Playa del Carmen,Mexico
November 12, 2010
The first time I visited Playa del Carmen, about forty miles south of Cancún, in Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula was in February 19865. I have no memory of this, but according to Steve we stopped there on a day- trip out of Cancún where we were spending the week.
In 1985 Cancún wasn’t much more than a blip on the travel radar.
It had been a cold, snowy winter, and on the Friday before the last week of school before February break, I’d almost wrecked my car in a white-out on the interstate driving home from work.
I called my travel agent in Montreal who’d always got me great deals, and said, “Get us out of here. Anywhere that’s warm.”
In those days there were lots of charters flying south. A few days later he called me a school.
“I can get you to Cancun Friday night.”
“Where’s Cancún?” I said?
“Mexico.”
“Is it warm?”
“Yes.”
That was all I needed to hear.
In 1985, 50,000 people lived in what would ultimately be called the Maya Riviera. Today, more than 1.2 million people live in the Cancún corridor.
We flew out that F
riday evening, arrived in the middle of the night and woke the following morning to summer in February. I was hooked.
Midweek we rented a car for the day. I remember almost everything about that day—a few ruins, visiting a water park, sharing the car with a couple of women we’d met on the flight. But I have no memory of our short visit to Playa.
Back then it wasn’t much more than a large fishing village. What put it on the tourist map was its ferry to Cozumel, which Jacques Cousteu had put on the map 20 years earlier.
There would be repeat visit to Cancún with friends during February or April break, but it would be another ten years before we’d return to Playa del Carmen.
It was Christmas week, 1995. Neither of us wanted to spend Christmas at home that year, Dad had died the Christmas before and the memory of his shutting down Christmas Eve morning and spending that evening with Hospice, and Christmas Day with priests was still raw and fresh.
We decided to imprint a new image on Christmas. We bought a package to Cozumel where our most vivid memory of Christmas is sitting on the roof of a restaurant, a guitarist playing Silent Night in Spanish. Dad was very much with us. It is, of course, impossible to run away, but we did observe the holiday in a much different way.
The day after Christmas, the anniversary of his death, we decided to take a day trip to Playa. It was sunny and warm and we spent the day on the town’s gorgeous white sandy beaches. In De
cember of 1995, La Quinta, Playa’s Fifth Avenue, was still a dirt track. (Today, on the far north of it, condos sell for close to a million dollars and more.)
I think we spent every other day of our week in Playa that week. I returned two months later, and again for April break. It was then that I tracked down a Spanish language school and set up program for the summer.
It was in Playa that I met Alba, my first Spanish teacher. In August of 1996 I’d walk to the far edge of town, meet her in a rundown old school, and for four intensive hours a day she laid the foundation for my Spanish. Thanks Alba! You were the best! (Today, that school is gone and a new three story school has been built. Across the street is a Wal-Mart Super Store that takes up a whole city block. Across the street from that is Mega, another super store that takes up another city block.)
That was just the beginning of my ongoing relationship with Playa. In summers when I wanted to go somewhere but didn’t really want to travel, I’d head to Playa.
Sometimes I’d fly into Mexico City, draw a travel line and spend
two weeks travelling to get there. A few later, rested from the school year, I’d fly home.
There would be times when I’d commute between Montreal and Playa four or five times a year.
There’d be times I’d walk off the beach on the Sunday afternoon of April break, shower, fly home on a red eye, and drive back to school from the airport in time for Monday morning class.
There’d be summers I’d live in Playa for weeks on end in the searing wet humidity of the Yucatán, in a hotel without air conditioning. A stiff breeze off the Caribbean always made it tolerable.
There’d be times I’d make friends with a group of people who’d all be gone the next time I’d visit. Such was the life in this very transient town.
There is no other place in the world that has my mark on it more than Playa del Carmen. I’ve watched it grow from a village to a city of more than 100,000 people.
I’ve spent more time there than any other place in the world, other than Plattsburgh and Northern New York. In many ways it’s home, and given the right combination of factors, could be.
It made sense then to come here to finally immerse myself in Spanish. I’d just retired and in January of 2007 I’d come here to study. Playa was as good a place as any. It would be warm and I’d be away from the north until May.
I found an apartment far from the tourist ghetto s
tarted class, and settled into a comfortable routine.
I got up, ate breakfast, and went to school until 2:00 pm. I’d spend an hour at the gym each day, then stop at a grocery store and buy something for dinner. I’d take a bus home or, if it were nice, which it almost always was, I’d skip the gym and walk the five miles back to Mission del Carmen. I’d do my homework, study, watch TV and go to bed.
I had a good life. The school wasn’t great and I found fault with a ton of things, but I soon realized it was the first time in I don’t know how long that no one wanted a piece of me. Thirty five years in the classroom and years of caring for my parents had worn me down.
For the first in my adult life I stopped. It was a totally selfish, and totally unapologetic, four months.
I never intended to stay that long. Never. But one week led to another. I took each class I could until I exhausted every possible level. It was really an academic overload, but life was too comfortable to stop. So I stayed.
I’d go to school for three weeks then take a week off. This was school, but it wasn’t real school. I’d travel on those weeks off. In February I met Steve on the west coast of Mexico for the annual roundup of friends in Zihuatanejo; in March I went to Mexico City and in April I travelled south into less travelled parts of the Yucatán.
The weather changed. Winter turned to spring. The days grew warmer and longer. By early May it had become steamy and it was clearly time to leave. Without school, I had no social life, and it really was time to return home.
I came home and, as always happened when I’d come back to the North Country, I’d go through was became known as “Playa Withdrawal.” A part of me always stayed in the Yucatán.
And so each I year I return. Now there are a few friends to visit, and I always take time to visit the teachers who influenced me the most, the ones who encouraged and stretched my abilities. I’m grateful to them for what they did, and for their ongoing friendship.
And so I found myself there in November of 2010, arriving in Playa in the most unconventional way ever. I’d arranged with our cruise line, Norwegian, to leave the ship at our last port, Cozumel. I spent a pleasant week on the beach, marveling at the continual changes in this town, eating in my favorite restaurants and visiting the few people I know there.
On my last full day in Playa I left the beach early and made my way to “The Mission--La Mission del Carmen” where I lived for 3 ½ months in winter of 2007. As I did every day that winter when I’d come home from school, I’d get off the bus, cross the street and stop at Oxxo, the neighborhood grocery store. I bought a Diet Coke and a cup of homemade arroz con leche—rice pudding. I walked down the street, stopped in front of “my apartment,” leaned against an iron fence across the street, enjoying my snacks and thinking back:
I thought of rainy, early winter evenings when the sound of soft rain would splash against the skylight in the living room. I’d always stop what I was doing and just listen to that sweet, soothing sound.
I thought of soft, warm winter nights when I’d sit in my front yard studying the night sky. Venus glittered in the Eastern horizon; Orion rode the heavens directly above me, and not to my south as he would if I were watching him from home.
I thought of the man who, in the twilight of early evening, would ride his bicycle down the streets of La Mission chanting:
Tamales. Coladas.
Tamales. Coladas.
Often, his voice would trail in then trail out. Sometimes I’d grab some pesos, step outside and buy a few tamales—rice, vegetables and meat steamed in a banana leaf. An elegant dinner.
I thought back to my ongoing battles with ants who marched across the living room floor from the front window to the back door. Each Saturday I’d wash the floor with a water and Clorox mixture and for a few days I’d be ant free. By mid week I’d have to do it all over again. Oh, my poor mother would have gone crazy.
I thought of hot, late winter days when I’d slog home from class and open the door to an oven. I’d open all the windows and doors and within a few minutes the small apartment would cool right down.
I thought about a lot of things while leaning against that fence. By the time I was ready to leave, the sky had turned lead gray and a light autumnal rain threatened. I’d been rehashing happy, for the most part, memories. A 5:00 dusk was settling over the neighborhood and people were beginning to return home from work.
I gathered up my things and left, but not before sending good thoughts to whoever lived in the house now.
But I felt a bit sad. The neighborhood had deteriorated and “my” house was dumpy. Changes. That is what Playa del Carmen has always been about. It’s not a town that’s stood still since it started being developed.
But, through it all, there were constants—the constants that brought be back time and again and will bring me back in the future:
The Caribbean—water soft and warm in indescribable shades of blues and greens.
Giant stratocumulus clouds that hug the sky like giant white mountains.
Sand, mica rich, that even on the hottest summer days, is cool to the touch.
On the way back to my hotel I stopped at Mega, the huge box-store super market in Playa. Employees were busy decorating for Christmas. Fresh evergreen trees were available, their heady pine scent anachronistic to the Yucatan.
I’d come full circle. It was time to leave Playa. It’s a great place for a week or two, but I’d worn out my time there. I had an air ticket to Mexico City the next day. There, I’d get to watch Christmas unfold for an entire month.
This time I was racing toward the holidays, not escaping from them. I also knew that Christmas in Mexico City would be like everything else that city does—it would be bigger than life.
I was psyched to move on to chapter 3 of this journey.
November 12, 2010
The first time I visited Playa del Carmen, about forty miles south of Cancún, in Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula was in February 19865. I have no memory of this, but according to Steve we stopped there on a day- trip out of Cancún where we were spending the week.
In 1985 Cancún wasn’t much more than a blip on the travel radar.
It had been a cold, snowy winter, and on the Friday before the last week of school before February break, I’d almost wrecked my car in a white-out on the interstate driving home from work.
I called my travel agent in Montreal who’d always got me great deals, and said, “Get us out of here. Anywhere that’s warm.”
In those days there were lots of charters flying south. A few days later he called me a school.
“I can get you to Cancun Friday night.”
“Where’s Cancún?” I said?
“Mexico.”
“Is it warm?”
“Yes.”
That was all I needed to hear.
In 1985, 50,000 people lived in what would ultimately be called the Maya Riviera. Today, more than 1.2 million people live in the Cancún corridor.
We flew out that F
riday evening, arrived in the middle of the night and woke the following morning to summer in February. I was hooked.Midweek we rented a car for the day. I remember almost everything about that day—a few ruins, visiting a water park, sharing the car with a couple of women we’d met on the flight. But I have no memory of our short visit to Playa.
Back then it wasn’t much more than a large fishing village. What put it on the tourist map was its ferry to Cozumel, which Jacques Cousteu had put on the map 20 years earlier.
There would be repeat visit to Cancún with friends during February or April break, but it would be another ten years before we’d return to Playa del Carmen.
It was Christmas week, 1995. Neither of us wanted to spend Christmas at home that year, Dad had died the Christmas before and the memory of his shutting down Christmas Eve morning and spending that evening with Hospice, and Christmas Day with priests was still raw and fresh.
We decided to imprint a new image on Christmas. We bought a package to Cozumel where our most vivid memory of Christmas is sitting on the roof of a restaurant, a guitarist playing Silent Night in Spanish. Dad was very much with us. It is, of course, impossible to run away, but we did observe the holiday in a much different way.
The day after Christmas, the anniversary of his death, we decided to take a day trip to Playa. It was sunny and warm and we spent the day on the town’s gorgeous white sandy beaches. In De
cember of 1995, La Quinta, Playa’s Fifth Avenue, was still a dirt track. (Today, on the far north of it, condos sell for close to a million dollars and more.)I think we spent every other day of our week in Playa that week. I returned two months later, and again for April break. It was then that I tracked down a Spanish language school and set up program for the summer.
It was in Playa that I met Alba, my first Spanish teacher. In August of 1996 I’d walk to the far edge of town, meet her in a rundown old school, and for four intensive hours a day she laid the foundation for my Spanish. Thanks Alba! You were the best! (Today, that school is gone and a new three story school has been built. Across the street is a Wal-Mart Super Store that takes up a whole city block. Across the street from that is Mega, another super store that takes up another city block.)
That was just the beginning of my ongoing relationship with Playa. In summers when I wanted to go somewhere but didn’t really want to travel, I’d head to Playa.
Sometimes I’d fly into Mexico City, draw a travel line and spend
two weeks travelling to get there. A few later, rested from the school year, I’d fly home.There would be times when I’d commute between Montreal and Playa four or five times a year.
There’d be times I’d walk off the beach on the Sunday afternoon of April break, shower, fly home on a red eye, and drive back to school from the airport in time for Monday morning class.
There’d be summers I’d live in Playa for weeks on end in the searing wet humidity of the Yucatán, in a hotel without air conditioning. A stiff breeze off the Caribbean always made it tolerable.
There’d be times I’d make friends with a group of people who’d all be gone the next time I’d visit. Such was the life in this very transient town.
There is no other place in the world that has my mark on it more than Playa del Carmen. I’ve watched it grow from a village to a city of more than 100,000 people.
I’ve spent more time there than any other place in the world, other than Plattsburgh and Northern New York. In many ways it’s home, and given the right combination of factors, could be.
It made sense then to come here to finally immerse myself in Spanish. I’d just retired and in January of 2007 I’d come here to study. Playa was as good a place as any. It would be warm and I’d be away from the north until May.
I found an apartment far from the tourist ghetto s
tarted class, and settled into a comfortable routine.I got up, ate breakfast, and went to school until 2:00 pm. I’d spend an hour at the gym each day, then stop at a grocery store and buy something for dinner. I’d take a bus home or, if it were nice, which it almost always was, I’d skip the gym and walk the five miles back to Mission del Carmen. I’d do my homework, study, watch TV and go to bed.
I had a good life. The school wasn’t great and I found fault with a ton of things, but I soon realized it was the first time in I don’t know how long that no one wanted a piece of me. Thirty five years in the classroom and years of caring for my parents had worn me down.
For the first in my adult life I stopped. It was a totally selfish, and totally unapologetic, four months.
I never intended to stay that long. Never. But one week led to another. I took each class I could until I exhausted every possible level. It was really an academic overload, but life was too comfortable to stop. So I stayed.
I’d go to school for three weeks then take a week off. This was school, but it wasn’t real school. I’d travel on those weeks off. In February I met Steve on the west coast of Mexico for the annual roundup of friends in Zihuatanejo; in March I went to Mexico City and in April I travelled south into less travelled parts of the Yucatán.
The weather changed. Winter turned to spring. The days grew warmer and longer. By early May it had become steamy and it was clearly time to leave. Without school, I had no social life, and it really was time to return home.
I came home and, as always happened when I’d come back to the North Country, I’d go through was became known as “Playa Withdrawal.” A part of me always stayed in the Yucatán.
And so each I year I return. Now there are a few friends to visit, and I always take time to visit the teachers who influenced me the most, the ones who encouraged and stretched my abilities. I’m grateful to them for what they did, and for their ongoing friendship.
And so I found myself there in November of 2010, arriving in Playa in the most unconventional way ever. I’d arranged with our cruise line, Norwegian, to leave the ship at our last port, Cozumel. I spent a pleasant week on the beach, marveling at the continual changes in this town, eating in my favorite restaurants and visiting the few people I know there.
On my last full day in Playa I left the beach early and made my way to “The Mission--La Mission del Carmen” where I lived for 3 ½ months in winter of 2007. As I did every day that winter when I’d come home from school, I’d get off the bus, cross the street and stop at Oxxo, the neighborhood grocery store. I bought a Diet Coke and a cup of homemade arroz con leche—rice pudding. I walked down the street, stopped in front of “my apartment,” leaned against an iron fence across the street, enjoying my snacks and thinking back:
I thought of rainy, early winter evenings when the sound of soft rain would splash against the skylight in the living room. I’d always stop what I was doing and just listen to that sweet, soothing sound.
I thought of soft, warm winter nights when I’d sit in my front yard studying the night sky. Venus glittered in the Eastern horizon; Orion rode the heavens directly above me, and not to my south as he would if I were watching him from home.
I thought of the man who, in the twilight of early evening, would ride his bicycle down the streets of La Mission chanting:
Tamales. Coladas.
Tamales. Coladas.
Often, his voice would trail in then trail out. Sometimes I’d grab some pesos, step outside and buy a few tamales—rice, vegetables and meat steamed in a banana leaf. An elegant dinner.
I thought back to my ongoing battles with ants who marched across the living room floor from the front window to the back door. Each Saturday I’d wash the floor with a water and Clorox mixture and for a few days I’d be ant free. By mid week I’d have to do it all over again. Oh, my poor mother would have gone crazy.
I thought of hot, late winter days when I’d slog home from class and open the door to an oven. I’d open all the windows and doors and within a few minutes the small apartment would cool right down.
I thought about a lot of things while leaning against that fence. By the time I was ready to leave, the sky had turned lead gray and a light autumnal rain threatened. I’d been rehashing happy, for the most part, memories. A 5:00 dusk was settling over the neighborhood and people were beginning to return home from work.
I gathered up my things and left, but not before sending good thoughts to whoever lived in the house now.
But I felt a bit sad. The neighborhood had deteriorated and “my” house was dumpy. Changes. That is what Playa del Carmen has always been about. It’s not a town that’s stood still since it started being developed.
But, through it all, there were constants—the constants that brought be back time and again and will bring me back in the future:
The Caribbean—water soft and warm in indescribable shades of blues and greens.
Giant stratocumulus clouds that hug the sky like giant white mountains.
Sand, mica rich, that even on the hottest summer days, is cool to the touch.
On the way back to my hotel I stopped at Mega, the huge box-store super market in Playa. Employees were busy decorating for Christmas. Fresh evergreen trees were available, their heady pine scent anachronistic to the Yucatan.
I’d come full circle. It was time to leave Playa. It’s a great place for a week or two, but I’d worn out my time there. I had an air ticket to Mexico City the next day. There, I’d get to watch Christmas unfold for an entire month.
This time I was racing toward the holidays, not escaping from them. I also knew that Christmas in Mexico City would be like everything else that city does—it would be bigger than life.
I was psyched to move on to chapter 3 of this journey.
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