Eco-ish Ecopark

As some of you know, I have a fascination with anthropology, and sort of wish now that I had studied it at that place where it is easy to study things, college.  Also, as I am sure you know, anthropologists and archaeologists can look at a society´s trash, and from the detritus can piece together whole social systems. I think the opposite is true, too- you can infer a lot about people by what they keep (which is one reason dog sitting is so interesting).  So, in this spirit, here is a collection of things from Playa Del Carmen:

I spent Sunday at Xcaret (pronounced ish-car-ET), which according to the Lonely Planet guidebook is a ¨disneyfied ecopark¨ that was created through lots of illegal and not so eco friendly blasting and drilling and recreating of Mayan ruins.  But, Playa Del Carmen, as lovely as it is, is kind of boring once you have lain on the beach for a day and your scuba shop has had to postpone your diving certification two or three times (today the boat was taking in water and ¨maybe it will sink¨  . . . uh, you think ).  I think that the Lonely Planet book writer was having a bad day when he went there because though it is theme-park esque, and though you can buy any number of Xcaret branded products (biodegradable sunscreen, water, dolphin shaped hats made out of foam), and though the Xcaret EXTRAVAGANZA! at night is sort of Vegas-y, though all this cheesiness can`t be denied, I still had a fun day.  The highlights:

My own personal portent, the octopus.

1)  I was snorkeling in a lagoon and a giant sea turtle swam up next to me and looked at me, hung out for a minute, and swam on.  I`ve wanted to see a pelagic turtle since Hawaii several years ago, so hooray, dream come true.

2)  It is beginning to occur to me that I have my own personal portent, my own sign that things are about to get interesting: the octopus.  As you may remember, I was nearly attacked by an octopus in Croatia.  So, at the Xcaret EXTRAVAGANZA!, the first half is devoted to, um, creatively retelling the Mexican history, starting with the Maya and moving through the Spanish colonialization.  I say creative because at the very end, the Spanish dude is strumming his guitar, and the indigenous Mayan dude walks over to him, and begins to play his flute.  AWW how sweet, the colonized and the colonizer can make sweet music together . . .The second half is a sort of dance review of many of the styles from the different regions of Mexico; with some variation, they are generally what you might think of traditional Mexican ballet folklorico.  And then the octopus showed up.  Because, apparently Quintana Roo, the state of Cancun and Playa del Carmen, doesn`t have traditional dance.  Instead, they have people who strut out with giant inflatable pool toys attached to big sticks, and a women prancing around in clamshells, and inexplicably, a GIANT OCTOPUS being propelled by probably 10 people hiding inside it.

Yesterday, I went on a crazy jungle expedition to the, well, jungle.  I learned this jungle is a low jungle (no tall palm trees or lush foilage) because the whole Yucatan peninsula was once a coral reef, so the ground is mostly limestone and it is hard for plants to find water sources.  But what is cool about limestone is that it buckles, creating giant sinkholes, with over time fill with fresh rainwater, and the water flushes out the calcium in the limestone.  Fast forward thousands of years, and the sinkholes have turned into caverns.  The calcium deposits are stalactites and stalagmites, and so part of my jungle experience was snorkeling in the caverns: it was otherworldly.  Sort of like being in space, on Mars or some other barren planet, except with water and you are floating in the middle of it all. Today I have moved on from my 24 hour party hostel in Playa to a much saner hostel about an hour down the coast in the town of Tulum.  The hostel in Playa started out cool, but all the rooms faced the interior dining room, which turned into a club nightly until 2 in the morning.  Now, on my list of things a good hostel should have, a bar is one of them: that`s where you can hang out, meet other travelers, etc. but you don`t feel weird because you have something to do.  But a hostel with an impromptu rave every night- well it could be that I am not 19 anymore- but that got old the second night, and by last night I was as we say, over it.  Oh and for the first time ever in my travels in Mexico I got the Mexican flu, and that, compounded by the tump tump tump of the bass, well...and the stupid girl in the bunk below me left her giant backpack and all her crap stacked up against the ladder, so I got in and out of bed all night by launching myself off the footboard.

* Writing, like teaching, is about making choices, and for each choice there are thousands of other ones that you could make. Travel writing is like this, too, but it seems to me like the choices are more between different narrative lines. The things I included in my collection above: these are the fun stories, the iteresting and the odd. But running in and out of this trip is another narrative, and the question I have for you all is which are the stories you tell, and which are the stories you keep to yourself. Which ones become part of your collection, and which ones are left for someone else to find, and set about the process of reconstruction.