That’s Playa del Carmen, to the initiated. One of my web design clients owns a couple of nice condos here that he rents out. One is in Playa and the other is in Cancun. This weekend he was kind enough to let me have use of his Playa condo. So I’m here hanging out with my daughter.

Thus far we’ve done not much of anything. And that’s the point. I’m terrible about taking weekends off, in fact I basically never take two days in a row off unless I’m away from home. I guess it’s a sign that I like my work that I can’t leave it alone for two days in a row. Either that or I’m just pathetic and have poor boundaries.

This condo is located just a couple of blocks from the ocean, so this morning I rose early and took a jog down the beach. The beach here is big and wide and lovely, and at 8 a.m. it’s also mostly empty. I saw just a few other joggers, a couple of families and a couple of die-hard, tan-all-day, leather-looking-skin types.

After my run I came back and read a chapter of Barack Obama’s book Audacity of Hope (which is really GOOD, by the way) and then fell asleep in the hammock under the palapa for a little while. Life is tough in paradise.

Last night my favorite vecino borracho (drunken neighbor) dropped in and asked me: “Do you like boxing?” “No, it’s barbaric” I replied. “Then what sport do you like?” he asked. “I like cycling, I like the Tour de France, and I like hockey.” said I, queen bitch of the north. He looked at me grimly.

Despite my unsatisfactory answer to his sporting questions vecino borracho then insisted that we accompany him to “have some drinks” and “watch boxeo (boxing).” I finally agreed to go for a few minutes figuring I could leave and go home easily enough as his house is close enough to mine that I could run an extension cord to it. And besides, I really like his wife, so I’m always happy to see her for a bit.

When I went over there I carried my own drink with me, a Cuba Libre (rum and coke), so I could avoid having him make me a drink with an inferior brand of rum in it. I know I’m a rum snob. But Bacardi is shit. And Appleton is no better. Both of them give me a hangover before I finish one drink. We basically only drink white Havana Club, which is Cuban, and which is one of the few things I will miss when I move from here. I don’t drink very often and so I don’t see why I should lower my standards and drink crappy rum.

Vecino borracho was a little offended that I brought my own drink to his house. And he insisted on tasting it, to see what the fuss was all about. But being as he was muy borracho (very drunk) he soon forgot the offense and turned to playing with the volume knob on his stereo, like he always does.

They had the TV on, tuned to the beloved face-mashing boxeo match. But they also had the stereo playing. And, as usual, vecino borracho went through a pile of CDs, playing a song here and there from each of them, and periodically turning the volume WAY up so that the leaves on the almendro (almond) tree in front of his house would start to shake. I guess he likes his stereo. Or maybe he thinks that the rest of the world loves his music. We decided long ago that we like him despite his music.

Now and again vecino borracho would turn down the music so he could tell us a joke. I’m pretty sure I’ve heard all of his jokes before, but that actually makes it easier to time exactly when to laugh long and hard, which is what he wants.

So we laughed on cue, and relaxed a little, and didn’t watch the abhorrent boxeo but rather played with vecino borracho’s great dog and talked to his family.

And actually, it was just nice to hang out with the neighbors. It’s nice to have physically convenient friends, people so who live so close by that you can run home to answer the phone (well, assuming you could hear it ring above vecino borracho’s music).

A year ago I wrote a post about Isla Blanca. Below are some new photos of the area. My favorite beach around here is in Isla Blanca, it’s just south of Pirata Morgan. It’s big and wide and no one is ever there when I go. According to the owner of Pirata Morgan the beach close to his establishment has been getting BIGGER since Hurricane Wilma which is nice since so many beaches around here seem to be shrinking.

Looking north toward Pirata Morgan. Pirata Morgan has rustic cabañas and a very basic seafood restaurant. It’s a nice place to stop for a cold beer.

This is my favorite beach. Yum.

This is the “restaurant” at Pirata Morgan.

North of my favorite beach is a place where the isthmus narrows and you can easily get to Laguna Chakmochuk. The lagoon has amazingly hot water. We always see lots of tiny fish there as well as lots of birds.

This photo was taken north of Pirata Morgan close to Laguna Chakmochuk.

Here’s Sam at Laguna Chakmochuk.

And another shot of Sam enjoying Laguna Chakmochuk.

This is for ex-pats living in Mexico, if you are Mexican don’t get offended because this is just a joke. You know you’ve lived in Mexico too long when:

• You think it’s normal to see an entire family (mom, dad, 3 kids) riding on a motor scooter together with not a single helmet among them.
• You know several ex-pats living in Mexico who you suspect, or know, are wanted back home.
• You know the proper amounts of money to bribe the cops with for various driving infractions.
• You have forgotten what it’s like to be able to drink the water coming from your home’s faucet.
• You think it’s normal to see a baby riding in it’s mother’s lap in the front seat of a car and not in a car seat.
• You no longer expect law enforcement officers to actually enforce laws.
• You can sing along with the horrible songs that the various gas companies blare from their trucks as they drive around.
• You’ve adopted the attitude of “it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission” and you now do things you shouldn’t figuring you’ll get out of it later.
• You know somebody who knows somebody who has been executed by the mafia here.
• If you look like a gringo, you’ve accepted that the “gringo tax” is just part of life here and you don’t fight it. (For the uninitiated the gringo tax is the extra that gringos get charged just because they are assumed to be dripping in dollars.)

OK, that’s all I can think of right now. You guys got any more?

In addition to liking the Mexican custom of saying Provecho I also like the common custom of greeting people by kissing them on the cheek.

In Mexico the custom is to greet a person by kissing their right cheek just once. Let me clarify and say that men here don’t kiss each other on the cheek, they usually do a pat on the back kind of hug that is sometimes preceded by a handshake. But men will greet women with a cheek kiss. And women greet both women and men with a cheek kiss.

Not everyone gets a cheek kiss, only certain people in your circle are going to expect one. Neither my husband nor myself greets our housekeeper with a cheek kiss, it just doesn’t feel right. And usually I won’t greet someone I am meeting for the first time with a cheek kiss, but sometimes if they are young, or if we are being introduced by a close friend I will give a kiss to a new acquaintance. And we normally don’t greet neighbors with a cheek kiss because they are too familiar, we see them too often for it to be practical.

But when the person you are greeting is a friend or acquaintance usually a cheek kiss is in order. There are all kinds of cheek kisses and they mean all kinds of things. Some of the more memorable types of cheek kisses are:

~ The “I actually don’t like you but I’m kissing you to be polite” kiss. This one is usually given by and to women. It’s often given as just a “mwah” sound in your right ear, there’s not any touching of cheeks and usually there’s no pretense made to pretend to hug.

~ Then there’s the “I’ve got loads of make-up on (and/or a hat on) so don’t mess me up by touching me” kiss. This one also normally involves just a kiss sound in your ear with no cheek touching. But if there’s an accidental touch, and the person really does like you, they will apologize for the lipstick they just put on your cheek.

~ There’s also the “I don’t want your spouse/partner to realize I like you so I’m going to kiss you just a little wrong and maybe he/she won’t notice” kiss. This kiss is a little too emphatic, sometimes it’s too wet and sometimes it lands too close to the edge of your mouth and doesn’t make it quite onto your cheek proper.

~ But the very best kind of cheek kiss is the “It’s really good to see you” kiss. This is the only kiss that should take place imho. This is the one where you really mean it and they do too and both parties feel totally at ease.

I first learned the “It’s really good to see you” cheek kiss from my husband’s family and Mexican friends back when we were living in the U.S. So by the time I came to Mexico I was used to the cheek kissing custom.

Now, after 8 years of being around lots of cheek kissing Mexicans, I’ve found that greeting people with a cheek kiss is very simply normal. And when I travel back to the U.S. I gleefully inflict cheek kissing on my friends there, whether they are expecting it or not. And if they aren’t quite expecting it I cover my totally intentional cheek kiss by saying “I’m Mexican now, so I can’t help it.” Ha!

I think that the thing I really like about cheek kissing is that it softens the social edge between people, and it does so right at the beginning of the conversation. If you start off with a cheek kiss then you are starting with trust and mutual appreciation.

I just got a whiff of sewer gas, it came in the windows. Normally I don’t smell sewer from my home. But for some reason a few minutes ago I smelled sewer. Thankfully that’s over now. I hope it doesn’t come back. But the stink inspired me to finally write a post I’ve been thinking about for a long time.

Mexico often smells like shit. In Cancun I sometimes smell shit when I’m in the hotel zone, near the posh houses and big hotels. And sometimes you smell it when you are in the nice parts of downtown. And it goes without saying that you smell it when you go to the poorest neighborhoods.

It makes sense that in a 3rd world country there will be problems with the public sewer system. They don’t have the money here to keep the roads properly repaired and they don’t have the money to pick up the garbage that’s strewn around the city, so why should the sewer system work perfectly? It shouldn’t. But actually that’s not why I’m writing this post.

I’m writing because in Mexico it’s common for the inside of people’s houses to smell like shit. This is because it’s very common here for drains to be put in without water traps. A water trap is a device that works by keeping an amount of water between the room and the sewer, so the sewer gas can’t escape. A water trap for a floor drain or a sink costs less than $50 MXP (under $5 USD). There is no reason on earth not to put one in every drain in the house.

And yet I have wealthy friends in Cancun whose answer to having a stinky sewer gas filled bathroom is to keep the door shut. Instead of solving the shit smell problem with a $5 USD part they opt to keep the door shut? Does this make sense? Not to me it doesn’t. I don’t know how people can justify not fixing this, unless they secretly LIKE the smell. Ick!

One of the things that I really like about Mexican culture is the custom of saying provecho to other diners as you leave a restaurant. Provecho means bon appétit or “enjoy your meal”.

Usually as you get up to leave your table you say provecho to the people at the table nearest yours, but sometimes you hear people saying it as they pass more than one table.

When I’m in a restaurant I have a tendency to forget that I’m in a room full of people. My table and my companions and my food become my temporary little world. And I think that many Americans are just like me. There’s a sense in the U.S. that people want to be left alone when they are eating in a restaurant. So the last thing you are going to do when you are dining out there is to talk to the people at the next table.

But in Mexico that spell of isolation is broken. You ARE in a room full of people. And it’s acknowledged in a polite and particularly kind way. I like that.

I’m feeling honored. A close friend of mine, a single woman who is 20 years my elder, asked today if I would be one of her emergency contacts in case she gets sick. Perhaps this sounds morbid, but I am deeply honored to be seen as stable and trustworthy enough to be on the short list of people she would let herself need if all hell broke loose.

I’m also honored because Gary over at The Mexile complimented my blog. He writes well and his blog is really about living in Mexico, so it has real value to people interested in Mexico. In fact, Gary’s blog makes me interested in Mexico City which is something that husbandito, who is a chilango (person from Mexico City), cannot manage to do. I think Gary was just being nice; my blog is actually just a long grumpy rant written by someone who types too quickly, does too little and doesn’t really want to live in Mexico. But I appreciate the compliment.