Melissa's Place

Our Friends in Mexico

No, we’re not talking about real native Mexicans or Mayans, but the other fellow tourists that we acquainted ourselves with on our trip. I guess the word “friend” wouldn’t quite be accurate, but there were people who came and went in parallel with us at the resort and on day trips, that in some way or another, touched our lives.

Let’s begin with Vin Deisel. He was a jackass. We didn’t know him well. But the entire trip to Mexico, he sat across the aisle from me in his Dolce and Gabanna jeans and his sleeve-less t-shirt wearing designer sunglasses (yes, on the plane it’s VERY sunny) and ear plugs and a bright turquoise neck pillow that said “I (heart) N.Y.” He also wore a straw cowboy hat over his bald head. He got up to stretch for a good five minutes, blocking everyone from being able to see the television, but he is the kind of guy who doesn’t notice these things. For a while, I couldn’t pinpoint what it was about him that made me think he was such a jerk – it kind of seemed unfair of me to make such an assumption – he probably didn’t know we were watching the t.v., right? Well, on our return trip to the Cancun airport from the resort, I saw him look at one of the women he was traveling with, asleep in the seat next to him. He saw that she was using his bright turquoise neck pillow and so he just reefed it out from under her sleeping head. AWESOME! What a gentleman. And at the airport, when everyone was walking (albeit a bit hurriedly) towards the check-in windows – he actually sprinted, and I mean RAN at full speed to be first in line. However, he did not beat everyone because a small line had already begun. That is no obstacle for Vin Deisel, he simply raced to the first check-in window and by-passed the line.

There was a Brooklyn couple on our Coba Mayan Village tour. They asked stupid questions and complained when people weren’t passing the pictures fast enough. They remarked out loud all of the fleeting thoughts that entered their minds. And at the cenote (water hole) when we all went swimming to refresh ourselves, they planted themselves next to a poor British family and forced a political conversation about George Bush onto them.

We had a quiet silent hero asian couple (I thought they were Japanese, but Mark says they’re Chinese). As we came off the airplane when we first arrived in Mexico, we looked quite dumb-founded as we wandered looking for our Transat Vacations representative. I began wandering toward two uniform-clad men who seemed quite friendly and who were holding clip boards. “No, No” the couple saw us wandering that way and came to rescue us, “Unless you’re interested in a time share…..you’ll want to avoid those guys.” That was the last we saw of the quiet asian couple.

Joyce and Ting were from Toronto and they were our outgoing asian couple. Joyce talked in bubbly excitement to everyone. We went swimming with sea turtles and in the cenote with Joyce and Ting. Also, they were at our same resort. So we kept seeing them everywhere. They had a room near us. They were in the buffet when we were there. They were living parallel lives to us. Mark could always remember Ting’s name, but he kept forgetting Joyce’s.

Then there was the French family with two kids that also went on the snorkeling tour with us. In fact, Mark and I figure we were, throughout the majority of the trip, in the MINORITY language-wise. Nearly all the tourists on the resort spoke Spanish. There were a lot of Mexicans who were vacationing in our resort. And a lot of Americans or maybe Europeans, who spoke Spanish fluently. There were also quite a number of French-speaking families. So the snorkeling tour was done in French primarily, and in English as an after thought. There were only about three people on that tour who didn’t speak French. Anyway, we ended up sitting at the back of the van with these two children, who seemed so quiet and well-behaved for the first half of the trip. Then, they came out of their shells for the return trip to the hotel. They started to be silly with each other. They began to try to talk to us. They said the only English words they knew “CAT!” they exclaimed, “DOG!”. They recited the numbers from one to ten to us. Then they tried to tell us jokes, with minimal success. The result was the four of us giggling a lot and their parents looking back at them and telling them not to bother us. Then they started to tickle each other. THEN they started to tickle Mark! Mind you, he’s wearing a bathing suit and no shirt, so they’re sticking their little hands right into his arm pits and along the back of his neck. He looked at me nervously, “I think I need my t-shirt, Melissa.” As we got out of the van at the hotel lobby, the little girl took my hand as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

There were other people….like the card-playing family. Every evening, they would sit at the same table in the lower lobby and play cards together. There was the boy who was always hogging the computers in the Business Centre where we checked our e-mail. And there was the very sweet waitress who said, would you like “a little milk in your coffee” but didn’t seem to really know what “a little” meant.

All the people who worked on the resort, probably mostly Maya, were so very friendly. They offered an “Hola!” every time we walked past them. Mark didn’t want to “hola” back, for fear that it would be obvious that he was trying too hard to seem like a Spanish speaker when he really wasn’t. But I wasn’t afraid. I had to get all my Holas out while I could. I got so good (or so I interpret it) that people would then say the next thing they wanted to say to me in Spanish too (which I could usually understand if it was a short sentence). And if the answer was just a nod or a head-shake answer, the conversation could go on for quite some time before they noticed that I couldn’t say more than “hola”.

And of course, Mark loved Mexico so much, he brought a few Mexican bugs home….in his ear. Like a souvenir really, of our lovely honeymoon in the Riviera Maya.