Adam and I went to the Riviera Maya in Mexico last weekend for his cousin Jeanette's wedding. As you can tell from the above photo, the ceremony and reception were beautiful!
The trip got off to a strange start when we found ourselves on a plane that was so freshly delivered from Boeing that it had yet to be customized for United—no entertainment (alas, for there were iPadless children among us), no branding, no color, just gray on gray. It was so generic it bordered on governmental. In all my years of travel, I had never seen such a thing, although we must have been on the same plane for the return trip, for it happened again three days later.
"Welcome to the jungle!" bellowed the shuttlebus company's rep at the airport. I couldn't resist replying by screeching "I wanna watch you bleeeeeed!" in my best Axl Rose voice—only to find out that he wasn't making an allusion.
Adam was wildly amused to discover that the resort directly next to ours was Hidden Beach Resort, "the only luxury all-inclusive nudist resort in the Mexican Caribbean." The front-desk clerk checking us in said we could buy day passes for $100, which was not at all tempting.
Besides, a woman who liked to sunbathe topless was staying in the swim-up room—you read that right—next to ours. I kept wondering if she was disappointed to have neigbors unlikely to fully appreciate her display. I peeked a couple times, just to be a good sport.
The photo above is sort of misleading, in that the swim-up rooms' pool was wider than it looks—and our room, to the right of these, had a much larger ledge, where we could sit directly in the water or on our lounge chairs. The pool is designed so that you can reach the swim-up bar at the far end, but as someone who doesn't generally drink during the day, I never took advantage of that. I did enjoy watching people walk to and fro, because they would do it at an oddly slow pace—far more slowly than the water alone would justify, and without speaking, like mastodons on parade.
I went to the spa for a massage, and although it was a good one, I was ready to leave when it was done—there was a lot of rigamarole and pomp. But as soon as I was 10 yards away, the rain starting coming down, and hard. I stood under a palm frond for a few minutes, but I was still in sight of the spa, and I felt like an idiot. Since I was in my swimsuit and flip-flops, I decided to walk back in the rain. (The spa was maybe a seven-minute walk from the resort proper.) At one point, I thought I heard a golf cart coming up behind me, but it was a torrent of rain. I could actually hear the rain approaching down the path. It was magical.
Would two male swans have been too much to ask? I kid.... Everyone at the resort was very accommodating. Resorts aren't really my thing: I don't like to sit around all that much, but as soon as a staffer comes and tries to get me to join in the fun, I want to crawl in a hole or say something unpleasant. (And I find it amusing that all the guests try hard to be nice to the staff, saying "hola" when they pass, but we all ignore each other.) Again, that's me. My sister had wondered before our trip whether she should consider the place for her 25th wedding anniversary, and I think she and my brother-in-law would really enjoy it. Besides, there's a swing at the bar with her name on it.
I hate to end on this note, but I feel it can't go unmentioned. As Adam and I were leaving the customs area at the Newark airport, we heard someone behind us say, "Look, they have the nigger on the wall." We looked up to see a framed photo of President Obama—the kind that all federal offices have. We turned around; I yelled that the guy should be ashamed of himself, and Adam said that his remark was disgusting. It was a stark reminder of how much hate and ignorance remains not just in the world, but in our country.