Mexico (part three)
In case you missed the first two days, here's a quick update on our vacation so far:
Let's move through a few events quickly. First, the house maintenance guy comes over (with his mother) and argues that it's not bedbugs, it's mosquitoes. This conversation is entirely in Spanish (C speaks excellent Spanish), so I amuse myself by making dramatic hand gestures at what seems like appropriate times. My point was no matter the cause, it's still an awful lot of blood.
After a quick discussion with C ("Are we staying here?" "Your blood is on the bed. No."), we decide to walk to the hotel district, which is a bit over a mile away. The sidewalks have enormous, deep holes, ankle or tibia breakers, for sure. The neighborhood is extremely gritty, even though it feels totally safe at the same time.
"Have you heard the pony story?" C asks. "A father takes his boy to the farm, and there's a giant pile of manure beside a barn. The boy immediately runs over and starts searching through the manure with a huge grin on his face. The father watches him dig, then asks how he can be so happy when he's looking through manure. The boy says, "With all this manure, there must be a pony in here somewhere!"
Indeed.
We found a beautiful, reasonably-priced hotel (Fiesta Americana), walked back to Wal-Mart (fortunately not far), bought clothes and trash bags, and returned to the hotel. As soon as we were inside the door of our room, we stripped, put the clothes into trash bags, double-knotted them, and took showers. After showering, we put on our Wal-Mart clothes, which we'd wear for the next six days. Well, I replaced the shorts after three days because the pockets were so shallow my phone barely fit. Otherwise, shower time was also laundry time.
Day three concluded with us in a hotel, wearing clothes from Wal-Mart, with C covered in bites and me only having a few. On the positive side, though, everyone in Merida was incredibly nice, we'd walked to a small museum that had an exhibit about a minor archaeology site, and we had a good dinner at an outdoor restaurant.
Meanwhile, just over a mile away, bedbugs were drowning.
The hunt for the pony had begun.
<< Home