Cancun was humid and hectic. From the moment I arrived until this morning when I got the bus to Playa del Carmen, life became hazy and uncertain. A tourist town with fake souvenirs, fake stories and fake promises. The Las Vegas of Mexico and Bermuda Triangle of the mind which royally screwed me over.
Don't get me wrong: I had a fantastic time, but something changed, the dream broke and last night I realised I needed to snap out and escape. I have barely had any sleep in the last week at all and no voice for just as long. Fruit and veg have gone out of the window and been replaced with tequila limes.
Drinking games, Coco-Bongo club, Mayan ruins on white powder beaches; Australians and a resident kitten who reponded to whistling. I was always too aware that none of it was real. Not just due to lack of sleep either- it was the feeling of being picked up, spun around, given a puppet show and then seeing the strings and artificial props.
Cancun is the only place so far where a taxi driver has complimented me on my spanish and given me a hug.
Playa del Carmen is just a bus ride away from Cancun, and I already passed through it once to get to Tulum, but I feel as if I have woken up. With the realisation that I hadn't eaten in 24 hours, I went to a Walmart for the first time in my life. I sat there in the canteen, staring into my rice dish and was joined by a man whose name I never asked. He told me his life story and made me cry. Then he got up and left me with the saying that "if we could see the invisible, we could create the impossible". I wonder if the phrase works more in spanish.
Sometimes I think that travellers are just sporadic groups of lost people hoping to take something from the places they visit and replace their emptiness with little nuggests of worldliness and other people's stories. Even the most confident of rugged backpackers has a purpose which goes beyond their itinery.
I went to the laundrette and sat there for a while with the owner's little girl and her dog. She saw my camera in my bag and asked if she could take a picture. I showed her how to do so and she showed me her book. It's the most I've ever bonded with a small person before- I usually avoid it, but I think we were on a similar wavelength this sleepy morning, her and I.Then I remembered that I was still carrying round some english story books- my original intention being to give them to the orphanage (which I bailed after a couple of days). I gave her a book called "All about Alice" to keep, and she asked me to take a photo of her with it.
Tomorrow I'll head to Chetumal which is on the border of Belize and prepare myself to leave Mexico. But not for the last time.
No comments:
Post a Comment