Most villages, towns and cities, small or large, old or new, have a Main Street.
Main streets support shops, offices, hotels, restaurants, government compounds. Some have divided boulevards for traffic, bike paths, sidewalks for pedestrians. Main streets are where towns were conceived, the center of an onion that keeps growing outwards as people move away from ground zero in search of more room, privacy, quiet, better schools, less crime,more new, less old.
This morning, the jungle pushes against the main road on both sides.
This route would have been used by Ancients who built the palaces to the north that have been neglected and fallen into ruin, as well as other pyramids deep in these Central American jungles. This main road would have been more narrow then, would have been swept with palm fronds by slaves of conquered tribes. There would have been pageants here with elites wearing feathered head dresses parading to their quarters in the palaces for religious ceremonies and political celebrations.
As this day begins, this Main Street of Tulum, Mexico is still checking its own pulse, waking up to the sounds of tropical birds and breaking waves rolling onto white sand beaches.
It is not as grand as it once was, but peaceful, these days, is much better than grand.
Across the road from the Hemingway Romantic Eco-Cottages is an open air bar with picnic tables covered by Mexican tablecloths, salt and pepper shakers made with small Corona bottles, pithy signs and a cooking area where a chef makes tacos, a specialty of the house.
This VW bus, from the 60’s, has been painted, gutted, and parked in a visible location. Inside it, our waiter writes down our order, sits a moment on a small wooden bench, stands, adjusts his glasses, and, in due time, hustles his ticket over to the chef who is cleaning his grill.
This VW bus was driven down here in the 60’s and never made it home.
There are still people living in Tulum who came down, lost their passport, credit card, money and hangups, and stayed to the drum roll of the waves.
Fish, beef, chicken and pork are the four tacos featured tonight.
Joan has one of each and I have the rest.
Coming to Tulum was her idea, and it is a good one.
I call this jaunt a sparkling interlude moving to the bridge in a typical jazz standard with an AABA form.
There are sand creations on beaches.
They start as an idea, then move past idea to become reality.
Artists bring their buckets and shovels, pots and rakes, sticks or bones, bottle caps or string, shells or seaweed to make hair. They kneel in the sand, and, with bare hands, sculpt, as best they can, their visions. When all is done, what they make stands till tides or careless feet sweep them away.
Sandy is Joan’s idea and, in her bag, are buttons, mittens, sticks for arms, an old pink ball cap,a Tecate bottle, and a composition scheme that allows sand to be stacked a couple of feet high.
As helper, my job is to capture seawater in a bucket, add beach sand and mix with a shovel till you have a material that will pack, hold together, and allow itself to be shaped.
It takes ten buckets to make ” Sandy “, and, when all is done, our borrowed shovel is returned to a hotel closet and the bucket is washed out and fresh water added for Felix the cat.
After photo documentation of the event, Sandy is left to face her public
The whole project is considered a success when strangers stop to take pictures for their Facebook pages.
If you have time to order mid day ice cream in a different country, served by staff who don’t know your language, with a white cloth napkin and clean silverware,you don’t need to worry about price or how quick to eat it.
This is a full three scoops of coffee ice cream plus strawberries with some nutty granola sprinkled around the base of the mountain for flavor and texture.
The ice cream in the bowl reminds me of a University of New Mexico professor in the English department who used to wear a red bow tie to class and extol the virtues of James Joyce and ” Ulysses. ”
Despite spending a semester in the novel, it would be difficult to sum it up in a neat little package. It was one hell of a book with a focus on little things, like taking a magnifying glass and looking at the weave of a handmade quilt that someone was quilting as you read.
In the hot summertime, the Professor in this bowl would become mud quickly.
Now, in February, he maintains his profile and will always be remembered as a crusty bookworm who should have been dusting library shelves instead of lecturing students in neat rows.
Ice cream is a small pleasure but a pleasure to be savored.
Joan and I share till nothing is left in the bowl.
Women and desserts seem to go together.
At sundown, people in Tulum begin to congregate.
From their tables in the dining area at Ahau Tulum, customers and friends watch the sun go down as the Caribbean Sea vanishes into dark. As sunlight dims, people leave the beach, wash away sand and suntan lotion,put on sexy night clothes and sit down to dinner and a few drinks. There are families here, romantic couples, locals who sit at their favorite tables, waiters taking orders and hustling drinks. Most guests are fleeing winter in Europe, United States and Canada. Table candles are made from Corona bottles and waiters bring little flashlights out of their shirt pockets to help guests read the menu as the sun hits the water.
As a visitor to Tulum, I am enjoying living the life of the rich and famous, as I imagine they live.
In reality, as nice as this hotel and restaurant is, it is just another budget eatery for people, like myself, of modest means.
Most of us can’t dream as big as our modern uncrowned royalty and business billionaires live.
Some men and women,these days, not all of them politicians, live a lifestyle that would make Caesar blush.
On the wall of a shop,these Cupid twins smile lustily, with a trace of the Devil in their expressions.
Cupids are often known to have smiling faces, flowing blond hair,rotund bodies. They fly in the air with ease and are particularly in evidence in palace gardens where men and women socialized in times past, held heart to heart talks on shaded benches and exchanged beautifully penned letters.
In this shop, the twins share one arrow and one common purpose – to release their arrow into unsuspecting humans and send them into the tizzies and trifles of love.
Poets, from Shakespeare to William Carlos Williams, extol the virtues, joy, pitfalls and pratfalls of love, a human condition celebrated on Valentine’s Day with flowers, cards, gifts, fond words, grand gestures.
None are immune from Cupid’s arrows and these grinning faces already have plans for this evening when they will fly out a partially opened window, buzz the town, and find victims.
Once shot by an arrow the results are not fatal, but wounded lovers sometimes yearn for death instead of living with the pangs of love.
Love and lust have little in common but they often bump each other in the night.
Along the Hotel Zone main road in Tulum, Mexico there are diversions.
There are small coffee shops that sell Mexican coffee, flavored with sugar, and delicious pastries for individual palates. Restaurants push seafood, Indian food, Italian, Chinese, Vegan and Mexican cuisine.Bars serve late at night and hotels have Vacancy signs hanging where they can be seen. Boutiques display designer clothes for women who need to look good, always, whether they are on the beach, dancing in a disco, taking kids to soccer practice or listening to pickup lines in the grocery.
Moments before this photo is snapped, a long legged woman in red, positions two mannikins on the street in front of her shop.She carries one out to the street under her arm and stands it next to the other.
With both mannikins positioned she turns and strides back to open her business. It is early in the morning and only a few vehicles are on the road. Light filters through trees and through her loose fitting dress that moves seductively as she walks.
It is not difficult to see who is and who isn’t a mannikin.
Movement shows life.
Rock colored birds face the wind so their bodies aren’t scattered like bowling pins.
Pelicans circle us above, dive like missiles, their pointed beaks becoming spears, surfacing with wiggling fish.
Sea colors, shades of green and blue, modulate.
Waves move as far onto land as they can go, then recede from our toes..
Fitting into nature, seamlessly, was what was lost in our Fall from paradise.
Now, we are observers of nature, on the outside, looking in.
At dinnertime, a pelican begins his dive.
He circles his target, turns himself into a projectile by tucking his wings to his body,and disappears head first into the surf. When he comes back to the water’s surface, he shakes his wings and recomposes, a fish struggling in his enormous beak.
Not long after, a fisherman wades into the pelican’s same fishing hole, net in hand, and the pelican takes off like a seaplane from an Alaskan lake.
The fisherman moves slowly, studies the waves, the light, the wind.
Positioning himself, he casts his handheld net with both hands,lets his net fall to the bottom, then draws it back towards him with a rope line, hand over hand. When he drags his net onto the beach it holds silvery fish twisting in the bright sunlight.
He and his friend transfer fish from the net into a plastic bag, then lift up and climb back on their bicycles and pedal home, the net draped over a bike’s handle bars to drip dry.
If you live simply, how much of the day needs to be used up working?
What is so important to us that we work sixty hours a week?
There are several postcards about keys on Scotttreks.
There is one postcard on a Montevideo door lock and three keys that look the same. There is one postcard on a break and enter situation in Belize when Jack’s renter doesn’t leave a key and he has to get his AirBnB apartment ready for a new tenant coming soon. There is one postcard on a key found at an Albuquerque golf course parking lot, the key to the box of forgotten dreams. Now, there is one postcard on a bent key to room number 10 at the Yoga Shala in Tulum, Mexico.
At the beach, you don’t have pockets. This key and its colorful leather chain fit comfortably around my neck.
The odd thing about this key is it’s severe bend..
It took a lot of not paying attention to do this kind of damage.
Where this bend comes from is a story known to Angelique in the Yoga Shala office. She reminds me ,when I mention it ,that she has another key to my room if this one fails to work.
In Mexico, there is no need to fix anything if it isn’t broken.
Recent Comments