Playa del Carmen--August 2016

Playa del Carmen, Quintana Roo, Mexico
August 10, 2016

The first time I visited Playa del Carmen, about forty miles south of Cancún, in Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula was in February 1985. 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 1.5 million people live in the Cancún corridor.

We flew out that Friday 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 Cousteau 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 December 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.

In those days there was no other place in the world other than Plattsburgh that had my mark on it more than Playa del Carmen. I’d watched it grow from a village to a city of more than a quarter of a million people.

Until Mexico City, I’d spent more time there than any other place in the world, other than Plattsburgh and Northern New York.  In many ways it was home, and given the right combination of factors, it could have been.

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, started class, and settled into a comfortable routine.

After the first week, there came a shape and character to my days.  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 didn’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 time 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’d return, until Mexico City took over.

But it’s been years since I’ve really been to Playa del Carmen, and any memory of it was wiped clean on this current visit in August 2016.  I’m not 100% sure why I came.  It’s where I came ten years ago when I retired.  Maybe I was celebrating that.  I was also scheduled for knee surgery later in the month and I knew that a vacation before the operation was a good thing.

But I was sad from almost the beginning.  What was I running towards?  Physically, I was not the man I was in 2007.  I had one artificial knee and was getting another one.  I was in pain every time I walked.  The city was like South Beach, full of lean too-good-looking people.  I felt like an old man, not something I felt like in 2007 or even in 2010, the last time I’d been here.  Now I was breathing down 70 and that was just plain depressing!  I think I came because Playa has always been a place I’ve traveled to when I just want to get away but don’t want to travel too far.  Plus, it was year ending in 0.  It had been ten years since I’d come here the summer after I retired, twenty since I came here to study the first time.  It just seemed to make sense to do so again.  And even with all the changes, there was something static about Playa—the heat, the constant change, good food, amazing beaches, almost guaranteed sun.

But I still had to do the pilgrimage, so on one my last full days in Playa I left the beach I used to go to all the time—wild then but now full of condos--early and made my way to “The Mission--La Mission del Carmen” where I lived for 3 ½ months in the winter of 2007. I had a hard time finding the place; the Mission had virtually exploded.  There was traffic and big buildings and a Home Depot and huge grocery store at the entrance.  I had a hard time finding the house because of all the growth.

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 sudden staccato 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 -midweek I’d have to do it all over again. I never did figure out where those ants came from, but the Clorox worked for several days.

I thought of hot, early spring days when I’d slog home from class, begrimed with sweat and dust, 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 warm summer rain threatened. I’d been rehashing happy, for the most part, memories. A late afternoon 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 whomever lived in the house now.

But I felt a bit sad., and not just for the changed man I’d become. 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.
I know it’s not good to live in the past, and that it’s far more healthy to embrace where we are at this minute.  Even though I was perceiving Playa in the past, I realized 2007 was nothing more than moments made up in the present moment—just as they were at the moment I was eating the rice pudding.

On the way back to the apartment I’d rented, I stopped at Nativo, then my favorite restaurant, and ate enchiladas verdes—the best I’d ever eaten. 

They were horrible and that was just a plain violation!

I’d come full circle. It was time to leave Playa and away from this downward spiral I’d set up for myself. It’s a great place for a week or two, but I’d worn out my time there. It was nice—sort of—to reminisce, but it was also time to move on.

I had an air ticket to Mexico City the next day.  DF was my new Mexican home and I was happy thinking about returning there.