Jessie Goes….

Nothing, and I mean nothing, beats sitting on a rocky cliff overlooking an ocean whose color and clarity is stunning, with a cocktail in hand as its effects slowly trickle through your system!

Its like a rip of a sheet of paper that I have to pick up from here within the hour knowing I will shortly be hanging out in Houston International Airport.

I honestly could sit here all day and write away in my little notebook. Why this is happening now on my last minutes to take advantage is a good question. Maybe Gauguin and Hemmingway experienced this and its why they never left their islandy paradises. The sound of the crashing see-through blue waves does something to me.

Yesterday, after waking up at a leisurely 10am I wandered into the ‘real’ Cancun and away from my little wave crashing oasis, to see a little something more of the way the people who live here actually live. The Isle of Cancun was born as a result of a 1967 feasibility study by the Mexican government and a local bank. When ground was broken in 1970 the island had 3 residents, and Cancun City, where I’m heading today on the local bus, didn’t exist at all. After the government financed the first several hotels, the rest was history, and now Cancun City has 600,000 people whose livings revolve completely and totally on the tourist trade of the Mexican Riviera.

The local bus runs nearly continuously. I jumped on one with my 6.5 pesos and sat down within 3 minutes of getting onto the main (only) road in the tourist zone. I wasn’t exactly sure where to get off in Cancun City, of course, so when we got to somewhere in there I just yelled stop in Spanish, and jumped off.

As is nearly always the case as a single woman, I got my spidey senses out, and looked about suspiciously as I wandered down the street, the only tourist in sight. On first entrance to the city it looked on the dirty, polluted, commercial zone side. Its funny, I often think that as a first sight in many cities. I liken it to being a NYer and staring in wonder when a tourist relates to you ‘how filthy dirty’ the city is. Huh? NYC? What dirt? What bag-ladies? After a while you just edit out those parts and see only the cool stuff beyond. It is part of the urban mystique. Well, its the same thing here, my first 15 minutes of wandering made me wonder if I might as well get back on the next bus I saw before I wandered into an area less trafficked and less safe.

Instead I took a propitious left, to a much more pedestrian street. I have noticed in many a central and south american town that pedestrian street and high speed highway aren’t mutual exclusive. You have sidewalk bars running right up to hordes of honking speeding traffic with people sprinting across 4 or 5 lanes to make it to the other side. I saw some gringo establishments, a hostel here, a hostel there, and that meant maragritas were around. After walking up and down for another 30 or 40 minutes, making sure I kept my internal compass knowing where the main highway outta this burg was, I finally settled on a cute place serving up lunch.

In spanish I did my best with help from pointing, to order just a side or rice and beans, and a margarita. Within minutes my little waitress shows up WITH TWO of these strong enough to kill you drinks.

“No No! I meant just one margarita!” I said in English, all pretext of cultural respectfulness to the wind.

She smiled and pointed to a small line on the top of the menu which said 2X1. So, I order one. I get two. Apparently AT ONCE. One for each hand. Not only were people staring at me because I was this lily white blonde girl alone in Cancun City, but I was so alone that I pretended to order a drink for my invisible partner. Ah well, I wasn’t in any rush!

As the tequila did its magic, my spidey senses dulled just enough for me to start to notice the details through the dirt. First I think there are a lot of americano gringo’s living the highlife here in cancun. 40ish men driving old volkswagon versions you only see outside of the US, with their little tan blonde families, speaking spanish and throwing around that flipflops and panama hat wearing familiarness that reminds me of Jane Goodall in the jungle or Dr. Livingstone in the bush-only he had a pith helmet.

Second I start noticing Latina girls in their full glory, with their hair done up, lipstick applied and stiletto heels clicking down the street, looking like any Manhattanite might, just with a vastly different backdrop. The traffic is still whizzing by, and a young man in a blue junker yells out to her, in that time worn ritual of how to disgust a girl in less than 10 seconds. In any language.

My walk back, down the same streets I had come down on, was much more colorful too… I peeked into the bank with the line out of the door, I took a spin through the grocery store, and I walked down numerous of the side alleys, none of which held the slightest bit of menace any longer, now that the dirt was invisible. People stared at me and I smiled, they smiled.

Last night, I slept with my balcony doors wide open to the ocean, to my maids horrification no doubt – she has twice told me “no safe”… but falling asleep this way is….aaaaahhhhhhhh.

Though I doubt I’ll come back to Cancun specifically, lets face it, I’m not the wet t-shirt type of party girl, I will no doubt come back to coastal Mexico, and I will not wait another 13 years! There is something to this living life in flipflops! Hasta Luego!

Tags: , Cancun, Cancun City, Flipflops, Margaritas, Mexico, Tag Index

This entry was posted on Friday, March 27th, 2009 at 2:42 pm and is filed under Mexico. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.