Escape from Cancun

I’ve learned that it might take a couple of days for a vacation to begin.

I had exchanged a thousand travel points for one night’s accommodation in Cancun. We needed to bridge our late arrival by plane with an early bus out the next day to our final destination. We were going to spend a week in Merida, the capital city of the Yucatan, and it was a few hours by bus from Cancun. At the time, there were no direct flights to Merida from Canada at a price we were willing to pay.

I’ve also learned that there is always a price, even if you don’t pay it in airfare.

We looked forward to deep sleep after the long journey. But the action starts late in Cancun and our hotel was located near the edge of the zona hotelera where a number of all-night dance clubs compete for a young crowd. Worse, it was Saturday night.

At 11 p.m. our Best Western came under attack from the dance hall. Guitars, horns, percussion, sirens, and synthesizers blasted out of loud speakers like rounds of heavy artillery. The techno-rock siege continued throughout the night. Pulsing light beams thrust like spears into the night sky. The building oozed red light which bled onto the street whenever the doors opened. By morning, our nerves were like chards of the talavera plate that had smashed on our tiled floor, a casualty of vibrating walls.

In the first light of dawn I am still awake. The wind has shifted so the music’s strident edge is muffled; it’s now a rolling, pulsing thunder that I feel as much as hear. But the wind changes again and the techno rock demon wages one more assault. The wind grows stronger. I open the shutters and through leaden eyelids see bent palm trees, swaying and groaning as if to say “Please. Stop the music! I’m going to lose my coconuts!”

I shower hoping to feel better, but the fine, sharp spray falls on my skin like acupuncture. I’m waiting for the vacation to begin.

At breakfast, a truce. All is quiet on the Yucatan front. Following a pleasant stroll in the garden – pleasant, that is, to the extent that the living dead can perceive pleasure - we seat ourselves at the edge of the thatched-roof restaurant. Barely are the eggs scrambled when the wind changes direction yet again. Then the temperature drops. The sky opens and breakfast is abruptly over. The heavens belch all over the rest of our morning, delivering the liquid equivalent of techno rock.

We make our escape from Cancun when the rain stops. Thirty-six hours after landing, our vacation may actually begin. (By C.Moisse @ mature.traveler.blogspot.com)