Our Mexican Adventure

Yesterday was Easter, the culmination of a week of festivities for Catholic Mexicans. Semana Santa, or Holy Week, is Mexico’s version of Spring Break. All the schools have the week off, government offices close down and many businesses give their employees a vacation. Mexicans flock to the beaches, and Playa del Carmen was no exception.

John and I headed to the beach yesterday to join the hordes.

We had a wonderful time at the beach despite the crowds. The sand was soft, the sun was shining, the sky a brilliant blue, and the water a refreshing aquamarine. Aaaah!

To top off our Easter day, we feasted on tacos al pastor and chicken alambre. What a great day!

Here in Mexico, since the holiday of Thanksgiving is not celebrated (by most Mexicans), there are no crazy “Black Friday” sales events to kick off the Christmas shopping season.  However, to our surprise, the local Walmart was offering all of their beer 6-packs for $30 pesos yesterday.  For domestic beer, this is about a 50% savings, and for the rare imports (Heineken and 2 others), it’s even more.  A sale like this is so odd, that Libby overhead many conversations between customers and employees in the beer aisle that went something like this:

Customer: How much is this one?
Employee: $30 pesos.
Customer: And, this one?
Employee: $30 pesos.
Customer: [Looking very confused and distrusting] And how about this one, is it also $30 pesos?
Employee: Yes, $30 pesos.

Normally, the peso exchange rate is 10 pesos per dollar, but lately, the peso has been weakened, and it’s been around 13.4 to the dollar for a few weeks now.  That’s an additional 33% discount if you are paying in good ole USD.

We decided to take advantage of this special and max out with the limit of 8.  This is what our $18 USD worth of beer looks like:

The reason for the sale will forever be a mystery to us.  I was hoping that Walmart would restock the shelves with a wider selection of imported beers.  Alas, Libby was back today and reported that the shelves are fully restocked with the same ole beer selection that they were practically giving away yesterday. Total bummer!

I miss the great selection of microbrews back in the US.  However, I guess this bounty will hold me over until I’m back stateside for the holidays at the end of the month. Salud!

Today is a historic day, not only because an African-American man was elected president last night, but also because 3 years ago today, John and I arrived in Playa del Carmen to start a new life. We intended to stay for only 6 months. Our goals were to learn Spanish, discover a new culture and gain some clarity to hopefully figure out what we wanted to do with the rest of our lives.

Three years later, and we’re still inching our way towards reaching our goals. Our Spanish is meager, allowing us to order food delivery over the phone, but often foiling our attempts to speak with our Chiapan cleaning lady. We now understand how so many Latinos in the U.S. can get by without speaking much English. We rely on our network of expat friends and English-speaking Mexican professionals more than we’d like to admit.

Culture? As any Mexican would say ‘Playa has no culture!’. Well, that’s partially true. We have no museums, no theatre, no art galleries. But that’s not what we came here for. We still struggle to understand the whys and hows of life in Mexico. But we’ve already learned so much. Like that Mayan women are not unfriendly but extremely shy and intimidated by foreigners. And that in a business transaction (anything from buying a mango to getting internet service to purchasing real estate), one should never EVER expect it to go smoothly or fairly or timely. And that living in the here and now is a good thing. Cuz when aggravation over a mango purchase hangs in your future, it’s just not worth thinking about!

We never did figure out what we want to do with the rest of our lives. But that’s okay because we’re living in the here and now. John is doing software development for U.S. clients. I’m doing website development and search engine optimization (a new skill I acquired in Mexico). And we both have invested much of our time into our labor of love, a Playa del Carmen website called In The Roo. Roo is short for Quintana Roo, the name of our state, in case you were wondering. I hope to spend even more time on In The Roo in the future, combining my two loves — travel and technology.

We’ve had our share of ups and downs in Playa del Carmen. We miss Chicago terribly. Living in a Mexican beach town isn’t all about drinking tequila and lazing on the beach. But for now, life is good in Playa. We don’t know how long we’ll be here. We’re just living one day at a time.

November 1st and 2nd is a Mexican celebration of the deceased called the Day of the Dead. Unlike Halloween, where death is treated as a scary thing, the tradition of the Day of the Dead is to celebrate, and honor, the departed.

After reading about the celebration at Xcaret, Libby and I were looking forward to attending this year’s event. We invited other locals to partake in the festivities with us. Unfortunately, Libby did not feel well and had to cancel at the last moment, but our friends Susie and Marissa and I went and had a great time.

Plenty of marigolds were used to decorate the park. It was a nice touch, it actually gave me the feeling of the fall season – something we don’t really experience here.

There were various events and performances throughout the park. This was a Mexican acapella group doing a routine.

There were candles all over the park. This central structure was available for visitors to light a candle in memory of their departed.

One of the most popular sites at Xcaret is the Mayan cemetery. Although it is normally filled with colorful tombs, and is a site to see on it’s own, during the Day of the Dead festival, the tombs are accentuated with marigolds, food and drinks for the departed.

It is believed that during the festival of Day of the Dead, it is easier for the souls of the departed to visit the living. Therefore, graves and altars are provided with offerings for the souls as they return. Typically, for children, the gifts are generally toys, for the adults, tequila or cerveza. However, we have seen a variety of gifts, including Big Macs and plates of enchiladas, in the past.

The marigolds are thought to attract the souls of the dead to the offerings. Candles are used to light the way for the visting souls.

There were various face painting stations located throughout the park, and we took the opportunity to have our faces painted.

The symbol of the skull, or calaca, for the Day of the Dead is quite common. According to Wikipedia, the skulls are “depicted as joyous rather than mournful figures”.

We finished the day off by seeing the 2nd half of the Xcaret music and dance performance. For anyone visiting Xcaret in the future, this is a must-see performance. This was the 2nd time I got to see only the 2nd half… some day I hope to see it in it’s entirety.

All in all, it was a nice place to see and experience some of the traditions for myself.

If you enjoyed this post, you may want to check out the more detailed report I posted on our In The Roo forum.

Contrary to popular opinion, John and I do not spend our days lazing on the beach with a margarita in hand. We actually work our butts off here, probably harder than we ever have before. But recently we had an opportunity to let loose on an ATV jungle adventure with a group of our friends. It was a blast!

First, we met up with our friends at a local watering hole, the Beer Bucket. What great adventure doesn’t start off with a few brews?!

Next, our designated drivers transported us to the ATV Explorer site just a few miles south of Playa del Carmen. We donned helmets to protect our noggins and goggles and bandanas to keep the dust out of our orifices.

And we were off!

We rode through the jungle for about two hours. For a refreshing break, we stopped at a cenote swimming hole!

And made another stop in a cave where we interrupted these sleeping bats.

With our rowdy group, it was no surprise that we had our share of jungle crashes, scrapes and bruises.

But I assure you that no kitty kats were harmed in this most awesome jungle adventure.

Thanks so much to our friends Tyra and Erik from ATV Explorer for making our tour possible. It was great fun to play like tourists for a day!