Yucatan
Yes, the Yucatan peninsula is indeed in Mexico, though parts of it are also owned by other countries that change their names a lot. The British Honduras became Belize in the space of a week once, then back again, and then back again. Rebel troops from southern Mexico are always troubling those fun and friendly federale’s with their lovely M-16’s and Ingram’s. Some hotels will warn to “not venture out at night”, and I don’t think it is just because of the mosquitoes.
Speaking of mosquitoes, those little blood sucking bastards, I did manage to contract one of the world’s most popular parasitic infections from them in the Yucatan. Ignoring the signs that I could not read, I plunged into a swamp in search of Belonosox belizianus, the live-bearing pike minnow. We had a new exhibit opening at the zoo, and I wanted a pair, at least. Mosquitoes rarely bite me, in fact, my roommate slept with nothing but her nose and fingers above the sheets during our stay, whilst I slept on top of the covers, in my birthday suit, with nary a bite! She, however, had dozens of raised lumps on her fingers every dawn. I think that the bugs figured I was some sort of a trap?
Anyway, I did end up contracting some sort of malaria, though the species has, to this date, never been properly identified. I kept on getting blood drawn from different doctors, to the point that I felt like some sort of a Danish pincushion, all with no firm results. Suffice to say, when those little flying vampyres are about, most of the people who know me tend to stay far, far away.
Enough about those pests, though, and onto the lovely Yucatan! I had the best French Onion Soup at a resort’s restaurant there, near Akumal, staggering distance down the beach from our condo, as well as some fantastic sort of ‘monte cristo’ sandwiches that were trundled by every day by a very quaint lady who also tried to sell me blankets. Blankets? It was about 99 fucking degrees at this point in the year. I guess if you came out of the surf at midnight, you might be able to use the blanket to lay down so you wouldn’t crunch all of the hermit crabs on the beach as you made your way to the sliding glass door that let you into the blessed coolness of artificial air conditioning. The same electricity that powered that unit also gave us the ability to crush ice for margaritas, which led to the staggering, which led to the stumbling…well, you see, it was indeed a vicious cycle.
I don’t mean there were a few hermit crabs. Not at all. There were hundreds of thousands of them, clicking and clacking as they ate whatever had passed out or drifted up on the beach. I know for a fact that one German girl only talked to me once, and I never saw her again. Of course, it could be that I was talking to her topless figure, though. My roommate smacked me in the back of the skull for that incident. It was that smack that made me look up ( “I see stars!”) and notice the incredibly huge spider that had made a nest way up in the Palapa hut. It must have been at least an inch wide at the rear, and in a good three foot wide web, about 3 meters up off of the bar at the apex of the hut. I asked the bartender if it ever came down from there. “ not yet, senor.” They are very phlegmatic in the south.
The snorkeling near Akumal, which is about 60 or so kilometers to the south of Cancun (forgive me for the latitude of my mileage, I didn’t drive) is absolutely phenomenal. Phenomenal !!! There are fish there that would scare a normal person straight out of their trunks and onto the beach. The cute little damsels will try to eat away at your ankles if you have painted nails, as my roommate and her friend found out, and they are fascinated with people who have had too much of that great French Onion Soup and perhaps a plate or two of Garlic Shrimp, as I found out. O.K. Let’s call a spade a spade, shall we?
The first night at the condo, I had two platters of garlic shrimp done on the local barbeque side-of-the-road-stand. I woke at about four in the morning with that strange feeling in the lower stomach that usually precludes something that is certainly promising to not be so pleasant. It wasn’t. I could have bought stock in the local “toiletpaper-eria”, except I think they were using all of the excess sandpaper to polish the yachts that occasionally drifted up to the southern pier, and disgorged a slew of people who did not eat at road side stands.
After a day of the squirts, I became fed up with sitting in the bathroom while my roomies played around the playa outside. Racing past the large iguana who had taken a liking to my beach towel, I did make it down the white sand beach and manage to plunge into the crystal clear water before leaving a chili surprise.
Now, even my mother will tell you, animals actually do like me. Some of them want to kill me, but that is just because I look tasty. Ask Archimedes. The fish in the cauldron of the Akumal reef were no different, they greeted me with open fins!
I swam about with a cloud of thousands of my new, bestest friends in a lovely arrow positioned in a huge delta just three feet or so from my rear end, which, since it was no longer on the porcelain, was free to just sphincter away as it willed. It had been anyway for at least two days by this point. In a school of blue, red, yellow, and purple I meandered above the verdant corals and live rock structures, without a care in the world, and had many of my new accompanying feasters swim up by my face, as if to ask, “Have you tried the French Onion Soup yet?”
(I really should add, at this point, that an extremely good man that I know, in fact, the minister at my wedding , is staying near Playa d. Carmen as I type this…Jorge, if you have the Onion Soup, don’t wear your wetsuit and stay near the beach!)
Yes, the soup was fantastic, and day after day the little fish would come out to greet me. I was the fucking St. Paul of the Ocean !!!! I could envision little fountains all over southern Mexico with little sculptures of me and the clouds of little fish coming to feast from my buttocks! I was a fish God !
Normally, when you are snorkeling, you tend to look down unless:
A: you have a fancy floaty bubble-thing that blocks water from coming in, or
B: you can breathe salt water.
I can’t do/didn’t have either. I can however, hold my breath for up to four minutes at a stretch sometimes, and still talk or whistle. I’m still working on the harmonica thing.
I actually can do the entire “got no satisfaction” Devo version without having to breath at all, though I am purple and sometimes swerve a bit in traffic. Anyway, so here I am, chumming away placidly in my little cove, when my escort suddenly just disappears. “What the hell?” I know that there was still a bunch of brown goodness that was flowing from my parasitic-ridden arse to keep the little bastards happy, but they lit out on me!
Bump.
I looked up, saw an eye about two inches in diameter, and yes, breathed in through my snorkel.
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