This part, right here

i'm mostly ready to go home, yet i feel reluctant to leave. the pull of home includes our bed and the cats. ("the bed" is not metaphorical. i love that actual mattress, those specific sheets, the pillows, the bedside lighting.) i want to ramble around in my own kitchen. i need to be sure that everything in the house is shipshape - a quick peek would do, a tour through all the rooms to be sure our tchatchkas are still arranged the way i like them, the wireless is working, birds are still frequenting the backyard, nothing's happened in the spare room. i miss the intellectual stimulation of everyday life: reading the newspaper, talking to friends/colleagues, teaching. i want to live the heather-and-mo life again. i want to be dry.

on the other hand, there are many things i'll miss about being here. for one, the breakfast pastry run. i typically head out around 7:30 to walk the four blocks to zermatt's. some sellers are opening up, but most shops are still shuttered and sleepy. police officers lean on the town square's walls, chatting. locals hail each other on the street while their dogs check out the action. at this hour, you hear mexican radio as trucks unload wares at the back door and municipal streetsweepers prepare for the day.

another thing i'll miss is the magnificent frigate bird. you look up in the sky and there is the most incredible creature, elegant of wing and long of tail. when the frigate bird sees something intriguing, she forks her tail to hover in one spot until she's satisfied. on the windward beach the other day, i hoped and hoped and hoped - and feared - she was looking at me.

also, i'll miss her opposite, the stout workaday pelican. with their big waterbird wings they cruise just over the waves. when they see a fish they fancy, they divebomb with the force of a kid's cannonball, swallow, then sit on the waves quite proud of themselves.

i will miss bare feet that are never cold (as they are in edmonton, even in the summer). i will miss being able to walk out of the house at any hour of the day or night wearing...whatever you happen to be wearing. i will miss the sight of the ocean just two blocks down the road. i will miss the walkable city. i've thought a lot about scale, these last few days, what it means for a road to be a single lane, how great it is to live within five blocks of the mercado municipal, with its mounds of papayas, peppers of every kind, and beans. you don't have to shop like you live in the suburbs; you can just buy what you need that day. i realize this is a trite observation, but it really matters.

so: as the lovely jen has said: i hate this part, right here. i'm mentally prepared to move on, but it's not quite here yet. especially given certain recent (international) events, there will be a whole lot of agony between leaving and arriving. so for today, let the beach - sun, sand, fish, quiet - be enough.

How to eat in cozumel (for nat)

1. go to del sur and order a couple of bacon, cheese and plum empanadas. the owner, rene, will cook them for you while you wait, and marvel. how many ways are there to crimp an empanada? at least 13. throw in a dulce de leche empanada for dessert.
   
2. don't lose heart when the rainstorm means you can't barbecue the steaks. redirect the pecans and pomegranate for the salad toward an ersatz persian chicken dish. no butter/oil in the kitchenette? good thing the coffee cream is so thick you have to serve it with a spoon.
3. cross the street from your hotel and give sabores a try. the owner serves lunch in her own living room from lunes to viernes. first, she brings you a big jug of jimaica juice. then, hot chips with a couple of hot salsas. soup is next - say, carrot cream. by the time your chicken tacos in mole sauce come, you wonder how you'll do them justice, but the mole's thick chocolate smoke makes it easy. no, really, you really can't have dessert.
4. buy gelato/helado in the middle of the afternoon. after all, you didn't have dessert with lunch.
5. go to kinta. order one of everything. mahi mahi in guajillo sauce? yes please. red snapper and cream cheese rolled in panko and deep fried? crunchy on the outside, dreamy on the inside. potatoes smashed with truffle oil and garlic, served under mayan pulled pork? scallops and prawns skewered with fresh local chilis and served with a cranberry-pineapple salsa? three-milk bread pudding with banana ice cream and mexican chocolate? well, you get the idea.
6. look for the biggest plate you've got. nope, that won't do. bigger than a dinner plate. a serving plate: yeah, that's the ticket. pile it high with shrimp, fish and conch steeped in lime juice and onion. fan a perfect avocado on top, serve it beachside, and call it an appetizer on the menu.
   
7. ask for guacamole with everything.
8. go back to del sur and try the chorizo and cheese combo. add a quince empanada for dessert. if you must, say they're for your housebound parents.
9. get up early enough that zermatt's bakery is not sold out of the buns con queso crema, or the damp whole wheat biscuits, or the cuernitos. have an espresso on the patio.
   
10. take a pineapple to the beach.
    

Playa del carmen

the idea for our current trip to cozumel started back in april when i was visiting dear NY friends with a new baby. elena is a sweetheart of a girl. as is always the case with little babies, though, you might set out to do something first thing in the morning, but after the feeding and the napping and the bathing and the changing and the feeding and the napping and the changing, you generally leave the house at the crack of 4PM.

i'm not complaining. it was a wonderful trip for many, many reasons, the least of which is that elena's dad being from puerto rico and elena's mom being a former NACLA editor made me think, briefly, that we should spend christmas in playa del carmen.

boy did we dodge a bullet there, or so i feel after having spent the day across the water in playa. it's definitely the maya riviera, complete with too-good-for-you attitude. i felt like a slovenly dullard, the way i always do in such places - think laguna beach, pacific heights, chelsea (UK or US). if i can be permitted a cheap imitation of tolstoy, it would be that rich people are the same the world over, or so i learned years ago in dalkey. after the disorienting north-of-the-liffey train stations, where bruised, middle-aged women stared down beer-swigging irish louts, we landed in a completely different, yet completely recognizable milieu of bottled water, white walls, blue skies and sangfroid. for playa del carmen, add women with beautiful, sandy feet in platform flip flops and buff boys in everything quiksilver.

finding myself in the magical land where everything is organic, charming and chic unearths wealth-dripping fantasies and a delicious meanness. i look around and think: chanel sunglasses with the logo on the arm? did you really think we wouldn't know otherwise? i wonder why that woman doesn't hire a trainer - and, for that matter, a new esthetician. honey, just because lady gaga wears white spandex doesn't mean you can. as for that guy over there, does he think being rich gets him off the crocs hook? and OMG what were they thinking with that house? i know african slate costs a lot, but it is absolutely hideous in that quantity.

making fun of rich people is one of my favorite sports. if my moral centre quavers momentarily, i remind myself that owning a vehicle that runs on the blood of the spotted owl must take the edge off being mocked by the likes of me.

of course, what yearns behind this nasty little commentary is the conviction that i would make a better rich person. i really do believe i would make a fabulous dowager. i would be trim, generous, tasteful and carefree, not to mention truly stylish. i would throw fabulous parties. i would eat fabulous food. i would have a fabulous body, a carefully cultivated icon to exercising well, sleeping deeply, and medicating appropriately. if i were rich, i would make the world a more beautiful place, starting with me. i want the opportunity to be the folks i see, but improved. when you think about it, it's kind of a generous pedagogical impulse. right?

unfortunately, playa del carmen did not open this satisfying avenida to me. i wanted to be that principessa (but with a wrinkleless brow and a better handbag) - or, rather, i wanted to want to be her - but instead playa unleashed the sniffy inner cheapskate that i hate. what makes a bathing suit worth that many euros? even if it's directly from florence, at that price it should come with a gorgeous italian lady! and are they serious: a matching cover-up? puh-leeze. although it is true that nobody wears white linen like the rich (oh, the look of white linen against a caribbean sea!), it is also true that big bucks make for big mistakes, at least judging by senora frumpy's baubles.

why didn't playa let me play out my rich girl fantasies?: not rich enough. there's a certain number of galleries, sure, but there's also a few too many wholesale-priced yucatan souvenir stands and 50%-off-silver touts. who wants to eat at a white-tableclothed restaurant if your gaze lands on seven minimum-wagers hastily ironing boxes of textiles from guatemala? no. i like my rich places to be well and truly rich, so rich it hurts all the way down to the core where your self-esteem should live.

My newest self-improvement project

yeah, yeah, lose ten pounds and get out of debt - but the real 2010 challenge is to be less misanthropic, more generous, less pissy, more forgiving, less impatient, and more indulgent.

and i'm going to start by liking cruise ship people.

i have a ways to go. cozumel, it turns out, is the second most popular cruise ship destination in the world. not that that came up in any of the research i did before coming here. "hotel people" and "cruise people" are separate species. we all use the www, but don't frequent the same sites. it's like the other side of facebook. (don't believe me? go explore hard christianity in fb.)

cruise ship people walk down the san miguel seafront wearing balloon animals on their heads. they give strip restaurants high reviews in trip advisor. they carry ginormous drinks in ginormous receptacles from places called "fat tuesdays." they use words like "ginormous." cruise people move like a swarm of goatfish from recommended activity to recommended activity. they like activities to be cheap and predictable, thrilling yet safe. cruise people like senor frog's and carlosncharlie's.

or so i grumble, mashing my way down avenida melgar after a big boat disgorges.

but that kind of misanthropy is easy. the harder task is to imagine why people would go on a cruise in the first place. and a good place to begin that project is with the unsettling admission that the largest concentration of locals we've seen has not been in the town square or on the windward coast or at a devotional meeting, but at mcdonald's.

money matters. cruises offer you 15 nights for $1800. you can't be an "independent traveler" for that.

then there's the family aspect. several of the families we've seen around the cruise ships are multi-generational. how else can you travel with built-in childcare?

then there's the ease factor. you get on the boat and for the next two weeks someone else makes all your decisions. you move from bed to buffet waylaid only by the pleasures of kingston, cozumel, miami beach. the older i become, the more attractive such not having to think about it sounds.

plus, people are different. not everybody is like me. some actively like disney, seek out casinos, prefer large groups, feel safer in herds. see cultural studies 101.

to appreciate people who are just like me is easy (not that i've accomplished that either). the real task is to throw my imagination across the widest cultural gulf i can imagine, and smile indulgently at the white folks with a three-hour jet-ski rental on my quiet playa.

i'll let you know how it goes.

Christmas with the Ps

in this case, P stands for predator:

we ran into a shark while we were snorkeling. there is no photographic evidence, but i bet there's a trace of one kind or another out there in the water. sharks are big.

then, on the way out of parque punta sur, we saw these fine fellows:


one of the strangest aspects of being here is realizing just how mammal-centered i am. we've seen birds, dragonflies, iguanas, fish, butterflies, rays and slugs, but apart from one raccoon-like coatimundi on the side of the road, no mammals to speak of. there aren't even many cats or dogs on the island.

it's disorienting in general, but particularly rattling when it comes to possible dangers. i've read grizzly attacks: their causes and avoidance. i know how to respond t0 a black bear. i avoid rutting season in the mountains, and i know what to do if i run into a coyote in the river valley. but i have no concept how to navigate around a predator in its 360-degree aquatic comfort zone.

so today, i think we'll visit some mayan ruins instead.

Lizards laze

our iguanas love the sun. they crave heat. they choose the top of the wall at the back of the property, where they can look down on the little deck lizards and, i suspect, on us. they look like rocks. they ignore the turkey vultures that make the little lizards scamper. they can move fast, but they'd rather not. periodically they do a series of fast lizard push-ups: the better to smell? to show off? to communicate? just because they can?

they taste the wind with their tongues. they loll their heads about sluggishly, then hold them high. every now and then one snags an insect, but not a dragonfly. too much trouble, you can hear them thinking. every now and then, an insect appears to snag them: gowdy, the iguana on the right, just scratched her head with a scaly toe, then circled around to face the other direction.

these iguanas don't sleep, exactly. these lizards laze.

23 Dec, Cozumel

rosie's morning snorkeling tour really is all that: first el cielo, the heavens, where we drift over a sandy firmament dotted with star(fish). then the columbia shallows, with una tortuga - smaller than the honu in hawaii but every bit as moving: you simply have to believe in the future of the world when you see a turtle swim so fast with those ruddy little fins. finally we snorkeled the palancar reef, where we saw a porcupine fish the size of madge, with its bashful long eyelashes - and, to close off the event, a barracuda.

afternoon spent lounging by the pool, my new insight being: nobody really cares if you act the good girl and run the household errands, and nobody really cares if you're bad. barbara gowdy, the resident iguana and i lazed around the back yard with mo while the Ps slept.

dinner at kinta, an inventive mexican bistro with exquisite creations: shrimp-stuffed avocado, mahi mahi in guajillo sauce, and three-milk bread pudding with mexican chocolate and cajete. afterward the square was full of famillies - 23rd the last day of school, perhaps? everybody has their virgen spruced up with christmas lights, and some have santas too. one particularly exuberant display has inflatable santa visiting the inflatable creche. there are candles burning near the big shrine in the square, with photos of people's loved ones. bring health, prosperity, recovery...

on the way home we pass a small storefront packed with worshippers so numerous they added rows of chairs well into the street. a pinata hung goadingly over the devout, who were listening to what, a sermon? a peroration? a set of prayers? children retreated down the street to race paper airplanes.

you can feel the "feliz" in feliz navidad.

What they look like in the sunshine

In which i come clean and describe my penance

gentle reader,
i have not been entirely honest with you. though it is true that we are on a caribbean vacation, and though it is true that we are in a tropical paradise, it is decidedly not true that we are sunning ourselves silly. in fact, we have barely seen the sun since we arrived last wednesday. wednesday was a hot day. i know that because wednesday is the day we arrived, first in toronto, bleary from the red-eye, and finally in cancun, where it took 100 minutes to retrieve our luggage. after an hour-long drive to playa del carmen, our cabbie dropped us at a cobblestone maze with a vague "alli" and a toss of his head to indicate where the ferry terminal might be. at least, we hoped that's what he was indicating.

we bumped our suitcases over cobblestone cuartos looking hopefully past the senor frog'ses and the carlos'n'charlie'ses and by and by we found the terminal. around that time, so did an entire cruise ship. they filed by us in approximately 15 groups of approximately 24 passengers who were approximately inebriated, until the pier was chockablock with human beings. we looked at each other in dismay, but what to do? once the wind was in our faces and the sun - still up at 5pm - was in our eyes, we lost all sense of tribulation.

however, we found it again, forcibly, on the san miguel side, where we schlepped our bags several more blocks to the hotel. gentle reader, though it pains me to reveal my unworldliness, let me admit that the charms of cozumel were initially hard to discern through the rivers of sweat and the sleep-deprived shakes.

this is the context for the relief we felt at thursday's cloudiness. "we couldn't ask for better weather for acclimatizing," said brian. "no," agreed mo, "and it means my sun allergy isn't acting up either."

on friday's drab we putzed around town, shopping and eating. saturday we moved from the hotel to the villa and spent the rest of the day marveling. sunday we gave in and just moped. (you're wondering just how deep my dishonesty goes: the ray, you're thinking, didn't you see a manta ray yesterday? yes, gentle reader. from the car.)

today we summoned all of our canadian can-do and soldiered to the beach in spite of the wind and drizzle. you know those guys who break out the shorts on the first day in march that the temperature goes above minus 10? today, we were those guys. we packed snorkel gear, rashguards, fins, books and sunglasses and headed for chankanaab national park.

it was not the most auspicious outing. first, mom slipped on the weedy steps and fell ass over tea kettle into the drink. i sprinted over as fast as i could, knocking japanese tourists heedlessly out of my way and diving straight in, without a thought, to rescue brand new fin #2. (oh, and mother, of course.) hence we both started the day out cold. with great care, the four of us selected the single windiest palapa in all of chankanaab, where we shivered for a while, making a show of reading our books. but we were really there for the fish so we headed in.

i got immediately swept into a sea of plastic garbage and swallowed a pint of dirty seawater.

dad's equipment didn't work (again). neither did the backup equipment.

mo got separated from the herd and headed back to shore, getting well bashed on the way.

we broke for lunch, which we ate shivering under sun shirts and sarongs, and then we gamely headed back in for a somewhat shorter dip. how cold was it?: the frigid outdoor shower was a positive relief. we huddled back under the palapa to debate our next move - the botanical gardens? a little browsing in the tourist stands, perhaps? - when i looked up to the godless black heavens and said, "uh oh."

we barely made it to our little chevy four-banger when the deluge began. and by deluge, i mean hurricane-force rains and a cold brisk wind. storm sewers regurgitated. cyclists were up to their bottom pedal in it. shopkeepers had gone home for the day.

and speaking of home: when we arrived at our lovely villa, we discovered that the roof leaks. and the lanai doors leak. and the air conditioning units leak, sending water coursing down the kitchen walls. the pool has overflowed into the yard. as i key these words, we have 21 bath towels and 3 bathmats pressed into service - we soak 'em, wring 'em, put 'em back down - and still the water is trickling past my feet.

so this post is for those of you who have been thinking of me malevolently this week. edmonton, i'm lookin' at you. you too, new york/philadelphia, with your five-foot blizzard. and don't try to look innocent, ottawa, you know you've been muttering under your breath.

oh yeah: here's a taste of what we saw.


kinda makes you wonder what it's like in the sunshine.

Swim vs fly

you know that old question: if you could fly like a bird or swim like a dolphin, which would you choose? today i saw the answer, a manta ray cruising the caribbean turquoise under a soft december sky.

Redeemed

seven years ago, i booked a two-week trip in kauai for mom, dad, mo and me. we didn't know then that it would become a triennial tradition, of which cozumel is the latest iteration. it tends to go the same way every time: i get antsy about booking something and spend the month of may scouring the internet for independent places that offer something the average tourist never gets to see. i corral my travelling companions, lay out options a to j and ask for their opinions. "they all look lovely, heather," my mother will say. mo knows better, but sometimes picks the wrong one or two. my dad will typically ask something like, "are we going to mexico?" result: heather gets in a huff and books exactly what she wants. everybody is happy.

for the kauai trip, i thought it would be swell to spend one week on the touristy coast and one week in the rain forest. "they all look lovely, heather," said mom. "i like this place," said mo. i gave her the stink eye and she stopped opining. dad said, "kauai: is that the big island?"

the rain forest cottage might have been just as advertised, but it was not at all what we had expected. for one thing, it really rains in the rain forest. every day. nothing ever dries. ever. as for "charming": mo and i slept in a loft six feet above the kitchen and two feet below the thatched ceiling, while mom and dad slept on the sofa bed which extended into the same kitchen. there was a hammock; the moment mom sat on it, it collapsed. there were geckos; they seemed particularly fond of our little loft. (candor compels me to admit that, to comfort mo, i told her geckos had tiny little pads on their feet - true - that meant they would never walk on bedding - not so true.) we took advantage of jim's homemade trails. imagine slippery red mud through ravines overgrown with kudzu and other relentless greenery. add the rain trickling down your neck. add bright white ked's (mom's). miserable, right? now add the twist: wild boars chasing us back to home base.

the week on the coast was a little better, though i learned that "isolated" is not always synonymous with "desirable." mo and i walked in and laid immediate claim to the only double bed in the property, leaving my parents the twin beds across the hall. everything in the coastal house advertised the "jerry jones discount," which was the same everywhere: a measly five percent if it was recognized at all. the beach was across the street, as advertised; what was not so clear from the internet is that this was the beach where the american navy boys drink.

oahu/maui three years ago was better.

but cozumel this year is definitely the best.

we started at las anclas, a chic boutique hotel run by the kindly pedro and his gay son ayal. if you have time, click through that link and look at the photos. perfectly located, it's close to everything you'd want nearby (markets, restaurants, beach promenade, ferries to the mainland, taxis) and far enough away from undesirables like the cruise ship terminals and the air-conditioned mall. you can't help feeling cosmopolitan and superior at las anclas.

this morning we relocated to casa tropicale, which is further from the downtown core, closer to the airport, would require us to do our own cooking, and might not match the description on the internet, which among other things refers to the property as a "villa." i was relieved by las anclas (we return there next week) and a bit apprehensive about casa tropicale.

i needn't have worried.

i am writing this post from the kitchen;s breakfast bar, which is four feet by eight feet of bright white tile. this gives onto a dining room table set for eight but that could easily accommodate ten or twelve. beyond that is the living room, which gives onto the courtyard with fountain and pool. out the side door - sorry, one of the side doors - is a carport, a screened sitting room, a sand sink, an outdoor shower and a gear room. over near the maid's entrance is a laundry room and a powder room done, like all the bathrooms are, in mexican tile. there are two principal bedrooms here, each of them the size of a typical hong kong apartment. each bedroom has its own terrace. there is a kids' bedroom we are not using, but if you want to use it, please know that it comes with its own giant bathroom and its own giant lanai. there is another common lanai on the second floor, making a total of three on that level alone. the entire third floor is a rooftop terrace with areas for lounging, areas for eating, areas for sunning, areas for reading, areas for drinking, areas for getting away from each other should more than one of you be on a given level at any given time. did i mention the (non-collapsing) hammocks? the six-burner stove? purified water on every level? the fridge stocked with beer and soft drinks?

i am hereby redeemed.

Dancers in the square

of all the things i've seen today --

• a pink plaid store
• mayan women making tortillas
• the panaderia cozumelania, lost for two days but appearing suddenly right where the guidebook said it would be (though, regrettably, not until early afternoon)
• the peacock blue of hotel las anclas's walls in the slant afternoon sun
• lunch in someone's living room

-- none was as beautiful as the couple dancing alone in the square tonight. the band was from merida and excellent, playing latin standards with such energy and skill that they warmed everybody against the wind storm. our couple, she in slim dark trousers tapered to the ankle, he in a long white cardigan buttoned at the bottom and proper men's dress shoes, danced the steps they learned in the '40s. they were light on their feet, precise and nimble, if a little less showy now than then. you could see the frailty, but you could also see the joy, the tribulations, the blessings, the losses, the daughter living in america, the redecorated living room, the shrine to the virgen de guadeloupe (shabby now), the ninos who don't speak spanish, the comforting sufficiency that comes from decades of living in this place, and the things they don't admit, each one promising instead: fear not, my love, i will always dance with you.