Mystery Machines

My new (used) Prius, named Clifford, wanted to pose with his friends in the parking garage at the office.

A Look Forward and Back

And thus ends another year, merely a turn of the clock, really, but we use it to first reflect and then greet the new day with hope and intent. I used to feel good or bad about my previous twelve months, but I’ve long since learned I view success or failure through the prism I woke up with on any given day. So, 2023. What’s today’s outlook?

A couple of years ago, I resolved to visit more destinations new to me, as I’d fallen into the habit of visiting Cabo and Barcelona over and over. And I’m semi-interested in going to every country, now that I’m over halfway there without having consciously tried. So in 2023, I visited El Salvador, which I hadn’t gotten to before when it was dangerous, finishing the last puzzle piece of Central America.

My other new destinations were Dominican Republic, Bonaire, Algeria, New Caledonia, and the most astonishing trip to Vanuatu. My overnight stopovers were (repeat) Panama City, (repeat) Sydney, and (new) Marseille en route to Stockholm Comic Con. Locally, I checked out Monterey and San Luis Obispo. Also, I couldn’t resist another weekend in Los Cabos or camping in Death Valley, which last time I went was on a bicycle. This time I more sensibly took a rental car.

Happy New Year from Cancun Airport

I have two simple resolutions for 2024. I am going to read more books. And I plan to carve out time for my own pursuits in a way I haven't since going back to work in an office. 

Here's a good start--sitting by the hotel pool next to Cancun Airport, doing nothing after a swim.

Tulum: Day Five

I awoke to an overwhelming sewage stench in my “luxury” Tulum condo. I’d noticed a faint whiff a few times and chalked it up to poor sewers and drainage, but why did it get so bad in the last hours? I threw a towel over the shower drain and closed the bathroom door. I wish I’d done that before I went to bed last night, but I’d been halfway to sleeping when I’d first caught a whiff of it.

“Maybe it’ll go away.” It hadn’t. It never does. It waxes and wanes but the only way to get rid of it is for a building to be built properly, and for sewers to be built properly.

I shrugged and went out to breakfast. Tulum’s infrastructure was rough from the start, and was now utterly overwhelmed by rampant development, but wafting sewer gas isn’t something I’ve only smelled in Mexico. I’d stayed at a hotel in Milan with this problem too, and many other spots in the world. I’m glad for building standards in the USA. Government intervention at its finest, unless you also count food safety. Which I do.

I wanted to go to Vintage Café to try their breakfast, but they didn’t open until 8, and I needed to get out of my AirBnB early so I could stash my bag and get to my morning appointment ahead of the bus to Cancun. I went back to Rossini’s, where I’d gone the first day and had stern words with the server about the difference between drip coffee and americano. Their espresso machine was working today.

Tulum: Day Four

Today’s professional excursion was titled Mayan Inland Empire, and the gist of it was I got to go with other tourists in a van to the ruins at Coba, to visit a Mayan village, and to stop at a cenote. But it was oh-so-much more complicated than that. In a good way.

The trip didn’t start off so well. After I’d waited outside for a half-hour, the booking agent messaged me on WhatsApp that the driver was waiting. This turned into a kerfluffle and was resolved when the agent realized there had been a mix-up with coordinates. The other two passengers, a married couple originating from both Texas and Venezuela, had been waiting in the van outside the random apartment complex some six blocks from mine and were not delighted. And then we picked up an Annapolis family of six nearby, before driving ba
ck to the beach hotel zone (where they’d picked up the first couple) to get a solo French traveler.

Everyone was a bit grumpy at first, including the guide when we met him (late) at HQ. The only person not-grumpy was the van driver, a taxi driver who’d gotten lucky after the agency had made a series of logistical mistakes that morning. The taxi driver and his van taxi were our limo for the day. He chauffeured us to 7-11, where everyone but me and the French guy bought cheap coffee to improve their moods and awareness. (I am staying in an AirBnB with a kitchenette, so I’d made my own coffee and breakfast before the sun rose.)

We eventually drove on into the rural area outside Tulum, passing roadside stands selling dreamcatchers and Mexican Talavera pottery, and eventually we pulled into a parking lot between a lake and the entrance to the Coba ruins.

“Sometimes we see crocodiles in the lagoon,” said Tzamn, the guide (who said to call him Sam, so we will). We didn’t look for any today. We were hurrying to get through the Coba gates to get ahead of the crowds.

Coba’s main sites are at the entrance and also 2 kilometers on. We rented bicycles for the two kilometers. I chose a rusty pink one-speed beach cruiser.

Tulum: Day Three

What was more exciting, making breakfast in the AirBnB, doing some laundry in the sink, or ironing a shirt on a beach towel laid out on the bed? (Side note: Why provide an iron without anywhere to use it?)

Okay, not the most thrilling day here in Tulum, but what does one do here on a rainy day? I started the day with…yes…yoga class. Today’s class was tougher than yesterday’s, but I made it through without hurting myself or screwing up. Nearly everyone else in the class was a young woman somewhere between 25-35 years of age, weighing approximately 48 pounds, most of which was made up of hair clips and tattoo in
k. Two brought their man-friends. I was pleased to see a woman of about my age, but she turned out to be the owner and did not stay for class. The yoga experiment has largely succeeded, and I am optimistic I can continue this back in Burbank. While I don’t have the flexibility of some years back, I can mostly recall the various poses.

I followed my phone map along some new roads that went to dozens of construction sites. The walk was lovely, the sky was gray, and I barely saw any other humans or cars. Though I did see a fair number of birds. I tried figuring out which was which now that I’ve watched an entire six-episode documentary series on birding as well as read a book about a birder, but I still couldn’t tell you the name of the black bird with the bright blue wings.

Oh, will you look at that. Searching with those terms turned up the Yucatan Jay. Like a crow in a handsome blue outfit. 

I got in 10,000 steps ahead of the rain, stopped by one of the neighborhood restaurants for lunch—really, second breakfast, since my first had been fruit and coffee. I could have gone back to the apartment then, but I tried a local bakery next, and finally headed back to wait out the dampness of the day. That is, until dinner, when I had to go back downstairs to the strip of cafes. But I brought an umbrella, so all is well.

Tulum: Day Two

I did it! I went to yoga class! I found a place near my lodging and signed up for an 8:30 a.m. class today and one tomorrow. My biggest yoga class fear is I haven’t been in so long and there are a lot of instructions to follow, and I’m nowhere near as young and flexible as I was last time I went to a yoga class.

That said, this was an easy one. I do actually go to a low-key pilates class on Saturdays in Burbank, and this wasn’t even as difficult. But the point isn’t easy or hard. The point is to go and to try to establish a routine. I don’t need to go to a class to be in a class—YouTube and pandemic sorted that out. But I have to actually do it and not just think about doing it, so today was step one.

The teacher was strumming a ukulele followed by playing a tuning fork near each attendee’s ears, as well as singing a little song I didn’t know at the end. Some of the others knew it well. I didn’t laugh. I had a tough time keeping my giggles to myself the first few times I went to yoga many years ago, but now I stifle them easily. I won’t have to do that if I turn on 30 Days with Adrienne or Kassandra or one of their contemporaries.

Some Other Time, Perhaps

I think Tulum ruins might be hell. The first long line was for paying the national park fee. The second long line was for the admission ticket. The third was to actually get into the site.

I rented a bike for this! 

I'm told these queues are because I came over Christmas vacation, that I picked the worst time. 

Tulum: Day One

I spent a lot of time on Reddit and TripAdvisor. I read Lonely Planet Caribbean cover to cover. Where would I go, I wondered, for the week between Christmas and New Year’s?

Not that I’m *required* to go somewhere, mind you, but it seemed a shame to waste a week of not working. I had an idea that I would do some basic, simple yoga, possibly overcome my lethargic aversion to it and start a routine, and catch up on some writing, but I didn’t want to do it somewhere cold. I wanted to do it where I would feel encouraged to go outside—so somewhere warm. Yes, Burbank is warm. But I already know I won’t do yoga or catch up on writing in Burbank, because I don’t know why, I just don’t. And I didn’t want to get involved in dramatically different time zones this trip. It’s a long way to the Pacific from the East Coast, and a long way back to LAX from Europe.

But as I dug around online and through my guidebook, it dawned on me that Barbados and Jamaica and Trinidad all had the same problem. I would be so engaged in seeing the country that I would just do my usual—race around and learn about the destination. That’s not yoga. That’s not catching up on writing. That’s something I’m very, very good at, but I do it all the time. And the idea was to do something new—focus on myself and minimize distractions.

Editors Can Be Tiresome

I don’t have the same traditional vices as most folks. I’m too lazy sometimes, but I don’t drink, smoke, indulge in much beyond coffee. And I’m sitting in a coffee shop in Tulum where I ordered latte and breakfast, and after the breakfast order went in, they told me they only had americano. 

I promptly ordered espresso instead, but they don’t have espresso, only drip. I hate me too, but I told the guy americano isn’t drip.

Anyway, the avocado toast looks good.