre'd. Sam bought a straw fedora at a
Cuban cigar joint. Braided mannequin heads on stakes indicate "Braid
Raps" service. Salespeeps line the streets proffering tickets to various
locations and venues. (We skipped out on Coco Bongo, as two of the three
highlighted performers are dead.)

Sometimes I wonder why all shopping everywhere isn't like this. A little
chaos to liven up your trip to Wal-Mart? Something shady yet awesome?
Vicious haggling? Money well spent.

vacay

So, over Christmas la familia and I took a three-pronged flight in a
roundabout way south of the border. After our red-eye to Charlotte trying
to sleep on the tray tables, we ate some bagels, napped, and, at long last,
arrived in sunny Cancun.

Psych! It was raining. Pouring, actually. Buckets and buckets. We
navigated flooded roads in our Chrysler ark and counted accidents,
wide-eyed. This only a 20% chance of rain!

But we made our rental car way without incident, windshield-wiping
down the highway lined with billboards that featured people forging
lifelong friendships with marine mammals and too many upside-down
exclamation points.

Mexican drivers give the Chinese a run for their money, except they let
the gringos drive. Cones in the way? Just hop out and move them. Bit
of a squeeze? Reach out and fold your mirror in. Car trying to cut in?
Too bad, sucker. They're a little easier on the horns, though. And that
first sodden drive was the worst--upwards of ten cars smashed on the
median in forty miles, despite the carefully worded plea of a traffic sign:
"Drive Carefully When It Is Raining."



So began another Traveling Kate Adventure--"Tripping Over Random
Crap: Mexico Edition."