OG Dog

 Interesting Tulum morning. OG the smallish pit bull who looked and seemed like a Winnie the Pooh wandered around our legs. Catherine asked the Grunge-esque Mexican hippie woman (thus our age) "where did you get OG?" She replies: " In Mexico City". "From who?" Woman replies: "I traded her for hash" then a small shoulder shrug, "You know how Mexico is" then a brief laugh.

Petrals and Gulls

 When the fishers come in at the end of the day, they throw all their small fish bait to the sand and petrals and gulls swarm to get the small fish. Watched a lucky petral fly amongst her flock with a large silver fish in her beak as all the other birds tried to snatch it from her. She was a very clever bird and while swooping and diving managed to hang on to it until she dove right down straight into the sea, I assume to swallow it unbothered by her brethren.

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Vespa Smash

 In a taxi to the beach today I imagined a new video game: "Vespa Smash!"

You the driver of the taxi race at 100 km an hour, on a one lane path (speed limit 20), interspersed between cars cheek to jowl parked on both sides of the road while lines of turistas on vespas drive slowly in front of your cab. You either overtake them or have to get rid of them. They wear ear buds or stare at their phones so honking won't work!

For bonus points you can take out the many, many turistas who have not been on a bicycle for 20 years and steer their bike like Jan Brady.

Extra points if you take out the barely dressed blonds in the smallest thongs really getting down on cycling on old bike seats that likely carry gonnorrhea.

Nothing between them and the seats but sunscreen.

Cartel

 A few days ago we were wandering looking for a shoe store for C as her sandals caused her nothing but misery. After going from store to store we gave up and C resigned herself to going to the local version of Wal-Mart. I declined the adventure and sat down in a cool bar on a side street to have a glass of wine and view the comings and goings. It was only after about 20 minutes that I realized the roped off establishment across from me was where the cartel cross fire shootings had happened on October 25th, killing a German woman and a young "social influencer" from California. 3 other turistas were shot. 

The cartels, formerly absent from the region, when we were here 7 years ago, have taken hold, When COVID shut everything down the only place you could go, if American, was Yucatan, and they held raves and dance parties unfettered.

With raves etc...come drugs and then the cartels. 

A few nights ago in a small restaurant a group of American turistas looking as nervous as mice waited drinking Coronas until the Mexican woman with the bunch introduced them to some guy, very hyper, with a back pack. Lite talk and small introduction. 

I knew what was going down.

Behind them 7 NYC undercover drug detectives ate 3 courses of food each while telling 'on the beat' war stories from the different detachments they had been assigned to. I assume they were here to do American-Mexican drug enforcement training. 

National guard soldiers in white camoflauge, bullet proof vests and significant guns patrol the street in armoured carriers the way the Brits did in Northen Ireland during "The Troubles". 

The beach resort area swells with rich white girls suffering from extreme eating disorders and their more plump muscle bound boyfriends. 

In a state where the poverty rate is 49 percent, remember a Mexcian poverty rate valuation, half the population lives in dismal shanty towns, cheek to jowl with huge new timeshare condos. One might see the attraction of cartel life. 

Kyle Rittenhouse acquitted today; guns brought down from the States and the only music played here in bars is the worst of gangster rap.

Falling Deities

We went on a great Mexican gubernero tour yesterday at the famous Tulum ruins. By the time the Spanish cast their eye on Mexico the Maya were gone. 

Only Tulum lived on as a Mayan city. In 1511 a Spanish ship accidentally crashed off the reef of Tulum leaving only two Spanish survivors: A Catholic Priest and a Soldier. They came to live in Tulum. 

At that time the Royalty situated in the main city, open only to the upper crust, treasured obsidian glass so they could watch the solar eclipses. The astronomers measured, like the Irish and ancient Britains, the precise time of the solstices and equinoxes to the very day and time so the edifices show first light through small windows or temple gates, of the regressing or returning beam of sun. 

9 years later, after the ship wreck, the Spanish came again. This time intentionally. The soldier wanted to return to Spain. The priest however had married Mayan royalty and had a large family. He had no interest in regresso and thus in Mexico the first Meztizos were born. 

The buildings of Tulum sport fabulous carvings of deities, each corner a massive head and face: the Maya practiced head and eye binding to replicate the deformities brought forth from interrelational marriage: like the royalty of England, Russia and Egypt: if the family tree doesn't fork, with it can come some physical problems. 

The Maya had 13 sky deities and 9 down below. On the carvings the sky deities are all upside down.

They are shown falling from the skies.  In fact they look they have just rocketed down from heaven. Precisely what the Maya intended and it reminds me of  "The Man Who Fell to Earth" a disturbing movie with David Bowie about an alien who came to earth to find water for his dying world but just got interested in drinking and watching TV and gave up. 

If you watch "War of the Worlds" by Stephen Spielberg, the aliens rocket down from the sky on lightning bolts. The carvings kind of look like that. 

No wonder that weird Swiss guy in the 1970s era posited a theory that all of the Maya culture was a result of Alien intervention. From "Chariots of the Gods" to " Ancient Aliens" there is his  assumption that all of us, from Egyptians to Irish to Maya, were too stupid or too primitive to figure out how to build stuff on our own. 

Humans 10,000 years ago were just as smart as we are all today. And we, over this time, have created agriculture, enormous temples, strange paintings, head binding, mascara, computer chips, math, linen,  glass and space flight.

 And that is just to name a few. 

The "Luvahs" and Covid

I am now 56 and a sound world traveller. All the people who travel now are either boomers in their 70s or rich "jungvolk" in their early 20s. So nosotras are a bit out of place. People our age usually have children and teens and university to pay for. 

By the small pool the rain soaked everything. 6 rooms and Dutch, English and Americans kids would check in sporadically.  I greeted them and tried to ask questions to get them to relax and enjoy the hotel. I realized suddenly I may sound like the infamous "Luvahs" from SNL. Did I really come across like some creepy weirdo?  (sans the 'lovah' stuff)  "Let me introduce myself: we are the Professors Catherine and Beth Klarvins...are you here with a 'lovah?"

I started to get depressed at aging but then realized when I was a 21 year old back packing around India alone everyone there thought I was weird. 

I remember in Goa walking near a cool beach market when a French heroin hippie, likely 35, came out of nowhere and started dancing around me with a tambourine, cigarette dangling from her leather tanned mouth: "You are magical" she said dancing and dancing: "too bad you're going to die so young"

That strange prophecy has haunted me to this day. Have I dodged it?

I wonder what "young" is. 

Everywhere in Tulum there are countless very young Americans, Dutch, English and a few Canadians. No one wears masks, it seems, unless you are Canadian. 

I don't think most Mexicans are vaccinated. Our hotel guy today told me he didn't believe in vaccination: "I feel fine." "Yes" I replied "until you get really sick with COVID"

He looked down and then looked worried. Then he said "I think we need to reduce the population so earth can heal from global warming. So it can breathe again. 

This Malthusian viewpoint is quite popular amongst the many New Age hippies who frequent the vegan cafes and yoga huts, spaced out among half built edifices and small shanty huts the where poor labourers hang hamocks and squat. Their families in tow setting up poor shop and living on the unlit streets. 

Tonight the young Gringo women nearby, all Barbie doll legs and and sarongs sing and chant and egg on homeless Mexicans who walk on the rain soaked road to play some drumming. 

It's authentic.  

A Point of Contention

"Four Points by Sheraton". A premium hotel at a premium price by the airport. I didn't expect chocolates on the pillow but the really large and spry cockroach standing on the bed busily waving her (very long) antenae at me was not a welcome sight. When I complained to the front desk the response was "Eww I will change your room" and then the hotel clerk promptly put us in the room right next door. 

"Do you not know cockroaches go through walls, plumbing etc...and putting us in the room next won't change anything?" I thought, but it's one night so I gave up. C on the other hand couldn't sleep at all, the thought of crawly roaches on her face tormented her. 

Like me, she is an old school Torontonian who lived in some of the most disgusting of roach infested apartments, from which we still have PTRT: Post Traumatic Roach Terror. 

Somehow it doesn't bother me as much if, for example, we are in Latin America. Christ...it's the tropics after all. But Mississauga in November bleh. There's something quite unsettling about it. 

Not to mention the "premium" price.