Rainy day at the beach

Today we planned to take an excursion to Tulum, but the weather forecast this morning led us to change our plans. It started raining yesterday, and the rain can come down pretty hard here. Fortunately it's still reasonably warm out and it's not raining all the time. But anyway, we didn't want to spend an hour and a half to get to Tulum only to discover that we'd arrived at the time of a deluge. So we made other plans.

It was almost sunny first thing in the morning, so I decided to go for a walk while Alla went to yoga. I put on my "rashguard" shirt (intended to get wet) and my board shorts before setting out barefoot to walk down the shore to Blue Dolphin beach, where the locals hang out south of us. I had almost the entire beachfront to myself as I headed down, the humid wind pushing on my back. As I neared my goal, raindrops began pecking at me and I considered turning around. But why should I? The rain felt good.

By the time I did turn around, the rain fell heavily, blowing into my face. I wished I'd brought my dark glasses, not to protect me from the sun but from the heavy raindrops. I made a visor of my hand and started walking faster. To my right, I noticed that the waves now had texture. The water rippled in the wind, and many shapes and colors tumbled over the waves' basic geometry. "Ooh," I thought. "This is new, and I like it."

I got back to the hotel way too soon, so I continued about the same distance in the other direction, figuring I'd prefer to finish by walking downwind anyway.

As I returned, I passed four intrepid women doing yoga on the beach, and a fisherman trawling his baited hook over and over in the surf. He told me it's possible to catch big fish here, but he had nothing to show today. I came home wet, completely wet, head-to-toe wet as if I'd been swimming. It was great.

Later, we went to have lunch at Pescadillas el Galeón, a fish joint recommended by a local we met at another tiny lunch spot. This place is so basic, it has no electricity and no running water, though we didn't lack for water in general because rain washed down heavily on their thatched roof. I had come dressed for walking in the rain, so I had no camera with me. I felt sorry about my lack of camera when we got there, because the place is totally cute. Cooks worked over open fires while a worker kept the woodpile stocked and the waiter kept the tables. I wasn't terribly impressed by the food, but would love to show you a picture of the place. Here's somebody else's photo, courtesy of Trip Advisor.

We worried that today might be boring, but we're having an excellent last day.

Cheap fun in Cancun

Here we are in Mexico, at the usual place because we can’t avoid it after an unfortunate timeshare purchase some years ago. The timeshare company keeps trying to convince us to buy upgrades, their theory being that by throwing good money after bad, we might be able to make our situation somehow less unpleasant.

Honestly, we enjoy their efforts to sell us upgrades because they take us to the fancy new resort, feed us, tell us outlandish stories about what we ought to buy, and then release us to enjoy the beach, the river and other attractive features of the place. Today’s sales guy had already fulfilled his November quota and had enough in the bank that he doesn’t even have to sell a thing inDecember. I suppose the bosses knew that we never say yes, so they sic’d their smarmiest, most effective agent on us. I begged him to let us off the hook early so we could all just go out and play, and he responded by telling us how f***ed we were (he actually used that word) because we’d bought a perpetual timeshare and were obligated to keep paying annual fees to his company for the rest of our lives and the lives of our heirs as well. By paying a bunch more money, he offered that we could get into something with possible resale value.

I maintained that having been duped (actually, I used his other word) by his company once, I had no intention of trusting them in another deal even more complex than the first. Finally, he pointed us toward the door and told us to get onto the van back to our home resort. I checked with the doorman, made other arrangements, and we went to the beach. We had a very nice day at Tres Rios.

We swam in each of the two main swimming pools, floated down the river, sat on the beach, and then floated down the river some more. When we finally went back to check on transportation back to our home resort, we worked out an agreement to go back at 5:00. With the extra time, we went out to lunch, swam in yet another pool and floated down the river a couple more times. I didn’t take a single picture of any of this stuff.

This evening we went to the welcome party at our home resort. Most of the guests forgot to bring their invitations, which turned out to be lottery tickets. I had ours however, and won second prize: a choice between a not-too-bad T-shirt and a garish Mexican-style hat; both made for tourists. I didn’t want either of these prizes, but intended to pick the T-shirt because I could imagine using it. From the audience, however, Alla caught my eye. She really wanted the hat, and now she’s ecstatic. I’m surprised. I couldn’t imagine that anybody would want it, but, well, she did. As she told me when we were dating, “I’m not crazy, but I like hats.”

¿Quién es más macho?

We’re in Cancún, on our annual winter break. We keep coming back to the same resort, which plays a lot of the same games year-to-year at the welcome party. I usually manage to volunteer for one thing or another because I enjoy getting up on the stage and acting silly in front of a lot of people. This year I got picked for a game that involves drinking tequila and behaving in other ways like a stereotypical Mexican. Oops. As many of my readers know, I don’t drink. I didn’t know what game we’d be playing when I volunteered, but I figured it out in time discreetly to tell the guy who seated me onstage that I’d like him to bring me a glass of water when he brought everybody else tequila. And I promised to put on a good show.

When the next guy came onstage, I shook his hand. Any time men gather in Belarus they all shake each other’s hands. It would probably happen in Texas, too. But this group of North American tourists didn’t take to that custom, and I had a hard time getting Contestant #2 to notice my hand held out to him. He didn’t extend the courtesy to Contestant #3 and the handshaking stalled. By Belarusian tradition, each newly-arriving man should have shaken the hands of each of the men already present. In this group of Americans, it was every man for himself.

Last time I played this game I lost, in part because the audience picks their favorite and most of them realized that I wasn’t drinking. If they hadn’t seen me negotiating with the staff about my beverage, they certainly noticed that my drink didn’t seem strong to me. This time, when we got to the drinking part of the show, I acted cautious and afraid about drinking (while I sniffed to make sure I really had water) and then I pretended to struggle with swallowing my drink. I also had to ride an imaginary horse, say a few things in Spanish, yodel and dance around a hat. All the while, I remembered to pay attention to the audience.

I still had to encourage the audience when it came to voting by applause. The other contestants just stood there and took however much applause they got. I milked the crowd with gestures of come-on, victory and conspiracy. They may not have wanted to vote for me, but they had to because they couldn’t ignore my encouragement. Since I was the only one asking for their approval, I got plenty. Since that evening, everybody greets me, frequently by my stage name. I am Juanito, the most macho man in Cancún.

Fun with English

When I first knew Alla, she claimed that her English improved after she’d had a glass of wine. By now, her English is pretty steady, but I got a good laugh after she had a glass of chardonnay on an empty stomach and then called the hotel operator. We’re still in Cancun, and Alla now knows a little Spanish. The operator answers the phone in Spanish, so Alla responded “Buenos dias… Buenas tardes.” Realizing it was after 6 pm, she added “Buenas noches.”

From there she proceeded to offer the operator a room number ten less than our actual room and breathlessly intoned, “We have a lamp burned down.” English is the hotel operator’s second language too, and I feared she’d get the wrong impression and call the fire department. I figured that the simplest way to correct any misunderstanding would be to make sure the operator knew Alla was talking about a light bulb.

“Light bulb,” I said.

“Oh,” Alla said to the operator. “We have a light bowl burned down.”

I offered more information to Alla: “We have a light bulb burned out.”

Alla improved her report, saying, “We have a light bowl burned out.” Following with a little spate of general confusion, Alla hung up the phone. We hadn’t gotten to the part about our actual room number, but I trusted that the operator had caller ID, so I let it slide as we began to wait in semi-darkness.

We ate bowls of soup, but nobody came. Discussing what had happened, Alla suggested that perhaps people with hoses and water buckets were right now pounding on the door of room 505. I decided it might be best if I were to call the operator myself. I think the operator already understood what we wanted, and she said that the maintenance department would come soon. It all ended very nicely, but as I’ve discovered when making a fool of myself in Russian, the structures and concepts in one language don’t always map directly to another.

¡Hola!

We are in Cancún with my cousin and her family, staying at a timeshare resort. When we first started coming here, most of the guests around us came from the US and Canada, but this time the people around us come mostly from Latin America. I’m happy about that, because I enjoy greater immersion in Latino culture. However much time I spend in Mexico and south, I’m still amazed by how friendly the people are. When most of the guests at the resort came from the north, the locals we saw most often worked here and I probably assumed that their bosses went out of their way to hire friendly people. I re-thought that theory yesterday, when we took an excursion to a nature-adventure park called Xel-Ha.

Many of the people getting onto the bus after us stopped at the top of the stairs to say hello. The first time, I thought they must know somebody in the front row, but soon I realized that at least many of them were greeting the bus passengers in general. How cool is that? This demonstrates friendliness on a whole new level. I really like it here.

We had a good time at Xel-Ha too. When Alla and I have been at this park previously, we came for an afternoon only, after visiting an archaeological site called Tulum. Having seen Tulum twice, I jumped at the opportunity to spend the whole day at Xel-Ha. We saw parts of the park I’d never had time to visit before, riding too-small bicycles up to the spring where the park’s main river begins. Since we had cloudy weather yesterday we rented wetsuits to wear with our snorkel gear and then we swam down the river, looking at an increasing variety of fish as we got closer to the sea. The warm salty water from the sea stayed below the colder fresh water from the cenote and the thermocline between the two layers shimmered in the sun.

We stopped at some towers in the river where we could play on ziplines and a couple of ropes courses. I struggled to cross a wide span by walking on a slack rope, holding onto another rope above me. Seeing that others fell when people on the rope near them lost their balance, I started with a good gap after the guy in front of me. He crossed the span successfully, but his overweight friend behind me caught up with me and then fell off. Her weight had made the rope sag under my feet so I could barely reach the overhead balance rope, and when she fell the rope under my feet snapped up like an archer’s bow and shot me into the air. I held onto the overhead rope, but came down beside the foot rope, which was now at my side. I decided I didn’t really need to get back up, and dropped, laughing, into the water. As I write this, I wonder if I could have finished the course by going hand-over-hand. I think so, and I’ll have to go back and try again.

Meanwhile, I’ll enjoy the friendly culture and the delicious food. I probably can’t bring home much of the food, but I wonder if I can get away with saying hello to the folks on the bus next time I take any kind of an excursion. I’ll give it a try.

Cops, soldiers and guns

I don’t like to take pictures of people with guns. I guess I’m always worried that they might shoot back, but as a result I don’t have any pictures to go with today’s blog entry. Take it from me, however, there are lots of guns around here. Today, for example, we saw two naval warships right off the coast, a busload of cops across the street from our hotel and numerous cop cars whizzing up and down the avenue. All of these entities were heavily armed and armored. I don’t know who holds the bullet-proof-vest contract for the Cancun district, but I suspect they are making a lot of money keeping the cops safe.

Yesterday we saw military helicopters touring up and down the coast. Apparently Cancun would be a bad place to dabble in crime, since there would be lots of people trying to catch you. The other night, for example, we were in a taxi that got pulled over by the cops for a random inspection. As the inspector waved us through without looking anywhere, the driver asked me, “Are you carrying?”

No, I was not carrying and I don’t do drugs. But I guess one reason for all the police presence is to keep some sort of a lid on drug trade. The other reason is the big climate summit going on right now in Cancun. Apparently the area is full of world leaders and the authorities want to make sure they all get home safely.

The most interesting cop sighting was in the mall across the street from our hotel. There’s a fancy department store inside, and the store has guards at all of the doors. I assume that these guys are not real cops, and as a result they have only small side arms rather than automatic weapons. They do have nice white uniforms, right down to special all-white nightsticks. If you’re going to get beaten up by a guard with a nightstick, I think the white stick would be a good choice since it probably shows blood more quickly than a black nightstick. But once again, I really don’t want to get whacked and I imagine you don’t either.

Fortunately the cops around here tend to be friendly. Last Thursday we walked out of our way as we headed to dinner in order to avoid walking among cops milling about with machine guns. By today we were used to them and we walked up to one of the guys stationed in the street in front of our hotel. I’m happy to report that he was open to our approach and knew where we’d find a bus stop and how to get to our restaurant. Still, it’s really hard for me to get used to all the automatic weapons kicking around here. If all the guns are intended to make me feel safe, then they are not working!

Utopian community

Today we took an excursion to Tulum and Xel-Ha. Tulum is a small Mayan archaeological park, and I would describe Xel-Ha as a Mayan natural-aquatic theme park. The two are near each other and combine to make a well-balanced day. In the morning you get a small dose of ancient Mayan culture, some great photo opportunities, and even time to go swimming at a nice little beach behind a spectacular temple where Maya once performed human sacrifices and threw the bodies down toward the sea. (There’s more to this story, but it’s too disturbing for this particular piece.)

Today’s Tulum trip follows yesterday’s trip to Chichen Itza, one of the Seven Wonders of the World as redefined recently by some accredited standards body. Frankly, I don’t remember who comprised this standards body, but Chichen Itza certainly is big and impressive. Alla and I had been on both of these trips previously, but Nika wanted to see Chichen Itza and we felt that we’d enjoy the trips ourselves so we went with her on both of them. It was Alla and my third trip to Chichen Itza, and our first after visiting another archaeological site with a real archaeologist. We noticed yesterday that our guide was grossly less informed than the archaeologist, but of course we enjoyed being at the site anyway.

Today’s guide didn’t appear to be any more thoroughly educated than yesterday’s, but to his credit he did offer us some very interesting tidbits. We didn’t mind any lack of depth anyway because we weren’t in the archaeological area long enough to learn a whole lot anyway, and the place was just plain beautiful. And we got to go swimming even before moving on to the Mayan natural-aquatic theme park.

The latter offers a wide range of services, including snorkeling gear, rafts, life jackets, towels, beach chairs, zip-lines, bicycles, unlimited food and drink, showers, hammocks, and what-have-you. This is the place that struck Nika as utopian after we’d been there a while and hopped from one set of beach chairs to another to take advantage of the changing position of the sun. It’s utopian in a very modern way: The institution shares all manner of good stuff with the clients, but the clients aren’t obligated to give anything to anybody. Except money, of course.

I thought it was sort of utopian traveling with Nika anyway, because she likes to challenge herself physically, as do I. I got to swim longer and harder than I would have without her encouragement. (Or was it instigation?) And even though she’s a faster swimmer than I am, she hung back as necessary so we could swim the length of the park more or less together. And of course I’m grateful to Alla for her willingness to entertain herself with other activities while Nika and I introduced ourselves to as many fish as possible. Everybody reports having enjoyed the day.

Moving day

Today was our last day at the new Tres Rios resort and our first day at the newly-somewhat-renovated Royal Sunset. We stayed at the Royal Sunset last year and had a really great time. Today, however, the place is, umm…, imperfect. They didn’t finish their renovation on time, and in fact the most seriously-renovated rooms aren’t generally open yet. Our room is in good shape, though the post-construction dust hasn’t all settled and it needs another thorough cleaning. The staff is looking pretty exhausted, and we’re grateful that they were able to set us up reasonably well, especially considering the stories we’ve heard from other guests.

It was hard to leave Tres Rios, but at least we went out with a wonderful flourish.
We woke up to early sunlight, followed by smoothies delivered punctually at 7:15. Alla had already packed her bags yesterday, but I spent the first hour or so gathering and packing my stuff. Then we ate a delicious breakfast and checked out, leaving our bags with the staff. They welcomed us to stay and use the facilities all day if we wanted, and we managed to go snorkeling in a cenote, paddle a kayak down the river and back, swim some more, lift weights, shower, eat grilled chicken and shrimp sheesh-kebabs, and look at the photos the staff made of us when we were in the cenote.

I tried to buy the photographs from them. Their price list, as I mentioned previously, started at US $15 for a single file. I thought I had a clever idea, and I combined all the photos they took all week long into a single zip file and told them I’d like to buy that one file. They were not amused. Unable to come to terms on any price accommodation, we left without buying photos.

We got off to a bad start at the Royal Sunset, but Alla finally succeeded in talking them into giving us a room we liked, and at this time we even have toilet paper, shampoo, napkins, and all the essentials we’ve thought of. Most importantly, Alla’s daughter Nika is also with us, arriving conveniently at the moment we had finally gotten moved into the room we liked. Tomorrow’s biggest adventure: Taking the bus to town and buying groceries. I really like the grocery stores in Cancun, and I’ll be sure to take pictures.

Sensory Adventure

One of the offerings here at Tres Rios Resort is called a sensory adventure. We were too busy to try it for the first few days, but decided to give it a go yesterday. This turned out for us to be one of the best things we’ve done here.

The tour started right outside the front door, on an unnoticed trail at the edge of the jungle. Our guide took us into the jungle and gave us eyeshades to remind us to keep our eyes closed. He encouraged us not to try to figure out what is going on around us, but just to experience it wordlessly. Promising our safety, he said that we needed only to trust him and his two assistants.

I won’t try to describe this adventure in detail because I’d rather not dilute the discovery should any of my readers have an opportunity to take the tour. I’ll just say that it involved herbs, spices, rocks, shells, music, a tiny planetarium where we were invited to lift our eyeshades, music, dancing, scented candles, water, and lots of lentils. Some of the water was not scripted, as we experienced a passing rain shower, but I think they would have gotten us wet anyway. I suspect that they wouldn’t have gotten every guest wet but since we were already wet and obviously didn’t mind, after pouring water onto my hands they ran the stream right up my arms.

My favorite part was the lentils. I saw the lentil area as we left, and there were enough seeds there to fill a child-size sandbox. They seated us on the floor and poured them onto our hands, arms, torsos, over our heads, everywhere. By the time they guided me to stand up, I was sitting in several inches of the stuff, still puzzled about what it was but confident I’d be able to find out because I had them in my hair and underwear.

At the conclusion they seated us once again and told us that we were facing a mirror and that we should look at ourselves with new eyes. Then we removed our eyeshades and discovered that we were looking at a little pool of water (or cenote) with jungle behind. We found it completely delightful.

Free vs. not free

I went for a bike ride today, on one of the options our resort offers in their “all-inclusive” program. They have a fleet of poorly-maintained mountain bikes in sizes ranging from really-small to medium. I need a really-big one and the bike they gave me kept my buns far closer to my heels than might have been advisable. Fortunately, they made up for this by giving me a huge helmet that bobbled about on my head like a spaghetti pan.

On the ride I got a real-life demonstration about the way Mexican chivalry works. Our guide was an attractive young woman. I am putty in the hands of attractive young women, so I wasn’t even slightly suspicious when she told me that she’d like to switch bicycles with me at the next stop. I figured she thought her bike might fit me better or something. In fact, however, she had a different reason for proposing this trade. Noticing that I am a strong cyclist and that my bike’s gear shifters worked, she wanted to ride my bike and give me the bike stuck in high gear. This was fine anyway because it still didn’t make the ride in any way challenging, but I found the enforced chivalry certainly amusing.

During this free bike ride, a photographer kept passing us at the rest stops and then taking pictures as we rode past him. He really did get some good photos of me, and I wanted to put one or two of them up on my web site or in this story. Unfortunately, that proved to be out of reach. When I went to the studio to see the photos I learned that the price of putting all photos onto a CD was US$ 220 and the price of buying a single photo would be $15. Apparently some people actually pay these prices, but I’m not one of them.

The other place I ran into not-free this morning was in the little store at our resort. This resort is in the jungle and it’s really difficult to get off of the property. The nearest town is about 15 minutes away by car, and we don’t have one of those. Rather than spend half a day taking a shuttle bus to Playa del Carmen and back, I went to the resort’s store and bought a little tube of sunscreen without bothering to understand how the price converted from pesos to dollars. I was in big trouble when I returned to the room, however, and Alla calculated that I had just paid US$ 23 for it. She took it away from me and exchanged it for another brand that cost a little less. Free is good. Not-free here, however, is really scary.

Back in Mexico

Ik-Kil Mexico—Friday, February 20, 2009

We had a great time doing unusual stuff today. We earned this pleasure by a bit of work getting here yesterday. We flew to Cancun, rented a car, and drove to Ik-Kil. This wasn’t as easy as it sounds. The map we received from Avis was one notch better than useless, and the Avis lady’s description of how to get onto our toll road left out an important detail that led us to drive all over creation before we finally got under way. We created some problems of our own too, primarily because we shot through the airport without getting any Mexican money. I really should have gone back inside when we circled back after figuring out where we really wanted to drive. I won’t tell you about all the troubles this caused, so you’ll just have to imagine.

Our difficulties were exacerbated by the fact that most of my Spanish language skills fled since I started studying Russian. I expect my vocabulary to come back any minute now, but it definitely hasn’t happened yet.

We did arrive successfully at Ik-Kil before the manager went home for the night, and he sent us to a huge and sparkling cabin with a thatched roof and colorful garden. It’s got a “king sized” bed, but the royalty here must be a little shorter than up north. Alla compensated by building an extension on my side of the bed with a luggage table and a pillow. We both slept very well and woke up only when the birds started singing in the morning.

Today made up for all of yesterday’s travail. We drove down to an archaeological site called Ek-Balam and bought a couple of admission tickets. As we turned to walk into the site, a guy behind a desk deep in the office asked us in perfect English if we’d like an expert tour of the site. He said that he was a leader of the archaeological team since 1994 or 1998 and he offered to show us around for a little more than $20 U.S. We’re really glad we said yes.

His name is Juan Canul. Juan warned us that some guests find him a little long-winded and he wanted to know how much time we had. Alla offered him as much time as he wished to offer. So he said to stop him if he talked too much. He did talk a lot, and I worried at the beginning that we’d be bored too. But Alla got right into it and started asking him questions, memorizing statistics, and egging him on. Our tour lasted two and a half hours. I gave him a 33% tip but I still feel a little sheepish about getting such a bargain. The reason he’s leading tours is that the government only funds archaeological work about ten weeks each year. He continues to supervise three guards and oversee the site and its maintenance, but he is seriously under-employed.

He read the hieroglyphics to us, corrected the misinformation we’d received in last year’s tour at Chichen-Itza, and regaled us with stories of which archaeologist made what discovery and when. (The Chichen-Itza misinformation relied on early archaeological theories, discredited by more recent research.)

On our way back from Ek-Balam we drove through a little town where we thought we might be able to buy lunch. A local police officer sent us to a restaurant we didn’t find appealing so we headed out and figured we might just buy some fruit to tide us over until we could get to a bigger town. Fortunately, Alla noticed a clothing store she wanted to visit, and when we turned around we found ourselves facing a tortilla factory. This place ground its own corn and cranked out tortillas. I bought a stack about an inch high for three pesos; less than 25 cents.

The still-warm tortillas tasted great and we were filling our faces with them as we walked toward the clothing store. We saw a meat market and looked in. Not realizing that they had cooked meat, we turned to leave. The owner called us back and said that some smoked pork would be really great with our tortillas and he cut us a sample. Wow, was he right. So we bought a hunk of meat and the owner took us back to see the huge smoke oven where he was cooking another batch of food. We sat on a bridge and ate our food with great pleasure. I think the whole lunch cost about a dollar and a half. It made our breakfast seem particularly ridiculous.

Our last adventure took place when we bought gas. The guy at the station engaged me in conversation and assured himself that I was a tourist. Then he pulled a little trick. I gave him 200 pesos for gas and then fished a coin out of my pocket because the total bill was 210. He pointed out that I’d only given him a five-peso coin instead of ten, so I fished out another five-peso coin. Then he pointed out that I’d only given him a 20-peso note instead of a 200-peso note. This was surprising because I organize my money by size in my wallet and I gave him the note at the very back of my wallet, knowing that I’d just gotten a bunch of 200’s at the ATM.

I drove away sure that I’d just let myself be cheated. Alla made me stop the car and re-count the money in my wallet. Since I’d been broke shortly before and had then gone to the ATM, I knew that either the ATM gave me a 20-peso note instead of a 200 or he had pulled a switch. Alla wanted me to go back, but I despaired because my Spanish is so weak. Still, she was firm and I complied. I asked the guy to re-count his money. He said simply that my 200-peso bill had fallen. I started to argue and then realized that I was happy to pretend to agree to his claim. So I held out my hand and he gave me a 200-peso note. It seems I made 20 pesos on the deal.