ON THE BEATEN PATH
The real Mexico is just around the corner from Playa del Carmen
PLAYA DEL CARMEN,
ME X ICO • He sat in the shade on a plastic stool in the morning on Calle 2.
All around him, white vans called colectivos gather passengers heading to Akumal or Tulum or Cancun or other destinations up and down the Caribbean coast of Mexico.
On a small table beside him on the sidewalk he’d arranged half-litre clear plastic bottles containing colourful liquid: naranja ( orange); zanohoria ( carrot); a green one which was chia, nopal ( cactus), pineapple and orange; beet; and grapefruit. Each drink cost 15 pesos, or about $ 1 Canadian. He also sold aguas (waters): jamaica and oat water, for 10 pesos.
I bought a green juice and sat down on one of the two big blue coolers with plastic lids, and watched the early morning stream past.
My wife and I and our two teenaged children had arrived in Playa del Carmen a few days earlier. The place kind of shocked me, with its overcrowded beaches, rows of hotels along the shore and gargantuan shopping malls.
I have lived and travelled a lot in Mexico over the years. My first visit to the region was in 1983. I stayed that time on Isla Mujeres, off the coast of Cancun, which was a little fishing village.
On this trip, we rented two rooms at the Bric Hotel in Playa del Carmen, about two blocks from the beach. Each room cost $ 150 a night. Our room featured a king- sized bed, a hammock on the balcony and a pool nestled in palm trees in the courtyard. It was the lap of luxury.
Playa del Carmen, however, felt a bit touristy at times.
Luckily, the real Mexico is nearby. Just walk away from the beach, and you are soon immersed in throngs of kids in school uniforms, buses roaring everywhere and 75¢ tacos.
That’s when I met the juice salesman.
The gentleman’s name is Wilbert Guemes Saenz. He is 74 years old, with turquoisegreen eyes and a red and craggy face crowned by a bulbous nose.
His first l anguage is Mayan. Out of school Wilbert joined the army. After serving eight years, one day his detachment came by jeep to Playa del Carmen.
“At the time there were only 13 houses along the beach and a little church,” he said. “They were just building a road to here.”
I had just walked down Quinta Avenida, the pedestrian- only tourist street in Playa del Carmen, past a riot of global tourist kitsch: Señor Frog’s official store, McCarthy’s Irish Store, Zingara swim wear and Solaris, “the ultimate sunglass selection.”
It was hard to picture the hamlet that greeted Wilbert in 1978.
“Only reason we were able to reach the place at all was that we drove jeeps, which could go anywhere,” he said. “Most people got around with horses and donkeys.”
He liked Playa, and decided to stay.
“I started off fishing,” Wilbert said. “I learned how to pick up a lobster. You have to pick it up by its antennae, otherwise it curls, and the scales cut your hands.”
He showed me the longhealed cuts on his big strong hands.
Wilbert left the fishery to drive a cab. “Then I got in a terrible accident.”
He li f ted his l eft pant leg to show me a scar on his knee. “I messed up my back. I couldn’t move for six months. I can’t work much anymore. So I sell juice.”
Each morning he picks up the juice from a neighbour family in Villa del Sol, eight kilometres east of downtown Playa. He loads the juice and ice in the coolers and loads those in a two-wheeled trailer, which he had a friend custom- weld for him, which he hooks to a trailer hitch welded to the back of his Italika motorcycle. He buzzes downtown and sells his juice.
As we sat, early- morning Mexicans streamed by; some bought j uice, some j ust waved and said hi.
Wilbert said his grandfather was a tall guy with blue eyes, whose father had been a Spaniard, but who only spoke Mayan.
Wilbert’s been married three times. He had eight children with his first wife, one with No. 2 and one with No. 3.
Now he is not married. He bought a little house and lives with his youngest, Joselyn, who is 24 and has a law degree and works in international relations.
I expressed surprise t hat he’d f athered a c hi l d at age 5 0. He looked me up and down. “Fifty is young,” he said. “I’m 54,” I replied.
“I bet you could have two women in one day,” he said. “One in the evening, and a second one for the night.”
That’s how they do it in Playa del Carmen.
I said goodbye to Wilbert and walked back to my hotel, arriving just in time to sit down with my family under the thatched roof in the restaurant and eat huevos a la Mexicana for breakfast.
‘AT THE TIME THERE WERE ONLY 13 HOUSES ALONG THE BEACH AND A LITTLE CHURCH. THEY WERE JUST BUILDING A ROAD TO HERE.’