Oh today. Today. Today. Today.
Today was a day of happiness, fear, and loathing, though not exactly in that order. Strap in. It’s a weird one.
I fell in love with Tulum today mostly thanks to a boy, but before you get excited, I should mention that he was about 4. I was eating at a sidewalk cafe all alone, and as he passed by towed by his mom, he just smiled at me. That’s all. We made eye contact and he smiled first. Sounds silly maybe, but it was such a friendly, unprovoked, unrequired gesture that I was struck by it and I thought about it for a long time. A 4-year-old kid – a little old soul with an obviously warm heart – no filter, no agenda, no guarded, preconceived notions about who I am and whether he should be friendly or not. What if more of us were like that? I thought about all the people I walk by without smiling and I felt ashamed of myself. Thanks for the lesson, kid, and thanks for the smile. It stayed with me all day.
And by the way, at that cafe I had a killer shrimp empanada, a fish taco, and a michelada for about $4. Just look for the locals. So what if you can’t read the menu – it’s part of the adventure.
I found out today that DEET dissolves toenail polish. So much for that pedicure and good thing I just sprayed a metric shit-ton of it on my skin. How are we not alarmed by that?
Today I also learned that sometimes it’s best to leave well enough alone. My room at Ahau Tulum was very sweet, but it wasn’t exactly the room I reserved. They put me in the upstairs unit of the Bali hut yesterday, which is different in a lot of ways from the downstairs unit, so I pitched a tiny, polite fit when I checked in. The downstairs unit has more windows all around and a hammock outside, plus a fantastic “garden bathroom” with an outdoor shower and sink on the sand plus a little 4×6-foot thatched hut on a concrete pad that houses the toilet. The whole thing is rimmed with 8-foot-tall bamboo for privacy, and it is soooooo charming. They had already checked people into the downstairs unit when I arrived yesterday, so they offered to move me to one today if I couldn’t live without it. As first-world problems go, I couldn’t.
So when I came back from the Tulum ruins this afternoon, they had moved me into the coveted downstairs room, and there was once again order in the universe. However, when I walked down a couple of stairs into my little garden bathroom to take a shower, I am absolutely certain I s
aw a tarantula scurry across the sand into the thatch wall of my toilet room. I lost my mind. Spiders are my kryptonite, and tarantulas- well holy shit. On the one hand, I was horrified that it was in my bathroom, then I realized I was actually in IT’S room with my little outdoor bathroom that I fought so hard for. Part of me wanted to use a stick and flashlight to get a better look at it, and that part of me lost the argument immediately. The other part of me wondered how I was going to make it for the next 24 hours without a bathroom. There is no universe in which I am going back into the thatched toiled room. Thank god the floor in the rest of the bathroom is sand, because that’s where I’m peeing. Not sure how the other business is going to go. Wish they had left me a shovel. And have you ever tried to shower with your eyes open? I have.
That was a cute little lesson from the universe.
As the sun set, I wandered past weddings and abandoned loungers looking for some food and revelry . On an otherwise surprisingly sleepy beach, there was just one option, La Eufemia, but holy crap. Mostly everybody here seems like they are wasted and it feels like a place where the hinges could come off at any time. But what else would you expect from a place where the WiFi password is “fuckingtacos”? LOL.
I say goodbye to Tulum tomorrow, but it certainly feels like I got a couple of very interesting days here. Soon I will wander back down the beach looking for Ahau and the hammock outside my room. Unless spiders like hammocks, then no. I’m currently watching the drunk people dance in the moonlight next to the water. Hope they don’t go in, because I won’t be able to save them. The waiter brought me two mescal margaritas for the price of one because it’s happy hour (off season perk), so about the best I could do at this point is yell for help and videotape it for their lawsuits. Just kidding – it’s Mexico. There are no lawsuits. If you drink enough to fall in the ocean and die, well, then you’re dumb. There is a certain amount of logic there.
Hasta luego, friends. I hope you are well, and I hope your life lessons today are productive and don’t include spiders. Haha.
