On Friday night I stayed at a just-opened B&B, and the other guest was a woman who had just arrived in Mexico. She was traveling alone, and it was her first time out of the US since the mid-80s, and she was laughing at herself a little for being so nervous about this trip. So a lot of dinner conversation was devoted to how, when she got up the next morning and got on the road, she would find the trip quite easy and so not intimidating.

In my experience, every stereotype I’ve heard about Mexico has failed to be true in the Yucatan. Crazy drivers? Nah–it only seems that way if you don’t know the rules. There’s actually an elaborate etiquette in which drivers are expected to pull over to the side a bit to let people pass if they want to. Slimy men? No–gallantry reigns. If you don’t like being told you’re beautiful, well, maybe the Yucatan is not for you, but I’ve never had to deal with anything more. Crooked cops? I drove the wrong way down one-way streets in Izamal for 20 minutes, and when the cops finally caught up with me to alert me to my error, they were almost embarrassed. People stealing your stuff? I accidentally left my hotel room door not just unlocked, but ajar, all day one day in Chetumal, and nothing was out of place. Traumatic intestinal woes? Not once. Well, a bit of an urgent situation while I was walking around Chichen Itza, but seeing how the same thing happened to me at the Pyramids in Giza, I think it’s an allergic reaction to ruins.

So I bet this woman is now thinking to herself, Sheesh–what a letdown. There aren’t even chickens on the buses!

Speaking of buses, there was one opportunity on my last day for Mexico to turn into a big freakin’ drag. When I’d arrived in Puerto Morelos on the bus two days earlier, I’d bought my airport-bus ticket, for a whopping four dollars, and an assigned seat–better than I could’ve imagined!

Day of departure, I rolled up early for the bus, and waited a bit. About fifteen minutes late, it finally rolled toward us–the nice security guy at the bus kiosk pointed it out to me, even.

Then the bus kept rolling past. I waved my arms desperately. The bus driver shrugged and gestured to show the bus was packed to the gills. I indignantly waved my ticket and stamped my foot. “Tengo boleto!” I shouted to no one.

The nice security guy came and escorted me back to the ticket booth, and listened patiently while sputtered in bad Spanish. The woman in the booth got on the phone and talked and talked and talked and talked. Meanwhile, I calculated all the annoying possibilities. Sure, I had the money for a taxi, but who would spend $30 when they could spend $4? But I knew my Spanish was not good enough to cajole anyone into anything–I could feel my brain already doing that “I quit” thing it does on the last day of any trip.

Then the woman got off the phone and said to me in Spanish, “You have two options–you can wait for the next bus, which comes in 45 minutes, or we can pay for your taxi.”

I was so amazed that I couldn’t believe I’d heard the last part right. I asked her to repeat it, and quickly agreed to the taxi option before she changed her mind.

Within minutes I was on my way to the airport in speedy a/c comfort, and I arrived in plenty of time. On the way, the driver was happy to answer my last-minute questions about taxi fares, even producing his rate sheet from his glove compartment. (Oh yeah–another busted stereotype: I’ve never been ripped off by a cab driver in the Yucatan. In fact, as I looked at the rate sheet, I saw that I’d actually been _under_charged two days before.) It was the single nicest travel-plans-gone-wrong experience I’ve had, except maybe for the time Peter and I got stuck in Paris overnight.

Happy to be back, but missing the gallant ways of the Yucatan already…

Well, actually, first things first: I survived Cancun clubbing. I did not show my tits to anyone, nor drink any drinks with sexy names. I’m no fun at all.

Silly me–I thought people went to clubs to dance. No–in Cancun, they go to clubs to watch people lip-sync to Beyonce while covered in glittery body paint and sproinging from the ceiling on bungees. I’m actually conflating a few different acts, but whatever. Outside the clubs was equally cacophonous, with a strip of open-air bars all playing “YMCA”, but none at the same time…like “Row Row Row Your Boat,” but disco style, and very drunk.

It was in one of these bars that I saw a very strange performance. Alongside the extremely bored-looking go-go dancers was a tall, close to middle-aged woman with dyed auburn hair, fully clothed in black flare-leg pants and a loose black shirt with long sleeves. She was doing a full-on, super-aggressive stripper act, complete with ‘ooh-I’m-so-sexy’ facial expressions and running her hands through her hair…but not taking off her clothes. She danced and danced and danced, and then the song ended and she climbed down from the bar. And as she did, she reached back to get her purse.

This is the magic of Cancun, I guess. Nearly middle-aged women can get up on a bar and do a crazy sexy dance, and no one bats an eye.

I came back later, and she was back up there again, this time dancing with a young dude in camo pants, the male equivalent of the go-go girls. And he didn’t look too horrified that this strange lady was miming fellatio on him, so maybe she was a professional, legitimately employed by the bar–but that doesn’t explain her handbag. Unless she was a drag queen? Huh. Just one of Cancun’s little mysteries. (Along with WHY does anyone still sing along with “Who Let the Dogs Out?”)

So that was Friday night. Saturday I tramped all over downtown Cancun, then dropped off my car (always breathing a sigh of relief that I’m in the clear, insurance-wise and general-risk-wise) and took a bus down to Playa, to take the ferry to Cozumel. That whole travel interlude took longer than I thought, and I wound up on an after-dark ferry, on very choppy seas. By the time we arrived, I was feeling none too spry, but at least I wasn’t quietly moaning and curled up in a fetal ball like the woman in the seat in front of me.

Maybe this interlude of disorientation would explain why this morning, within less than an hour of acquiring my new, just-for-today-to-drive-around-the-island rental car, I managed to lock my keys inside. I had been positively OCD about my keys with my first car, carefully gripping them in my right hand each time I shut the door. I did this because on my first trip here, my keys got locked in my car (note the passive voice–it was not my fault; it was my passenger’s), and although I had a great time hanging around the bar at El Crucero in Tulum, I wasted a good three hours waiting for someone to come pop open the lock.

So there I was this morning, in front of Mezcalito’s beach bar on the east coast of Cozumel, basically my first stop in what’s supposed to be a whirlwind tour. I only got out of the car because it was so damn pretty, and I thought I should take a picture, and then I jumped out with my camera…and no keys.

I skipped the photos and walked right over to the bar to ask some of the waiters to call someone for me, or help somehow or other. I was already eying the bar menu, and wondering if I should start drinking margaritas at 10:30 in the morning.

Well, the one waiter just walks out to the road and starts waving and whistling at a truck down the way. Turns out it’s an Angeles Verdes (Green Angels) truck. Theoretically, I know about this roadside assistance service in Mexico. There’s an emergency number, like 911, for calling them directly. But I don’t think I’ve ever really seen them, and certainly not in action. But there they were, sitting about 250 feet from my locked-up car. I walk down, explain to the guy the situation; he laughs, drives up 250 feet to my car, jumps out with his set of keys made just for this purpose, and pops open my passenger’s side door, all in about five minutes.

Most. Anticlimactic. Rescue. Ever. Even the Green Angel guy–and the policeman who materialized from nowhere, and all the bar employees who came out to watch–seemed disappointed.

But praise the freakin’ lord. I got everything I needed to do done today, and I even went swimming later, very briefly. I didn’t, however, wind up with any pictures of the beach at Mezcalito’s.

Dang, it’s noisy here in Tulum. Yes, that castaway beach town your friends were telling you is such a great place to do yoga and dance in the sand. It’s noisy here in town. Jackhammers, buses, kids screaming and laughing. I’m not at all saying the place is spoiled–in fact, everyone here seems leagues happier than when I first came through town (when there were no sidewalks) in 2003.

I’m just saying there’s a Subway sandwich shop.

Dude. You won’t ever hear me lamenting about lost paradise–I got to know Mexico too late for that, and I’m not going to begrudge anyone making a living in this edge-of-nowhere state. But a freakin’ Subway? Someone’s a visionary, I guess. I just wonder if it opened before or after the secondary streets, beyond the view of most visitors, got paved (they still weren’t last year).

This comes after a particularly disorienting day of driving around Xpu-Ha beach, which is really only about 200m of sand, but somehow a shocking number of hotels are being built on it, and all the old roads have been rerouted. I didn’t even recognize the main road because it looked so much like a construction site. To go from mega-millions condo construction to middle-of-nowhere dirt track through jungle just by making a right turn…well, it was very confusing. Back up the road, same issue south of Puerto Morelos, except substitute mangrove swamps for jungle. I saw workers’ barracks that looked like movie-set concentration camps (not having seen the real ones, who am I to say?). And I saw so many successful middle-class-Mexican housing subdivisions, I lost count. It’s like Vegas here.

And I hate to admit it, but I think I like Cancun better. I mean, there, the damage is done. It is what it is. Watching this area develop is like dealing with a teenager. What, you’re going to wear that out of the house? You have the chance to make an adult choice, and you pick a Subway?

Well. I also like electricity. The beach hotels in Tulum still don’t really have it, and in a weak moment, I actually paid cold hard cash to stay in one for two nights running. The appeal: going in the water, and not having to get back in the car wet and sandy (yes! I actually went to the beach! More on that later…), and also just staying in one place for two nights straight.

But. Uh. My computer. My camera batteries. My voice recorder sucks the lifeblood from iPod. What was I thinking? The really dumb thing is this hotel–though it is still one of the cheapest with proper screens and a private bathroom–is not cheap. It’s good for the book, though–I am honestly assessing the value of beach accommodations, instead of just poking my head in and saying, Pretty!

Re: beachgoing, have I lamented recently that I never really get to do it? Every time someone says, Wow, you have such a dreamy job!, I want to remind them of this cruel irony. Yesterday morning I checked out of the Club Med without getting in the water, as I was running late, and then by late afternoon I wound up at a place with an extremely unappealing bit of breakwatered-up sand. Cruel, considering I’d actually hustled to get stuff done to allow for beach time.

Anyhoo. Today I went in the water for about ten minutes, as the sun was setting. It was gorge. And I’ll go in again tomorrow morning. And heck, maybe the next. Then I go inland.

And now, for lack of a full restaurant review, I leave you with only this existential question: Does listening to harp music while watching the NBA on a wall-size flat-screen drive you insane? Maybe it was just the espresso talking. But this not-to-be-named Cancun restaurant (oh, fine: Casa Rolandi) was serving up a big daily special of cognitive dissonance, from which I am still recovering.

And thanks to the Subway, I’m not sure I’ve bounced back yet.

The Us Weekly offices are decorated, just as you would hope/expect, with giant photos of celebrities looking ridiculous.

One of these photos is of Jessica Simpson, astride a moped, with a look of horror on her face as the thing zooms out of control beneath her. Her blond locks are flapping in the breeze; her premium denim-ed legs are flying in the air.

For lack of any other point of reference, that’s exactly how I imagine my first experience driving a moped. Not that driving a moped seems particularly hard–it’s just that I’ve never done it. So it was with visions of J. Simp in my mind that I approached the rentadora de motos this morning on Isla Mujeres. I had exactly two hours to cruise the island, and that required more speed than I could manage on a bicycle.

When the guy asked if I’d driven a moped before, I of course said yes…but it was, ah, four years ago. He must hear that crap all the time. Anyway, he gave me the briefing (“Oh, no gears! That’s much easier than the last one I drove!” I dug myself in deeper), and then I hopped on and went scooting off. “Slooooowly!” he shouted behind me.

Well, everything actually went fine until I was around the far side of the island and paused to take some pictures of an interesting house. When I got back on the moped, it wouldn’t start. Freakin’ great. I tried various buttons–the horn, repeatedly; the left blinker–and then finally I remembered I had to hold down the brake while tweaking the starter.

This all must’ve addled me, because then, as I was making a U-turn in the road, I completely lost it when I realized the first car I’d seen in 20 minutes was coming along toward me (at about 10 miles per hour). I did the full J. Simp gasp-and-panic, and drove my moped down the crumbling asphalt and into the sea grapes. The woman in the car helpfully leaned out and said, “You should really be very, very careful when driving that.”

I muttered something about how I’d been just fine for an hour and a half, before she came along, apologized a million times, and drove off…slooooowly.

Fortunately I’ll never see her again.

Other things that happened today: a cabbie named Rafael simultaneously stroked my cheek and asked with unapologetic curiosity, “What happened to your ear?!” I can only imagine what would’ve happened if he’d been reaching for my breast and ran into my sternum scar. I only know how to explain my ear in Spanish (“una infeccion; mi madre me dijo “Cuidado!”, pero…”), but not my heart surgery. But the guy might’ve driven off the road before it came to that. (I know, I know–never sit in the front seat. But whatever–my suitcase was taking up the back seat. And he was nice, for a lech.)

Later, on the public bus to Cancun’s hotel zone: a guy sang powerful songs, accompanied by guitar. One was heart-wrenchingly sad. Another was a rockabilly tune about how he left his girl at ‘el ADO’–the long-distance bus terminal. I felt clever knowing that, because half an hour before, I hadn’t been able to remember this normal word for bus terminal and had been asking drivers about the ‘terminal de autobuses,’ which is a tedious mouthful.

Then, on the same bus: a clown got on. An advertising clown, I think. He had red and yellow hair, a white and pink face, baggy pants, striped socks, and a green balloon-animal microphone. He ranted and raved for several stops. I couldn’t tell what he was talking about, but I’m assuming it was advertising something. The alternative–that he was completely insane–is a little depressing to contemplate. (Also depressing to contemplate: his fate, should he try that shit on the NYC subway. Mexican singers: love ya; Mexican clowns: dead meat.)

Then I arrived at the Club Med. Here is proof that you don’t necessarily get fabulous treatment when you’re staying somewhere on assignment. No one told me that “the village” operates on its own time zone–an hour later than the rest of Cancun, I guess still on Daylight Saving Time–and so I sat in the green-lit bar, reading, for more than an hour while I waited for my reserved dinner time. Then I marched in, promptly at 8:30, only to be told that the kitchen was closed.

As you can imagine, I nearly cried. I wound up with some fried snapper and a chocolate dessert. No greens. No happy-tizers. Ker-sniff. While I was eating, I remembered how I’d smugly reset the clock in my room–“Luxury, my ass,” I was thinking. “That’s some crappy attention to detail right there.”

Then I came back to my room, and my key no longer worked. Double ker-sniff. I hoofed it to reception for help. Maintenance would be along shortly. Forty minutes later, I began typing away here, while the dudes replaced the battery in my door lock.

So, now it’s 11:30pm “village time,” and I guess I’ll take a bath in my ridiculously huge tub. After all that, my room is quite splendid, and I’m looking forward to enjoying the sea view tomorrow morning. I just wish the morning weren’t coming so soon…

Just arrived in Cancun today. Halloween seems to have swept Mexico–a crowd of kids just came by the ice cream shop in Isla Mujeres where I’m using the internet. They were all dressed up as ghosts and witches and pumpkins and chanting ‘Que-re-mos HALL-o-ween!’ Well, the ice cream shop proprietor didn’t have any HALL-o-ween to give them, alas. But she did have some tasty lemon gelato for me–there seems to have been a gelato invasion on Isla M, along with the Halloween invasion.

Things I forgot (remembered, each time, with an audible groan that made my airplane-row-mates look at me askance): an umbrella, my phone charger and maps. All my maps. This will be interesting. Still, it’s better than the year I forgot to renew my driver’s license.

I’m off to bed, even though it’s 8.15. Mexico already switched out of Daylight Saving Time, so I got two hours back when I landed here…but I could barely make it till sundown. I’m running only on all-cane-sugar Coca-Cola now. I anticipate zombie mode any moment.