Musings about Mexico
Janine asked, “How come last week you didn’t write about your holiday?”
Can I help it if I’m more passionate about plastic waste than I am about lying in a swinging bed on the beach, having banana smoothies for lunch? Ok, banana daiquiris, but they must be healthy with all those bananas in them. And I used the same plastic straw over and over.
This might have been on the highlight list except that I am not a lying-in-the-hot-sun person anymore. Seventy-five degrees is as much as I like. I spent almost as much time chasing the shade around as I did reclining with my book. Having said that, I did manage to go through six books in the two weeks we were in Mexico.
Mexico wouldn’t have been my choice, but it is a beautiful place with fascinating topography, wildlife and ancient Mayan ruins. We were in a huge secure resort between Cancun and Playa del Carmen and saw no sign of the dangers that Janine and Daughter #2 kept sending me. Unless of course you count the night a uniformed “maid” came to our
apartment to do an “inventory check,” which was obviously a security check as she didn’t actually inventory anything and didn’t rob or murder us.
And why be concerned when the Americans closed their embassy in Playa del Carmen and evacuated all their staff a couple of days after we’d been there on a shopping excursion?
Big Sister, who was on her 10th trip to Mexico, poohpoohed the idea that we could be in any danger, and I think she was right to a degree, as long as you stay on the resort or limit your excursions to highly controlled attractions, but Newman and I are explorers. We like to poke around places, and Mexico is not conducive to poking around.
I did decide I wanted to go para-sailing as a new experience. It seemed like a good idea after a few banana smoothies, but then I’d lie down on the swinging bed and the feeling would go away.
Climbing to the top of a Mayan temple is very cool. Of course, Newman and I didn’t do it, but it was really cool sitting on the fourth step and watching all of those who did struggle to get back down.
I was really looking forward to seeing the jaguars in the nature park, but a sign said “Sorry, Jaguars on Honeymoon” which was a delicate way of saying the female was in heat and they were off trying to make little jaguars.
However, we did hear a jaguar scream one night somewhere across from our balcony. It was truly awesome in the old sense of the word and definitely a highlight for me, cat person that I am.
Opening game of the Blue Jays spring training in Dunedin was another highlight (even though it made my mourning for the loss of Bautista fresh all over again). I quite liked Dunedin; you could walk across the streets there just like downtown St. John’s. The Jays had won and after some post game celebrating, I had it all figured out how we could buy a little house there and live happily ever after. Thank God it was night time and there were no real estate agents around because, as is my habit, I lay down and when I got up the next morning, the feeling had gone away.
I have other important things to share; you can buy presson nails that will actually last through two weeks of daily pool immersion, and you can do really good pool exercises that feel good and are good for you even if you’re not a swimmer. I can swim and was quite proud of my daily scissor-kicking. Unfortunately, just the thought of venturing out in the middle of the winter to get into a pool here is enough to send me back to bed, no matter how nice and warm the facility is.
In other words, in order for me to get year-round benefit from a form of exercise I actually enjoy, we would need to install an indoor pool in our house.
Buenos dias.
Note: Last week’s editor’s note re the Donner party didn’t mention that they became cannibals.