jlegler.com

At eight a.m. on the dot we both woke up naturally. We both felt great and both thought it was odd that we felt so well rested after sleeping only 6 hours after being up for over 24. We had not really planned on doing anything that day other than laying around so it provided ample opportunity to get going on that. It turns out that it is impossible for Heather to do nothing though. We took showers and at 8:30 a.m. we got a call on the phone from someone trying to sell us a timeshare. I just imagined a collie proudly looking into an office in the basement and barking a few times and a sales guy knowing immediately that the collie could sense that we were awake and the time to call was upon him. He reached for the phone quickly and with purpose in his eyes nimbly dialed our room number and prepared the speech in his mind that he would deliver to me to seal the deal and guarantee my annual return which he would utilize to sell me more crap until the end of time. Unfortunately for him I was prepared to say no to anything after an hour in the Cancun airport and shut him and his super-sales collie down before the process could even really begin.I went to the door of the hotel room and there was a piece of paper under it. It was an invitation from the Hotel to go talk about a timeshare! The collie must have put it there and that is how he knew I was awake. Anyway, according the header on said document, my Spanish name is Señor Lagler instead of Jason Legler. The emphasis is on the LAG, as in LAGler. My new Spanish name is the name Heather uses to address me to this day. We left the Zona Hotelera to find lunch. We found Spanish food at a roadside vendor for 35 pesos for the both of us. If you plan to go to Mexico, leave where all the white people are to get good food for cheap. Heather and I speak no Spanish and the vendors spoke no English and it worked out fine.

Once you’re out of Zona Hotelera the traffic becomes much more interesting. In Mexico and Puerto Rico, speed limits and lines on the roads are suggestions. Large busses using two lanes as one and changing lanes without using blinkers are bigger suggestions. I leave it to you to choose which to pay attention to. It is purely logical driving which was a nice change from Oregon. If you make moves with authority and avoid the people who aren’t watching or who clearly have more will than you then things work out fine. I loved driving in Mexico and as long as you are not too timid and don’t get angered or scared easily it isn’t very hard to catch on. After a little driving around and eating we went and took a 4 hour nap. It was glorious.

Later on around dinner time we decided to drive someplace to find dinner. We found a place after some navigational issues. We had bought some GPS software from BiciMapas before we went to Mexico. The maps were useful in showing the approximate location of many things but otherwise they were terrible. If you had the GPS coordinates of what you wanted to go see off of wikipedia or something, you were set as far as knowing where you were in relation to whatever you had the coordinates to; however, the GPS had no idea of the streets or where they were. In fact, many of the streets have no names. The GPS had streets that didn’t exist and couldn’t have ever existed in many cases. We spent a solid hour letting it route us to futility before we started using it as a suggestion rather than a rule. The GPS would tell us that where we needed to go was roughly northwest of where we were. We would then go north on a road until we were East of it and then turn and go towards it and deal with whatever Mexican magical street madness happened. Once we started doing that we were fine. If you buy the software, be prepared for it to be wrong most of the time; however, the signage in Mexico for places of interest and cities is very good so if you know what towns you need to drive through to get somewhere you will be fine.

Anyway, we found a street with a bunch of restaurants full of brown people. We figured that was a good sign and we were correct. The food was good and inexpensive. I did find out the hard way though that being in Mexico and not speaking Spanish is really tough if you’re a person who has social anxiety issues based entirely on feeling unwelcome and intrusive. The trip as a whole was very stressful for me. That being said, almost all of the people we encountered were overly nice to us and accommodated our ignorance. Maybe they could sense my discomfort. Anyway, out of curiosity we went to a Wal-Muerte and went inside to buy raw materials for breakfast and lunch for when we left to more remote places.. Wal-Muerte is insane in Mexico. It is similar in name and color coding only to its American counterparts. It’s much louder, with much fresher produce and much less order. No one there spoke any English. We got cereal and bread and sandwich fixings and then left for the hotel to sleep and get ready for the real fun to come… and by fun I mean driving.

Heather and I stayed up all night the night before we left. Neither of us really prepared for the trip. We had made grand plans of learning some passable Spanish and learning a little about the culture so that we wouldn’t go in deaf and dumb but it didn’t happen. Truthfully, the months before our trip were horrible as far as having free time went. I spent all my time at work or working on Randy’s record and had no time for thinking about Mexico and Heather was buried in clients and dog-sitting. We spent the night packing, putting together music for the trip, and loosely putting together a list of things we wanted to do while we were there. We emailed the rough itinerary to family members with copies of our passports just in case. Needless to say, by the time we got to the airport we were already exhausted and irritable. Both of us had the expectation that the sun and the warmth would make everything better.The entire day was pretty uneventful. I’ve traveled a lot for work over the last decade and it was the same generic fare with the notable exception that my hot wife was with me to suffer this time. I really dislike airports. I’ve been in too many of them and their associated generic American cities too be able to explain the sites and smells to someone who hasn’t I guess. I dislike them too much to relive it long enough to explain it. Our layover was in Dallas. The only thing noteworthy was that the men were more overweight and more clean cut than most Portland men. They all had on the same generic khaki or jean/dark brown leather jacket and/or goatee combo going on. It’s a style for people that don’t have time to have style or who have jobs who don’t allow anything more flashy. The women were also freakishly tall and similarly generically well put together. They all looked better than me; but I didn’t want to look like any of them, if that makes sense.

We eventually left the Dallas airport and flew to Cancun. Across the aisle from me was some dude who was packed for a week in the sun to partake in booze and boobs. The guy was dumber than a bag of hammers. He wore one of the smallpox airline blankets as a veil for the bulk of the flight. Occasionally I could hear short one-syllable-word explanations of what he planned to do in Mexico all of which involved tequila and women… the only multiple-syllable words he knew. He was basically bragging about going to Cancun to a plane full of people flying to Cancun. Ol Bag-O-Hammers yammered for the entire flight, veiled and challenged. I’m not a violent person but to see him suffer would have made me happy. I think I was pretty tired but I know he was pretty dumb.

We landed in Cancun and I got my first stamp ever on my passport. The guy didn’t stamp it on the first page which irritated the part of me that appreciates order; however, the weather was perfect… perfect for selling shit apparently. If the only part of Mexico you ever saw was the airport, you would think that everyone there was there to sell you something you didn’t want. I stepped off the flight, got my passport stamped and then made a run for the bathroom. There was a bathroom attendant there that wanted money. I never carry cash so I stiffed him and felt bad until I noticed, while on my way home a week later, that there were no bathroom attendants in the airport once you passed security. The entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well in Cancun. The poverty is like nothing I’ve ever had to experience in my life and I am incredibly thankful for that; however, the sales environment sucks balls and never really goes away unless you can get away from the other tourists.

We had some problems with Budget not having any cars available despite the fact that we had reserved one. They moved us to Executive though and Executive gave us better rates and full insurance coverage for cheaper. We got a good deal on the car ($350USD for the entire week with full coverage) and gas is cheap in Mexico. I highly recommend renting a car there. It was fun and we could get to a lot of places that no one else even tried to.

We drove from the airport to our hotel in Cancun. Cancun kind of sucks. It has a mini Vegas feel too it and just feels kind of generic, lame, and artificial. We were really tired and hungry though so we drove to the hotel and parked and then walked to a place to get food. It was $30 for two of us for seafood that was entirely accurate in its description. It came from the sea and it was food. It was incredibly banal. The beer in the Caribbean saved it though.

It was the same way in Puerto Rico. Puerto Ricans and Mexicans in the Caribbean know how to use a fridge to make beer as cold as it can be without freezing. I don’t even like beer and I drank it with every meal in Mexico. We then went to bed on the hardest wettest beds we’d ever slept in at about 2am. We placed bets on what time we would wake up the next day. Heather bet one p.m., I said noon.