Playa del Carmen

Things that consider Kathryn to be food (in order of generally accepted level of danger to most humans):
- Barracudas
- Mosquitoes
- The Sun
- Pelicans
- Doorways
- Sea Turtles*

* We can only speculate; the female turtle was quite full of sea-grass by this point. But given K’s inability to escape from inanimate objects such as doorways, I believe that the sea turtle could totally have eaten her.

Day 1:

We arrived in Mexico. We rented a car, an hour-long experience, and drove to Playa del Carmen from the Cancun airport. Interestingly, the printed reservation slip for our hotel didn’t have the address on it. Therefore, we spent close to an hour navigating the streets of Playa del Carmen looking for parking. We learned about the “Alto” signs at intersections, which look similar to Stop signs, only if you do anything other than flash your brake lights, you will be subjected to a wall of honking horns. This applies regardless of how many pedestrians or stray dogs have just darted in front of your bumper. We also learned that “pedestrian zone” is taken with a bit of a grain of salt, enabling us to wedge our tiny car into a parallel spot right outside our hotel.

We’re staying at the Hotel Fusion. This has the advantage of being a beach club hotel right on the white sand beach of Playa, and the disadvantage of being in a 3rd world country. K: “Do you think this sign means you can’t flush the toilet paper?” Correct, unless the parasites in the water consider you food as well, in which case, I’m all for being an ugly American.

Food was discovered at La Parilla, a Mexican joint right in the center of town. The place was kitsch, with mariachis and all, but the food was good. In keeping with the idea of being entertained throughout dinner, K’s steak was flambéed at the table.

Day 2:

Breakfast: Omelette with the best black beans I’ve ever eaten and salsa, at the hotel restaurant. We sat at an open-air bar, facing the glassy Caribbean. Unfortunately, we also failed to apply sunscreen (“It’s just breakfast!”) – why bother postponing the inevitable transformation from Canadian to lobster?

After breakfast came the initial stages of getting K to properly use snorkel gear. This was not as easy as it sounded, partially due to some cognitive dissonance in the underwater stage. Water does not fill our newfangled fancy snorkels when they are submerged. However, this in no way means that inhaling will be rewarded with oxygen. Disaster averted, she was diving like a champ. Of course, we got yelled at to come back behind the buoy, because that’s where there’s stuff other than sand. You know, like dead coral and tropical fish…only jet skis and boats are allowed out there.

Once inside the buoys, K became braver and decided to start really diving under the surface. I was about 10 feet away, having come up for a breather. Right as K flippered down, a pelican swooped down out of the sky and skimmed the water by her flippers. We can only speculate on his bird-y motives, but I suspect that he was looking for a polite lunch. Discovering that his prey, although unsuspecting, was slightly larger than anticipated, the pelican took off before she managed to get to the surface.

Playa seemed like a decent place to learn, but not particularly brilliant snorkeling, and there were clearly hidden dangers. We had to come up with something else.

Like lunch. Our indecision was solved by a pushy Mexican who gave us the hard sell on his place. Ceviche, which is fish, tomatoes, cilantro, onion, avocado, and lime juice. K had sopa lima, which is lime and chicken soup, which left us somewhat disappointed. The margaritas were not disappointing at all, enough that both of us were actually feeling the tequila (+ sun + dehydration + light lunch); we were hustled into the shop next door, where Cheech tried to sell us Mexican knick-knacks. “I got good stuff, for my friends here…we got Cubans, we got pot…”

“Pot, and drugs?” K asked as we left the shop, not particularly interested in the 34th lime green sombrero we’d seen in 36 hours.
“I missed that part. But maybe he meant prescription drugs.” Like Xanax or Vicodin, or whatever those crazy kids are taking today.

Taking the hard sell approach worked well for lunch, so we applied the idea to dinner. Most of the way up 5th street, we got offered “traditional Mayan dishes.” K had a super-sweet Caribbean shrimp dish. In keeping with the food-must-be-entertainment meme, I had “pil pil shrimp”, apparently a Mayan dish despite the use of soy sauce. Note to self: must set things on fire when cooking at home, it makes everything taste better. PS – Use brandy, not 151.

Day 3:

We had breakfast at a place my mom recommended, called “100% Natural”. It’s a hippie joint, with a fruit-laden waterfall, and you sit shaded by big trees. The juice - phenomenal. The omelette – meh, although it was hard to compare entrees; there was a big void in my stomach which could only be filled by exceptional black beans, and the side here was a house salad with tomato vinaigrette. For breakfast?

Oddly, at 100% Natural, they had a little weightlifting icon by dishes that were high in protein and thus good for active people. Oatmeal had it, but omelettes, not so much. Weird.

The Internets had pointed us in the direction of Akumal, which is where sea turtles come to nest. Plus, there was living coral there. This seemed like a brilliant idea, so we piled our snorkel gear into the rental car and drove down the highway. Akumal is in the process of building their very own highway exit, but right now it’s just a badly-paved road that you take (after a U-turn). After parking, we jumped into the water. The bay is protected by a barrier reef, so even though the ocean was a bit choppy, there were no waves, and we swam out past the tourists and started poking around in the sea grass.

Huge sea turtle. Check.

Many thousands of not-very-small fishes, making this silvery wall of fishes. Check.

Barracuda. Check. He was big. As long as K is tall big. At some point, we had enough of staring contests and decided to flipper off. At some point, I decided to turn over and see. The barracuda was swimming our direction. After being spotted however, he seemed disinterested in lunching on Canadian, and decided to stop.

Stingray. Check.

Squid. Check.

Coral. Check.

Dumb Tourists. Check.

K had to visit a restroom, so we wandered back to the car; the banos ecologicos cost 5 pesos to use, but we had stashed our money in the car rather than leave it on the beach. 33 cents, and all you get is a hole in the ground? Lunch was fried fish sandwiches with chipotle mayo, and fresh squeezed lemonade.

We had dinner at the Palapa Hemingway, which was good but forgettable. The service was…well, let’s just say that it’s better to pay with credit cards than cash. The waiter assumed he was getting the full tip, and then didn’t bring back correct change, nor did he bring the bill back for us to look at.

Fortunately, I was still hungry. We went back to the ceviche place for margaritas and flambeed dessert.

Day 4:

Lazy day. We did some touristy stuff, bought some metal artwork. Breakfast was croissants and juice. There were three highlights:

We walked by Cheech’s store again tonight. “Hey, you want to come in? I got it all at good prices. Cubans, Pot,” and what I swear was “cocaine.” I asked K, and she thought he said the same thing, but couldn’t tell for certain. Of course, she was still squeaking over getting her picture taken with a monkey, so she’s not a reliable witness.

Dinner at El Fogazon. This is apparently where the locals eat once they’re done with their shifts in the touristy areas. The tomatillo salsa is … um, let’s just say that I know when I’m beaten. We had beef arranchero-style, with the best guacamole ever (sorry, Doc), and a white-bean soup. Our meals cost $10. Not apiece.

The Best Parade Ever. Did you know that we’re here during Carnival? It didn’t even register to me. So, there was this parade down 5th street, the main tourist drag. The Best Parade Ever was a disorganized spectacle, with stops and starts occurring seemingly at random. It included:
- Token Beauty Queen.
- Random beauty-queen wannabes wearing large (6 foot radius) halo-wing things. One of them had so much trouble with hers that some random costumed guy took hers and wore it.
- Random latino/latina dancers.
- The Mask. As in the Jim Carrey character.
- Beetlejuice. As in the Michael Keaton character.
- Toddlers throwing candy from the sunroof of a Toyota Tundra into the crowd.
- Random octogenarian brigade. Some members of this group were concentrating as much as they could on walking on the cobblestones in their pumps. Those who were sitting in the back of their pickup truck were concentrating on beaning people with candy. One of the guys had a wicked fastball, which caught one of the tourists in front of us in the face.
- Fat men dressed in drag, singing, “We don’t need no water, let the motherfucker burn!” I’m a child of the nineties, that song is love.

I promise, I am stone sober. I can’t even imagine what this would have been like had I befriended Cheech.

It's not that late here, and good thing. We haven't yet figured how to preserve the "fire + food" meme.

From a beach hotel in Mexico, good night and good luck.