Sales receipts are prosaic.
On most there are times and dates, food ordered and its price, balances due and how the bill was paid. There is a spot for taxes and gratuities. There can be series of numbers indicating stock numbers of merchandise, re-order times, discounts, adjustments, credits.
On this restaurant receipt, at the bottom, is the phrase, ” Keep Tulum weird. ”
This is weird for a number of reasons. Weird, according to the Oxford dictionary, should really be spelled wierd to follow the rule – i before e except after c. Wierd has been spelled wrong so many years that both spellings are acceptable.Weird is also pronounced – wird, so we have a screwy English language where how a word sounds is not how it is spelled.
“Have a good day” is often at the bottom of sales tickets
” We appreciate your business is sometimes at the bottom of sales receipts.
In Tulum,” Keep Tulum Weird ” is totally acceptable.
The creator of this receipt is probably a seventy year old hippie living an an airstream trailer in a fenced off lot on the beach bought in the fifties for several thousand dollars. He would sell but can’t move because his cat, Mister T, likes to nap on an old couch under the airstream awning, on top of a Pittsburg Pirates World Series Blanket.
For all its weirdness, Tulum is becoming very comfortable.
There is color here.
The beach is a blinding white slightly curving belt of sand holding the blue sea and green jungle loosely around the waist. The sky is a blue un-fenced playground for white soft clouds sailing like yachts. Sunlight is intense and filters through the rustling leaves of a green canopy. Shops, bars and restaurants wear colorful pinks,turquoise, yellow, magenta, red. Bright birds pause on dark brown wood fences. Tourists wear straw hats,purple sarongs,black thongs.
Food is colorful too. For breakfast there is white pineapple,orange and green cantaloupe,green apples,red papaya ,pinkish watermelon. Eggs are deep yellow and brown bread is baked locally.
Stiff brown coffee, the color of Mayan skin, tops off one’s morning meal.
Somehow, this breakfast looks and tastes better than a McDonald’s egg McMuffin.
Somehow,if you aren’t a prisoner, you shouldn’t be eating prison food.
The location of this old Mayan city was well chosen.
It is a place Mayan elite lived for the best part of the year,entertained visitors, enjoyed food and drink on porches as their sun sank into the Caribbean sea. There were simple platforms built on the grounds upon which slaves and servants lived in thatched communal homes. There are altars that still overlook cliffs where offerings would have been made to the Mayan Gods.
Most of the old city has crumbled and front porches have been claimed by iguanas, prehistoric reptiles that survived the dinosaur extermination.The iguanas bask on the stone floors in palaces off limits to tourists, their coloring matching that of the stones around them perfectly. They run oddly with their tails swinging left to right and legs moving like robot legs, surprisingly quick, tongues testing the air as they move towards food or away from danger.
The pyramids still standing here tell the story of this ancient Mayan culture.
On top of the wide base have been stacked smaller and smaller blocks. At the top of the pyramid is a single living unit for the head of the society. There is no agonizing discussion of equality and fairness. All major decisions come from the top of the pyramid and all below the top support the King until they can’t and the pyramid crumbles.
It is strange to walk in one of history’s graveyards.
We have better toys today but we play in the same sandbox the ancients played in.
The surf rumbles all day and all night.
Where water meets land, long white capped waves roll over, roll under, and roll onto the land like conquerors.
There are high and low tides and thin legged birds kick bubbles left by the waves like Colombian soccer players. In early morning there is a row of seaweed deposited on the white beaches and men with shovels, rakes, wheelbarrows, move the seaweed, cover it up with dirt or bury it so still sleeping tourists have the white beaches promised by tourist brochures when they wake up for their breakfast of fresh fruit and fresh squeezed orange juice.
The sand here is Caribbean, white and fine grained. It sticks between toes, clings to you like a cranky child.When dry it is soft to walk on, When wet, you can run on it and make sand castles to your imagination’s limits.
When pirates ran these coasts there was nothing left but vestiges of an old Mayan civilization.
Natives lived in the jungle, fished the sea,worshiped old Gods left them by ancients. Stone walls and stone faces have been overcome by vegetation and old, precise, mathematical equations are forgotten. Tulum is now a place of loose wires and knotted plumbing, wind generators and rusted fishing hooks.
Before you move here, you would want to stay a month in August.
The rain, humidity, and heat will make you understand why you have the place to yourself.
“Why is Yoga so popular, ” I ask?
” Tulum”, Angelique smiles,” is an old hippie colony – it grows out of that. People want to feel good. ”
There is plenty of feel good here with a huge European presence.
In the morning a large group of Europeans sits at a big table at the Canopi restaurant and talk in foreign languages, eat healthy, dress in flowing garments for the girls and shorts for the boys. By nine o clock most will be seated on mats on a wood floor in an open thatched roof room, assuming positions that stretch the body, holding those special hard to hold positions for excruciating minutes.
Along the main thoroughfare are signs for hotels, bars, restaurants, shops, renting bicycles, buying juice, shopping for land from Mr. Tulum, eating Vegan, There are words of advice and scheduled times for finding your inner person. It brings back memories of Akbol in San Pedro Town, Ambergris Caye.
” You’ll never forget this chair….. ”
” Be easy on yourself….. ”
” The first day of the rest of your life…. ”
” Fresh lobster….. ”
” Free Corona…..”
This is not a cheap place to be when you need water, a hot bath, internet, good food, fine wine and entertainment.Tapping into your inner person is best done when you have a stack of hundred’s in your wallet and a high credit limit.
Chasing Zen masters is sought these days mostly by people of substance.
Tulum has two faces.
There is the Hotel Zone which is a strip of bars, restaurants, hotels,and retail shops along the main road running along the beach all the way south to a biosphere nature preserve called Sian Kian. Then there is the Mexican town of Tulum where locals live. You can find tourists in the town of Tulum and locals in the Hotel Zone, but each is a different slice of Mexican pie.
This restaurant,Matteo’s, is in the Hotel Zone, towards the north end, and features, according to the sign, ” The Best Fish Tacos on Earth. ”
When questioned, these two kids maintain that the tacos are really the best in the Universe, but agree this would be difficult to prove since Mexico doesn’t send up space ships to verify.
In mid day, the restaurant is doing good business and fish tacos are swimming out of the kitchen.The kids give a thumbs up and let their picture be taken. I’ll be back for the best tacos on Earth.
Who would turn down such an opportunity?
Every journey has an end.
The Mazatlan aeropuerto is small. U.S. Airways charges twice as much for a ticket as they should and the fact the airplane is only half full going down and three quarter full returning tells volumes about the state of tourism in Mexico. Years of gang killings, drug wars, and poverty in Mexico have taken a toll on traveler’s psyches. No one, except the most resolute, would venture across America’s southern border into a country that so many people die trying to leave.
A sign in the airport says, “End of the Road.”
Alan, Dave and I are waiting in shorts and T shirts to go back to the United States. Winter is going full blast there.
I can see why ancient tribes followed the Bering Strait into the America’s and kept moving till they found more hospitable places to live. Even then each journey had twists and turns and adventurous souls took chances for better results.
Mexico has become the third international ring on Scotttreks right hand but us travelers sometime have to go home to catch our breath.
Roots won’t keep me from packing my bags again when time, money, and imagination conspire.
We are flying back to Arizona where I drive back to New Mexico, Dave drives back to Colorado and Alan drives back to Texas.
Living far from friends and family isn’t a viable excuse anymore for not doing things together.
On the way to the beach at the Hotel Playa de Mazatlan, there is a mural painted on a hotel wall by some unknown Mazatlan artist.
The characters are easy to recognize.
There are homages to traditional lifestyles when women wore non-revealing clothes and carried baskets on their heads heading homeward after a day of laundry or working in the fields. There are mustached musicians strumming guitars and wearing huge sombreros. There are tourists taking pictures and children playing with turtles. There are bright, bold colors and exaggerated poses.
It is all in good fun, if not questionable taste, and full of contradictions – just like Mexico itself.
There is poverty in Mexico and unbelievable wealth. There is violence and lighthearted fun. Some people work hard and others little. There is pride and lack of pride, crumbling infrastructure and modern architectural wonders. There is sun and surf and family outings and beach vendors selling hats and trinkets for a pittance.
This mural is one of the first things we see when we go to the beach, and one of the last when we leave on our way back to our rooms.
Whether you cry, or laugh, depends on you, the moment, and how much beer you have had.
ThIs mural is a Mazatlan postcard painted on a wall.
All you need is a stamp and a mailbox.
In the hotel lobby, each day, this artist/craftsman unfolds two tables.
He is dipping his brush into color and applying paint as I watch. When done with one color, he cleans his brush in a glass of water, wipes the residue off with a towel, then switches to another color on the bowl he is working on.
These little bowls are finely detailed.
The one I purchase has turtles swimming on the inside. Any of these will look good on a coffee table and put conversation in motion. They make a good place for rubber bands, hard sweet peppermint candies, wandering coins.
An ancient God, playing flute, dances around the inside of another finished bowl.
Whether his muse is Gods, or money, is a question only he can answer?
On the walls of his home he might have spectacular canvases of Incan jungles, ancient costumes, and wild untamed animals, or reproductions of Diego Rivera’s murals, posters of soccer stars, or photos of his wife, children and grandchildren.
Modern urban life can take the spirit right out of you, if you aren’t vigilant.
This is a conundrum.
At first glance these are footprints on the beach. At a second glance you discover the footprints are not pointing the same direction.
At first thought, I wonder how this happened?
Maybe a man with a peg leg twists his right foot, in the opposite direction, and lights a Cuban cigar as his Labrador Retriever plays in the surf? Maybe a couple with a devilish sense of humor indulge passions, before the sun is truly awake? Maybe Big Foot is on vacation in Mazatlan and is showing Little Foot how to confound humans?
On our last day in Mazatlan, this is fit for a call to Sherlock Holmes.
If anyone can figure it out, it will be him.
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