From Sea to Shining Sea: Cozumel to Acapulo via Playa del Carmen and Mexico City

Plattsburgh, NY
December 7, 2013

We arrived in Cozumel on a wet, rainy morning.  The entire Caribbean coast was shrouded in fog and mist.  The sky was gun metal gray. It was the first rain we’d seen since we left the Northeast two weeks earlier.

I cleared customs on board ship.  This would be my last day aboard the Norwegian Dawn.

Later, Glenda and disembark.   Poor Glenda.  I dragged here though residential neighborhoods within walking distance of the port.  She tells me she’s islanded-out and so am I.

We return to the boat, grab some lunch, sit on the balcony and enjoy these last moments together.  It’s begun to rain more heavily and we watch passengers running from the entrance of the port to the boat.  I hold off as long as I can.  I have to face this wet but in the opposite direction, with luggage and a day pack.

At 3:30 I really have to leave.  I’m at my limit.  The boat will leave in an hour.  Glenda tells me she’ll be on the balcony to wave goodbye.

When I get off the boat, and far enough away from it to look up, I stop.  I take out my camera and search the decks.  It’s raining harder and a light fog has moved in. Had Glenda not been waving the white towel I’d never have found her.

I blow hugs and kisses and take a photo the make my way to the main street where I grab a taxi to bring me to the guest house I’ve booked online.  I have way too much stuff and there is no way I’m going to slog my way through Cozumel’s  wet streets to find a street I don’t  know.

The guesthouse: the owner is a French woman and a long -time resident of the island.  Her home and the adjoining rooms reflect a clean, French elegance.  To get to my room, however, I have to wade through puddles 3” deep with water.  It’s been raining since May, she tells me.  Everything is sodden.

That afternoon it rains again—thick and tropical heavy.  It’s just best to stay in.

The next day starts off well and I think it’s going to clear up.  I make my way to a scooter rental shop, hand over my money and take off.  I love the other side of Cozumel—the wild side where the sea pounds the coast and there’s no development except restaurants and protected national seashore.

The sky is dark grey, but I’m hopeful.  I make my way out of the main town, cut across the island and reach the sea in about thirty minutes. Since my last time on the island—a mercilessly hot summer’s day—the island’s installed and wide bike/scooter/jogging path that circles the island.  I opt for that.  There’s little to no bike/scooter/jogging traffic.  I drive slowly, stopping periodically to watch the wild sea and to enjoy the views.

About noon it starts to rain—a heavy sprinkle.  It’s also time for lunch so I duck into a restaurant facing the sea.  The rain continues, heavier as I finish my lunch.  There is no escaping the wet. Others on the road are also escaping the rain and finding refuge in the restaurant.  Because the winds are so strong, we are forced into the middle of the building.  It’s also gotten cold—cold for the subtropics.  No one is dressed for this and everyone is soaked.

An hour into this there seems to be a break in the sky.  I figure it’s safe to leave so I get back on the scooter and back out.  Thunder cracks.  Huge bolts of lightning slam into the sea. I hastily re-park the bike and run back to safety.  By now there must be forty of us-all of us wet and cold.  Another hour passes.  By 2:00 pm the sky brightens and the rain lets up.  It now seems safe.

And it is—for about fifteen minutes. Then it begins to pour again.  I’m half way around the island and the only option is to forge forward.

Nicety minutes later, after biking through 8” rivers of water, after dodging cars, trucks and busses and on the narrow bike/scooter/jogging trail and after every part of body is soaked and old,  I get back to town.  This has not been a fun day.

What a disappointment.  I tried—I really did—to find something good about the ride, but all things failed me.

The puddles that I’d waded through at the guest house had now turned into small lakes.  It made no difference.  It made no difference. My shoes were drenched.

I changed my clothes, cranked up the a/c so things would dry, and then called my friend Ed in Playa del Carmen. 

“Ed,” I tell him.  “I’ve  gotta get off this island. Can you meet me tomorrow at the 9:00 am ferry?”

I’d arrange week before to stay with him in Playa for a week.

Well, I was never so happy to leave a place as I was that day in Cozumel.  Navigating road rivers was not a whole lot of fun.

Thank heavens he was flexible.  He met me at 9:45, drove me to his apartment, showed me how to use the washing machine, gave me a key then left for work.  How nice it was to stay put for the day.

Playa: I’d  looked forward to this visit for weeks.  This is a place I’d spent a huge amount of time in during the late 90’s and early 00’s. This is where I lived and studied the first winter I was retired.

At one point this part of Mexico was the fastest growing place in the world.
In 1985, when Steve and I visited on a day trip from Cancun, it was nothing more than a small fishing town with a few hotels and a ferry to Cozumel. Ten years later “the world famous 5^th Avenue” which runs for several miles north was still a dirt track.

In 2007 when I lived there for four months, the city had grown to 70,000 and condos on “la Quinta” were selling for upwards to half a million dollars.  Today, Cartier and Louis Vuitton have shops on the street and millions of people make their way here every year. The beaches north of town that were wild a free, where its shores bumped up against the jungle, are now crowded with 1,000 room all-inclusive hotels. 

I just didn’t like it.

You really can’t go home again. While it was nice to see Ed and share his home for a few days, I felt a real need to get out of this city and escape to a place less crowded.

So I went to Tulum and spent three perfect days on a quiet beach.  Just me, a few other tourists, a large handful of iguanas and a warm, gentle Caribbean.

After a week I’d had enough and wasn’t sorry to leave.  I’d had enough heat and humidity.  I was very much looking forward to two weeks in Mexico City, thanksgiving at the Casa and the beginning of the Christmas season—la Navideña—in DF.

Oh, DF—el Distrito Federal.  My heart keeps returning there more and more. I realized that when I’m there I rarely think of home, but when I’m home  I’m  always thinking of  Mexico  City.  Just what does that say?  DF in November/December is glorious: 14 hours of cloudless sunshine with poinsettia trees in full bloom.

By the first Sunday in Advent, street stalls open selling all things necessary for a Mexican Christmas.  Whole stalls sell nothing more than hundred of different figurines necessary for a Mexican nativity—a nativity more reminiscent of an Italian crèche than the ones we know in the USA.

Shops sell Christmas trees of all colors—purples, black, orange.  Other shops sell Mexican made, and quite lovely, painted glass ornaments and ones made of straw.

There are live trees, too.  I have no idea where they come from I’ve heard Canada, but the altiplano is cool enough for pines to grow.  I’ve seen Christmas tree farms far outside the city.

Small shrines to the Virgin of Guadalupe are cleaned.  Flowers are lovingly placed in front of the image. Notices are posted telling people that a rosary will be said at the neighborhood shrine. Her feast day is December 12^th, but devotion to her is year-long.

I did get to spend Thanksgiving at the Casa—la Casa de los Amigos.  “Warm and wonderful,” is what I told people.

There were 60 of us—many Americans, but Mexicans as well—people associated with the Quaker community.  Almost  everyone brought something to eat.

I brought the ingredients of Elaine Cranston’s fruit salad—a dish that’s been at the Ladue table for more than fifty years.  There was no deviation from the recipe except pecans in place of walnuts which are not available in Mexico City outside of summer.

How different it is to spend this holiday outside the country.  Within my heart, and the hearts of all the Americans present, it was Thanksgiving, a day set apart from all others in November, a day full of its own memories and traditions, a uniquely American holiday.  But to the rest of the world it was just another day.

Last year I’d spent the day alone, save for the elephants.  What a special day that had been.  I’d started the day helping to bathe an elephant then concluded the day riding one in the low-brush jungle inside of Chitwan National Park in Nepal.
On my last weekend in Mexico I went to Acapulco for the weekend.  I’d not gone “cross-country” and from “sea to shining sea.”

For three days I sat on the beach.  It was hot, humid, sunny and 90 degrees.  Perfect Christmas weather.

On December 1^st, the first Sunday of Advent, I plugged into my iPod and listened to American Christmas music.  It just seemed like the right thing to do.

Now the first of December was covered with snow
and so was the turnpike from Stockbridge to Boston.
Though the Berkshires seemed dreamlike on account of that frosting,
with ten miles behind me and ten thousand more to go.

A year earlier, to the date, I’d escaped the horror of Varanasi, India and sat all day in the enclosed garden of one of the four major Buddha sites in the world.

It was there that I’d had the revelation to leave India early and go home.  I’d had enough.

But this first of December was quite different.  This was a happy Sunday, full of sun, surf and people walking the beach.  Carols played and it was a delight switching familiar Christmas-in-the-winter imagery to Christmas-on-the beach imagery.

Once back in Mexico City I spent an early evening in the city’s historic district. I was walking down Madero, the city’s only pedestrian-only street.  The night was frosty and a cold wind blew down the street.

A December dusk had fallen over the capital.

Suddenly, the carillon one of the oldest churches began to play “Silent Night.”

I stopped walking, moved away from the river of people, and listened.  The carol flooded my memory with Christmases past—of candlelight services and Decembers long ago when I’d listen to Christmas music on records.  I wandered back to a Christmas spent on a warm tropical beach in Thailand and another in Chile—in summer.

And I thought of snow and my parents and wonderful Christmases they produced year after year.
I was lost in the joy of that carol, enjoying every moment it played.

The next day I boarded flight UA 1567, flew to Washington then on to Burlington.  I wasn’t sad, although I was already a bit homesick for warmer days and la Navideña in Mexico City.