Wednesday, December 21, 2005





Entry #16

Week of Dec 5th to 10th
Tuesday, December 6th
I was awake at 645 and decided that it was time to soak my sore feet in salt water. Getting there around 845, I had my pick of El Tukan Beach Club palapas and selected one at the far southern end of their area near the dive shop. There would be fewer people walking past and it had an unobstructed view of the water at the top of a small rise of sand that caught a nice breeze from the ocean. I had everything I needed for the day: a clear, sunny sky, and a good book:
Small Island by Andrea Levy.

Thursday December 8th

Like Tuesday and Wednesday, I was up early and at the beach before 9am. At Mamitas Beach Club adjacent to El Tukan, construction
continued on the new facilities. Mamitas was almost destroyed by Hurricane Wilma, and the new buildings were going to be bigger and nicer than the old ones. Sawing, hammering and drilling went on all day but I didn't mind. At El Tukan, the only thing that eventually did bother me was the lip-syncing mariachi who arrived in the afternoon. That was my signal to leave.
Then I went to Cafe Corazon,
but I could not get a signal at all. I went to another internet cafe--Ah Cacao--a few blocks away and could not connect on their wireless network either, so I tried to adjust my settings. That was a bad idea because I only succeeded in completely messing up my settings and as a result could not connect with Cafe Corazon's network when it was back online. I gave up and decided to try to reach my school's IT expert in the morning. He would surely get me back online.

Friday December 9th
Yesterday my heel felt really sore-must have had some sand in the wound. So today I decided to stick around the condo and
save the beach for Saturday morning. I also wanted to solve the problem with my wireless access, which I messed up last night trying to get on the network at Ah Cacao. From a nearby Internet Cafe I sent our IT expert an email and we went back and forth until the settings were re-established as they were before . I went back to Cafe Corazon to make sure it was ok and spent almost 2 hours sitting there in the Ole bar area working on downloading pictures to my latest blog entry. Then around 1:30 I went back to the condo, put on my bathing suit and went to the roof, had a dip in the pool and then sat in the sun for about an hour. around 3pm I took a walk to the new Wal-Mart and bought sunscreen, lens solution and some other things. On the way back I checked email and called Gordon (50 pesos). I used 15 min out of the 10 hours I bought (9h.45min. remaining).
Back at the condo I watched
Almost Famous not remembering much of it at all. It has a great soundtrack and a good story. Then around 6:30 I went out for dinner. At Sazon I had enchiladas mole(68); they were filled with moist white meat, very tasty- spicy but also chocolatey as it should be. And beer was only 15 pesos. I'll go to Cafe Corazon later to check msn & email.
Sitting at Cafe Corazon, after dinner, I could not get an internet signal. But I watched the lights in the sky just to the south. It looked like two searchlights, but where are they coming from? There was nothing to the north, just in that one part of the sky. Could it just be moonlight behind the shifting clouds? It reminded me of Northern Lights.

Saturday, December 10th
Gordon would be arriving today!
I decided not to go to the beach; instead I went up to the rooftop pool. It was a beautiful day, and I had a comfortable chair and umbrella. The family across the hall was packing up to go home and gave me all their unused food. There were nachos, condiments, limes, cereal, two jars of jam, two large packages of cheese, juices, and even some coconut rum! It was so nice of them! I expected Gordon, whose flight was due to land at 11:45, to arrive after 2pm, and started to get anxious when he hadn't
arrived by 3pm.

He was bringing me a new suitcase since the one I had was damaged in transit to Mexico in October. I am sure it was abused by the baggage handlers in Chicago. The stitching of the zipper was ripped out in three places and I was afraid that the whole bag would burst open on my way to Cancun. I had searched all over San Miguel for duct tape and found some "DUCKED TAPE" in a paper shop in Plaza Civica. I also brought the suitcase to a luggage shop on Calle San Francisco. It was impossible to replace the zipper but the owner stitched the zipper closed so that the lid would only open two-thirds of the way around.
Gordon was bringing two suitcases---one inside the other.
Did his checked luggage get lost? Is that why he was late? I realized that he would have to wait to go through customs. Sometimes that took us an hour in the past! And then he'd have to wait to get the collectivo to Playa del Carmen. On December 3rd I had to wait over a half hour for one when I arrived in Cancun.

At 3:10 I was sitting on our balcony when I heard a familiar whistle--one we used to call the cat at the cottage. "Where was that sound coming from?" I thought. I looked down the street in the direction from which I expected Gordon to come. There was no one there; then I heard the whistle again from the other direction. There he was!

He had worried also that the checked luggage would be lost. He saw a young couple at the airport baggage area looking so forlorn, as they watched the bags go around on the carousel. Where would he even go to report a lost bag in the Cancun Airport? But to his surprise, his bag was first off the plane! That was probably because his Montreal-Toronto flight was late arriving and the departure of the Toronto-Cancun flight was delayed because the pilot waited for late bags to be loaded. Gordon's bag was probably the last bag loaded on the flight. So he was really relieved to arrive without any problem and was happy to see how nicely I had prepared the condo for him.
Now our holiday could really start.


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