Es el paraíso (Unrelated to Spanking but totally related to happiness)

Readers,

I’ve taken a fair few vacations, and they’ve all been nice enough – the Smoky Mountains are gorgeous in the fall when leaves change colors, and there’s a cool/funky nude river-beach just outside Portland where I once spent the day. Sitting on a big deck on the back end of a ship in the middle of big water is pretty damn amazing, too. There has never been a time when I’ve been ‘away’ that I’ve not been happy about that away-ness in some way, and I knew that this vacation would be just the same.

Away-ness makes me breathe more deeply for some reason, and I become adventurous, something which I don’t consider myself to be nearly enough in everyday life (although you may disagree). There’s something about getting out of one’s comfort zone and taking chances – even if, for me, taking chances means swimming underwater and drinking alcoholic beverages at lunch – that makes us feel that much more alive.

This past week I was Super Alive.

 

 

A week in small-town-anywhere will likely force a busy person to take things more slowly, but this small town is something special. We spent a week eating, strolling, swimming, and napping, surrounded by the gorgeous Caribbean, lush mangrove jungles, and one of the most spectacular places on the planet – the Great Barrier Reef.

Instead of doing the typical tourist thing, we decided to hop off the beaten path just a bit and ended up having quite possibly the best time of our lives. We rented a private home for the week, and I should say right at the outset that this place was Obnoxiously Fabulous – two full floors of indoor living area topped by a 3rd floor outdoor patio, pool, and party area, with a 4th floor rooftop observation deck. I should also say right at the outset that this was, by far, the least expensive vacation rental I’ve ever taken.

 

I could type for a very long time about the variety of birds seen and heard from this deck, but you’d have to see it for yourself. Also, the neighbors had chickens, roosters, and at least one turkey, so the usual sound of traffic, ambulances, and other noise pollution were replaced by a definite organic, winged cacophony that didn’t let up even at night.

Nighttime also brought out the geckos, gigantic prisma-color moths, and goodness knows what else scurrying around out in the mangrove directly – and I mean directly as in right up against the home’s perimeter wall – behind us.

Can I tell you how wonderful and wild and perfect this place is? There’s a crazy mix of very old, small, rickety homesteads, built-up homes like the one I rented, and cool little Mexican hotels – no huge resorts in the town proper and no way to insulate oneself from the local culture…exactly what I wanted.

One morning this happened:

 

And all was right with the world.

And then that evening, this happened:

 

Feel that?

Now let’s move on to one of the main reasons I almost always choose Mexico: the food. I believe (and I know that Anthony Bourdain would disagree and I vehemently do NOT care) that Latin America turns out the most consistently delicious food on the planet. In my opinion, as many of you already know, there are few foods more perfect than the taco. A simple corn tortilla rolled around nearly anything – how could you possibly go wrong? There is no lime shortage in Mexico, either, and I didn’t see a single bruised, black, shriveled avocado the entire time. Things are Lush and Fat in the Yucatan, and the food reflects the bounty of all that humidity.

I ate the hands-down-best-ever-on-the-planet shrimp cocktail – twice, actually – and likely downed more guacamole than anyone should rightfully admit; there were organic eggs for breakfast and mangoes so ripe and sweet that you could smell ’em right through the skin. And the habañeros? Ohholyhell…

There are no photos of the food. This should give you some indication of just how little time it spent sitting in front of me.

Oh, and cocktails. I should probably mention the cocktails. Since I don’t usually drink at all, any beverage stronger than fresh, sweet iced tea is likely going to make me a little wonky; I was wonky a fair few times last week.

It’s the Mojitos, you see, and the sun, and the sea – they conspire together to make you believe that nothing would taste better at this very moment than some really strong rum, watered down a teeny bit with a few drops of water and a couple bruised mint leaves. Do not be fooled by the steaming coolness rising from that tall glass, my friend. It is a ruse to lure in the unwary drinker and make her need a nap at 2pm. I believe I had a total of about ten alcoholic beverages during the course of the week, which should cover my quota well into 2017.

When you order your Mojito on the beach and drink it while smoking a cigar, the nice man brings you an ashtray that he just carved out of a green coconut:

I loved that man.

Hell, I loved everyone I met. Totally enamored with Latin culture, language, and people, I always feel pretty damn at home here, even though my understanding of the language is woefully inadequate (something which I plan to change immediately). We met several folks who live and work in the fishing village who are what one would call the Salt of the Earth, including one cool cat tour guide who seemed to know everyone and everything going on at any given moment. He even helped me find those cigars.

Speaking of those cigars: One needs certain things no matter where one is, but those essentials change depending on the surroundings. I’ve found it to be true that anytime I’m in the Caribbean, I need Cuban cigars. This is likely a reaction to a decades-long embargo in the U.S. which causes me to have the ‘want what I can’t have’ response, so every time I’m there I buy and smoke with abandon.

Also coffee:

 

Don’t think I’ve forgotten about the Sea..

That’s the reason for every single decision I make in terms of vacation travel – if there’s no beach involved, I’m likely highly uninterested. I know, I know, there are gorgeous places all over the world; ancient civilizations and art and culture and food and terrain that I’ve never experienced which could and likely would surely outdo my beloved Mexican Caribbean in a way or two. Again, I do not care. I am willfully and endlessly small-minded in this area.

Because I spent a large amount of my early life hanging out at the edge of the Gulf of Mexico and various rivers, ponds, sandpits, and the like, I’m obsessively attracted to water. I can sit, clear-headed, for hours, staring at the line where the water meets the sky, not a care in the world. Add in the fact that at NO time during my life did I ever experience water clean enough for one to actually see one’s feet when standing at ankle-depth, and you have a perfect storm of beach-bum-itis. And baby, I got it bad.

This time I did something that I thought I’d never do – I went underwater. Pretty far underwater, too. About 20 feet, which to me seems like a really long way down when there aren’t gills involved.

Also sharks.

But I did it. Snuba. Like a cross between snorkel and scuba, these two nice boys hook you up to a really long air hose that’s attached to your very own floaty thing; they give you some flipper thingies for your feet (try to keep up, I know this is getting technical..) and teach you how to do the air-breathing without drowning, which is vitally important. They also teach you hand signals to be used underwater, since you can’t talk through your air-breathing thingy (although I did yell ‘shit’ when I saw a large barracuda, all that came out was “bubblebubblebubble”). This was a super exciting little excursion and I got to see lots of really beautiful coral, a teeny bright-red ray, lobsters, aforementioned barracuda, and even an undersea cenote (google it). When it was done, however, I immediately remembered that I am 41 and don’t swim in the ocean often (see Las Vegas on the map?) – because my entire body decided to basically shut down on the walk back to the rental house, where I napped the nap of the partially-dead-by-snuba.

That was okay, too, though, because it was the perfect excuse to go back for a second massage..

 

I’d like to say, here and now, that it’s likely I will live in Latin America sometime during the course of my life.

This is why:

 

There is absolutely nothing you can say to top that, mi amigo. Don’t even try.