Maxigumee

Our final two days in Mexico have been a bit more of a success, at least culturally, than the first few. After staying in the extremely non-tourist Chetumal for two days, my mother and I were driven back to Playa del Carmen (a much more resort-like commercial town) by a professor named Alfredo.

On the way to Playa, we stopped in a small town called Tulum to see ancient Mayan ruins. It was a bit too hot to really explore and get into the pyramids and stuff, so we spent a lot of the time cooling off at the beach next to the archeological site. We got some pictures at the little ruin doodads and those should be up and online when I get back to Buffalo.

The beaches here in Mexico are really very gorgeous. None of that green, algae-filled water and rip-your-skin-off rocks like in the states. Here, the sand is pure white and the ocean is, well, ocean blue. I didn’t actually go swimming here, but my mother and I have both dipped our feet in the water.

When we arrived in Playa del Carmen, we parked the car and dragged our luggage for a few blocks until we got to The Plaza Hotel. Although my mother now denies it, I recall her saying that we were going to be put up in the best hotel that this town had to offer. It certainly seemed like that’s what Alfredo thought it was. But my stomach started churning suspiciously as soon as I laid eyes on the hotel, but I wasn’t sure because Alfredo kept flipping out about how fancy it was.

When we got the room, I found out that my suspicions were well-founded. I thought that the hotel we stayed at in Chetumal was mediocre, but it was a palace in comparison to this place. Not only were there rips and mysterious, blood-like stains on the sheets and pillow cases, but the room also came equipped with creepy-crawlies on the walls and dirt on the unwashed floors. I was worried that I might sound too whiny, as I usually do when it comes to my anal-retentivity about hotels and living spaces, but I think my mother found the place a little bit shady, too. As soon as we put down our luggage, we left in search of a better hotel. We found one at the end of Playa’s main commercial street and we got a reservation for the next night right away.

After that, while walking around in search of souvenirs and dinner, my mother and I worried more about our creepy hotel. When we went to the new, much nicer hotel to get reservations, the guy at the front desk asked us pretty eagerly which hotel we were staying at that we didn’t like. Now, we may have been being little bit paranoid, perhaps he just wanted to take some pride in his hotel by knowing the suck-levels of other ones, but we thought it sounded a little bit like he was going to let his pals at the other hotel know about us.

“You know,” my mother said, regretting that she had told the man which hotel we were staying at, “they all know each other around here. They’re like all one big gang of Mayan people.”

“Oh, God!” I said, getting kind of anxious. “What if we come back to our hotel room and all of our stuff is like stolen and thrown all over the room??”

It wasn’t, but we did sleep with a chair propped against the door all night.

* * * *

In the morning, my mother and I took showers, packed our bags, and got the hell out of that hotel. At the front desk, my mother told the guy that we had a change of plans and that we would have to leave right away. As we were walking away, my mother told me that he looked like he was about to cry. We felt kind of guilty at first, but we soon learned that it’s kind of a trick-of-the-trade around here to guilt people into doing things. In the twenty-four-hour time period that we’ve been here, we’ve had our fair share of guilt. We were guilted into tipping this singer (twice) as he turned up to serenade people everywhere we went. Some woman nearly got on the ground and begged us to come and get a private tour of her new hotel because I guess we looked like rich Americans. After we bought several bags of souvenirs, people were even more anxious to pull us in and almost tackled us to get us into their stores.

Later in the afternoon, we returned to our hotel to rest a little bit before going back out for dinner. My mother went outside of our room to the hotel’s swimming pool while I laid back on the bed.

I hardly ever take naps — I hate sleeping during the day — but I guess that today I did. I thought I had only shut my eyes for a few minutes, but when I opened them, my mom was getting out of the shower and the sun was setting. I could hardly get up. I felt as if somebody had given me ten doses of date-rape drug, hit me over the head with a ninety-pound sledgehammer, and then tied it to my feet. I don’t think I’ve ever been so tired in my life. My guess —other than the possibility of having my lemonade spiked at lunch— was that it was perhaps the sun and all the walking. I had my mom go and buy me a Coke from the hotel’s store. Any form of caffeine is usually a no-no for me, the smallest amounts keep me up until five in the morning and leave me anxious for nearly an entire week. But desperate times call for desperate measures, and I decided that not being able to move was pretty desperate. I drank the Coke, changed my clothing, and my mother and I went out for some dinner.

The food options here have been a little bit easier than in the hard-core-local Mexican places. I’m really starting to believe that all of this vegetarian Mexican food junk is really just an American thing. The only vegetarian thing on any of the the menus have been appetizers like nachos and guacamole. Luckily, the restaurant we went to tonight was super cool and they made me a special vegetarian fajita dish that wasn’t on the menu.

My mother and I return to cold, cold Buffalo tomorrow. We were told by one of the people who picked us up on Wednesday that you’re supposed to be at the airport three hours before your plane departs. That seems a little bit extreme, but you never know. Our plane leaves at 2:30, so that doesn’t leave us much time here in the morning. Five days really hasn’t been enough time at all. I never really considered Mexico as a vacation destination before (maybe the whole people pooping on the street stereotype kind of turned me off), but it really has been very fun and interesting.