I've jumped way ahead in the timeline on this posting, in the interest of mixing it up a little. This was my most recent trip from about a month ago. (posting June '08)
My travels have tapered necessarily in the past year or two partly out of budgetary reasons (shifts in career and a relocation from east to west coast), but I haven't lost the bug.
Several of my dear old friends from school had arranged a trip to Mexico and had rented two houses on the beach in Tulum, on the Mayan Peninsula, about 70 min south of Cancun. It was to be Cary, his wife Sylvia, their 2-year old Tyler, my old RISD rooomate Sean, his wife Kelly, THEIR 2-year old Maya, Cary's childhood friend Sam, his wife Marie, THEIR one-year old TRIPLETS, and another RISD friend Shawn. And a nanny and another couple as well.
A month or two before, they called me to join them and incredibly, I balked at first. I had just moved to LA and was suffering from a lack of comfortable job flow and hence, cash. But fortunately they pushed for me and I stepped outside a myopic view of things to consider this: Much valued friends, each raising pre-schoolers, each mobilizing to vacation together in a foreign country, is a RARE and valuable moment to get on board with.
As it turns out I was asked to come work for my old company in NYC temporarily for an extended trip in April which helped easy the finances. So after I finished that stint, I mailed my fashionable blazers home to LA, went to the Gap to buy ONE pair of olive drab shorts, and jumped on a plane straight to Cancun.
Everyone else had arrived several days ahead of me, so when Cary and Sylvia picked my up in a slightly aged Toyota rental, they already had a visibly lower blood pressure than myself. Before heading to the beach house, we took a ferry over to Isla de Mujeres for a seafood lunch
Our beachhouse, above, was perfect. Rustic, breezy, quiet. Right on the beach of a lagoon. You could walk out about 5oo feet and only be waist high in crystal green waters that averaged about 90 degrees. You only needed to take a snorkel with you to see plentiful sealife in it's natural environment right out in front of the house.
The house was maintained by a paunchy and charismatic local named Ricky, and his wife Sol. They lived on the grounds in a small house with their three kids and completely made us feel welcome. Ricky would sometimes cook for us or run into town for beer. Always an entertaining presence, he would sometimes hang out for a beer or a margarita at our urging.
During midday, iguanas would wander the grounds looking for lunch. But my favorite animal was Pinto, the house puppy. He looked like the product of a Jack Russell Terrier and a beagle or something. Like some local doggie had scored a one-night stand with a visiting trendy doggie from el Norte during a previous rental .
Pinto was playful, attentive, and affectionate. (Sigh) I love Pinto. It was hard to leave him.
One of Tulum's points of interest are a vast network of hundreds of inland cenotes, or freshwater pools which you can swim or scuba in. Some, like the one we visited above, are dramatically subterranean, with vines snaking down a hundred feet from the surface. The pool is cool and reviving, but virtually bottomless.
We did a slew of snorkeling, kayaking, and even went to Xcaret, a sort of cultural Mayan Disney, but really it was nice enough just to sit in the shade and stare at the ocean for a few hours.
People back home later asked me if I got a deep dark tan. Hell, no. My sensitive Irish skin demanded I wear SPF 50 the whole time and stay out of the sun. It was pretty much 95 degrees F and sunny the whole time. And so humid I gave up trying to tame my curls after the first few hours.
As attractive as inertia was, Cary and Sylvia convinced me to take an overnight trip to Chichen-Itza, the main Mayan temple complex, a couple hours into the interior. We passed through a pretty nice colonial-era town called Valledolid (images below) but had no time to stop. Ancient Mayan architecture was calling.
At Chichen-Itza.We booked into a very nice hotel just at the edge of the temple grounds, so that we could walk over. Checking in at 4 pm, I heard the grounds close at 5pm, but I could probably slip in for free in the last hour. So I grabbed my sketchbook and ran over. The ticket people had already vanished for the night and I was able to get the below sketch done in the last hour.
When I returned to the hotel, I decided to look into the hotel bar. There at the semi-circular bar were about nine women having drinks. It turns out the women were all in a week-long holistic healing course of a sorts. They were on their last night of learning about healing ailments (emotional and physical, I guess) through sound vibrations.I gotta say, I love my friends and their families, but the chance to get my flirt on after a week of being the lone single guy was too much to resist. I had a couple of laughs and glasses of wine with the holistic ladies until Cary and Sylvia appeared at the door with Tyler, waiting to eat dinner. They told me to stay, but I couldn't abandon the friends who brought me along. We ended talking to the girls later anyway after dinner.
The page above is a photo of Cary floating at the edge of the shore snorting salt water through his nose repeatedly to cleanse his sinuses of city dirt. He was mumbling something about tribal Africans doing the same, or something like that. I didn't really follow him, but he did say it cleared things out pretty good.
It was a great trip, and we all want to reassemble there again next year, maybe even with more friends. I loved being amongst friends, watching their families grow. I guess the only time it really caught up with me was the last night at dusk ,when I was on the roof watching the sunset by myself. The night before, over mojitos and Cuban cigars, Sam's wife, Marie, went around asking people what they wanted for themselves the next year. I answered to return with someone special to share it all with.
