HOW MOVING TO MEXICO KICKSTARTED MY WRITING CAREER

 

I became an author after writing a travel memoir about living as an expat in a fishing village on Mexican’s Caribbean coast south of Cancun, long before self-publishing was a thing. As a former journalist, writing came easily to me.

When my husband and I dropped out of San Francisco’s corporate world to move to Mexico, friends and family thought we were crazy. But we’d traveled to Mexico for years and had fallen in love with it. Once settled, I opened a bookstore in our pueblo, Puerto Morelos, and named it Alma Libre Libros—Free Spirit Books. I had a tale to tell.

Every year we returned to the States to buy more books during Mexico’s low season, summer and early fall months when tourism is light. One year during our annual buying spree I decided to attend a writers conference. I pitched publishers, agents, and editors. Nothing gelled.

AHA MOMENT 

At the conference, self-publishing guru Dan Poynter packed the room to overflow at all his lectures. He’d even developed an “E-Reader,” long before Amazon’s Kindle. We all know how that ended up, not with Dan! But his self-publishing ideas were innovative and hands on. He’d had good luck self-publishing his own books and had developed a solid formula, from formatting and cover design to sales and marketing. His book, The Self Publishing Manual, covered everything a newbie like me needed to know.

Feeling empowered by his part cheerleader, part evangelist message on the new world of self-publishing, I took the the bull by the horns and decided to just do it. My writing group had two experienced authors who vowed to assist in editing, and the book nearly wrote itself. After all, it was a slice of life tale—how I bought land, built a house, and moved lock, stock and barrel to a remote fishing village in southern Mexico. After the conference I got serious about writing my memoir, Where the Sky is Born: Living in the Land of the Maya.

PRE-PUBLICATION BLUES 

Back then formatting wasn’t done with a Word or Pages program. It was done by a typesetter—a human! Someone referred me and I went with their suggestion. In about four weeks that was handled. For the cover, since I was writing about life amidst the pyramids, Paul and I took to the road, and with camera and tripod in hand, headed to Tulum, one of the most picturesque of Maya pyramid sites. He got some great shots for the front cover, and for the back cover, the wooden dock of our picturesque pueblo, Puerto Morelos, served me well. 

I found a cover designer from Dan Poynter’s list of designers in his self-publishing manual and she came through nicely. After the typesetting was done and proofed, I was ready to print. I located a printer, signed on for a thousand copies, and voila! A book was born!

THE EDITING CONUNDRUM

After finishing that long awaited first draft, I suggest setting the book aside for a few days. Think on it, dream on it, then give it another pass. When you have your i’s dotted and all t’s are crossed, pass it off to your content editor (if you write fiction). At the very end, after the editor has marked it up like your 10th grade term paper and you’ve folded in changes and suggestions, with your editor’s blessing, pass it to a line editor or proof reader. Some authors incorporate Beta readers into the process, and their insights can be beneficial plus you earn their reader devotion by asking them to help you out

For formatting, since I’m not super tech savvy, I hired a formatter for both paperback and e-format. And for covers on my two fiction books, part of the Wheels Up Yucatán Thriller trilogy, an artist friend in Todos Santos, Baja California, Mexico, allowed me to use two pieces of art that worked out incredibly well. I’ve long been a fan of her work and asked if she would consider my use of her art for the cover. I was floored when she accepted. We worked out a trade agreement—my books for her art, a win-win all around. She sells the books in her gallery. I sent her artwork to a graphic artist to design the title, back cover, and spine.

THE PR DRILL

After publication, next up was public relations and marketing. In those days, one sent PR releases to

newspapers and magazines for review. I snagged several, including one in United Air’s inline flight magazine, and waited for orders to roll in. I had an email list of friends and family—a must—and that helped a lot. Word of mouth was my biggest advantage, and since we owned the bookstore, people knew the book was coming.

But those long ago days have changed. Now most sales are online through Amazon or Ingram Spark, Barnes & Noble, or Apple. And regarding getting a book prepared to publish, tech savvy indie authors format their own work, sometimes even their covers, though I’d advise against that. Professional designers produce a professional cover. 

THE NEXT STEP

Marketing, especially for indies, is a tough go and deserves a post of its own. I won’t go into it here, but be prepared to wear not only your writer’s cap but also a marketing cap if you want to see sales results. And find that lone brick and mortar bookstore in your town or city and ask them to carry

your book and host a book signing. Innovation, dedication, and consistency help, and networking is key. Get to know local writers and tap into the large community of writers worldwide through social media. Writers are no longer isolated, but part of a creative movement that stretches to all parts of the world. It’s an exciting time to write. Just look at it like this: Hemingway’s Paris cafe has gone global.

Happy writing! I continue to write, now penning a Mexico cartel trilogy, and I wrote a non-fiction book on the Maya 2012 calendar phenomenon, Maya 2012 Revealed.

Check out my website www.jeaninekitchel.com for information on Wheels Up—A Novel of Drugs, Cartels and Survival, and Tulum Takedown, books one and two in my Wheels Up Mexico cartel thriller trilogy. Sign up for future blog posts in the link above.

GRINGO MADNESS: ADVENTURES IN OPENING A BOOKSTORE IN MEXICO

 

Imagine transporting ten thousand used books from San Francisco to Puerto Morelos, Mexico, and then trying to clear customs without the proper paperwork. In September 1997 that was my first exposure to the world of owning and operating a bookstore in Mexico—Alma Libre Libros.

Yes, I eventually managed to clear customs. I can only believe that after three weeks of staring at two hundred boxes of books on their dock, some customs official decided to clear the deck and release them. Before leaving our nine to five jobs in San Francisco and making the move, we struggled with the protocol of how to bring the books in. Our contractor had lived there forever and at long last, we followed his advice. "Don't bother to go to the Mexican Consulate before you come down," he told me and my husband. "Just ship the books and see what happens. It's Mexico."

Although we could have received better advice, this wait and see attitude did do the trick. But clearing customs was only the beginning of the challenge to set up shop. We'd planned for years to be at this point in opening the store. Three years prior to moving we shopped for used books on weekends at garage sales, thrift shops, and Friends of the Library sales around San Francisco and even ran classified ads for books. We eventually ran out of space in our Half Moon Bay home and rented a Bekins Storage unit in nearby Redwood City to house them.

I attended a weekend workshop at a community college on how to start a used bookstore, and decided to follow a tried and true formula—for the US at least—on how to realize our dream. We set up the store on a Buy-Sell-Trade basis which would allow readers to trade in used books for store credit. It would generate new titles, buck up inventory, and allow customers to read new books for little, if any, cost.

We learned what percent to have in hardback versus paperback; how much fiction to carry along with mystery, thrillers, sci-fi, metaphysics, art, hobbies—up to twenty genres. Living near San Francisco proved fortunate in that we found an eclectic, wide-ranging mix of titles and customers commented on our selection.

Thinking ahead we contacted our eventual landlord two years before the move and asked if there were any shops on the town zocalo that might be coming available. He soon advised that something was opening up. We started paying rent on shop space in January 1996 even though we knew we couldn't escape San Francisco till late 1997. But location is important. On that note, one might ask why Puerto Morelos? (Easy commute). And we liked the idea of facing the town square.

Our work was cut out for us soon after we arrived from our 4,500 drive from Northern California down to southern Mexico. We immediately began the process for our FM3, or working papers, through a notary. Although it took only three months for our immigration certification to be completed, it felt like a lifetime as at times we had to make daily trips to the notary's office in Cancun to give and retrieve information due to his failure to properly inform us on various procedures.

Meanwhile, the books sat in our yet unopened store. We had the walls painted a bright mustard yellow and the window trims painted Maya Azul, a lovely shade of turquoise that mirrored the color of the Caribbean Sea.

Our next trauma was having bookshelves made. We needed to accommodate both hardback and paperback and decided to go floor-to-ceiling in pine. As luck would have it, by the time our carpenter purchased the wood, torrential rains had railed for two weeks straight. It was now early December and we were chomping at the bit to start alphabetizing and sorting books, all ten thousand of them. As we alphabetized, the carpenter began to bring in shelves but told us not to stack books on them for two days to let the wood dry completely. We waited, then cut strips of cardboard and tacked it onto the shelves first—for safety's sake—in case the shelves were still damp.

After four tiresome days of alphabetical sorting, we began placing books on shelves. We were eager to see the fruits of our labors shelved on the beautiful new wood. We had begun early in the morning that day and pushed ourselves to finish putting all fiction in place, along with spy-thriller, another large section genre. Around six that night we were breaking for dinner and Paul happened to touch the cardboard under one section. To his horror it was soaked—lying in wait to reach our books. Nightmare on Elm Street! Like two maniacs who'd just seen Freddy Kruger, we tore our books off the shelves desperately trying to keep some semblance of order after all those days of sorting. Tension was high. Tourist season was upon us. We had bookshelves but they were unusable in the state they were in.   

So we did what any normal thinking person would do—early the next day we brought out hairdryers and began drying shelves like a shag haircut. When that didn't work, as soon as the sun made an appearance, Paul broke the shelves down and pulled them into the streets to dry the old-fashioned way—with solar power. We can only imagine what the locals were thinking—Crazy gringos! We dragged wet planks of wood into the street, at one point creating a traffic jam. Picture Laurel and Hardy. What a backwards way to begin a business! 

Since patience was neither of our virtues, the next week painfully dragged along. We cut more cardboard and re-tacked it to the shelves. A couple days later all our books were off the floor and on display. On December 20, just in time for winter solstice, we opened our doors. 

We were astounded at the goodwill we received on opening. Even though most of our books were in English, many locals read both Spanish and English. We immediately started trading books, requesting more Spanish language books along with German, French and Italian.

The next week we searched Cancun for a humidifier for the store. Equipped with a relative humidity indicator and now a dehumidifier, we managed to control the store humidity to the perfect temp for books—about fifty percent—as explained to us by the manager of Green Apple Books, San Francisco. Any more humidity and the pages don't retain their crispness, any less and the crowns of the books begin to crack and break.

In those days, summer travel wasn't a thing in the Riviera Maya, so we'd close shop and May through August—low season—we headed back to the States for more books, gathering around four thousand additional titles per buying spree. After the first couple years we were up to sixteen thousand books and began to offer new books on the Maya, Maya culture, pyramids, Latin fiction, ecology and the local environment, birds, mammals, fish, and guide books on the region.

We received many accolades as our reputation grew and were written up in numerous travel guides. We were one of six bookstores in the state of Quintana Roo, the only one with a cache of books so large, both in English and Spanish. My favorite write-up came from the Rough Guide to Mexico, stating we were "the largest English language bookstore from Mexico City to Guatemala." Our local customers came from as far away as Chetumal, and we were a common port stop for sailboats sailing down the Caribbean Coast. Though we no longer have the store, it's now in its third rendition, with owners Caleb and Nicole Moss. Twenty three years in business, and a true gem of Puerto Morelos.

                                                                 ***

Check out my website http://www.jeaninekitchel.com for further adventures on life as an expat in Mexico, Where the Sky is Born: Living in the Land of the Maya. Wheels Up—A Novel of Drugs, Cartels and Survival, and Tulum Takedown, are books two and three in the Wheels Up Yucatán thriller trilogy. Sign in above to keep up with my next tale from the Yucatán.

MY JUNGLE KITTY AKA MIRACLE CAT IN MEXICO

When we moved to Mexico long ago we took our three-month old cat with us—Max, born on the Fourth of July. We got him from San Francisco SPCA on Union Square where they'd set up a tent to unload kittens. A bevy of little charmers peered at us from the cage—Max was the most bodacious of the bunch. Even when a two-alarm SF fire truck went roaring past, he didn't back away while I petted him through the wire. He was the one.

He's been neutered and had his shots. That was his life story, the SPCA authority told us. So what was ours? Well, we explained, we were leaving for Mexico in a few weeks and wanted to take a cat with us. We were cat lovers and trusted the SPCA when looking for a kitty.

GOIN' SOUTH? MAYBE NOT

Not so fast! we were told. How could they be sure we'd provide a good life for the cat south of the border? In Mexico!

Wait a minute, was this really happening? Were we being questioned about our capacity to provide a risk-free life for our new kitty by the San Francisco SPCA? Apparently so. By this time we'd bonded with newly named Max and just thinking about him not in our lives was almost unbearable. Paul, my husband, did some real fast-talking because within the next half hour we were trotting away with Mr. Max.

In looking back over the years, Ms. SPCA may have had a leg to stand on. Max endured some unbelievable ordeals, many man made. Allow me to elaborate. He didn't get his nickname Miracle Cat, aka Milagro Gato in Spanish from our trusted Cancun vet, por nada.

OFF THE GRID

First off, Quintana Roo in those days was unsettled and downright wild as far as critters go. Much of our pueblo, Puerto Morelos, was literally a jungle and our house sat a mile from the town zocalo. Back then we had very few neighbors and the mangroves across the sascab road were full of, well, varmints: gray foxes, crocodiles, boa constrictors, monkeys, and coatimundi. Also, added to the neighborhood combat list—beach dogs and stray cats. Non-neutered cats.

As life rolled along I came to realize Max was probably the lone neutered cat in all of Quinatana Roo. The strays still had their testosterone. I could tell by the midnight cat fights that woke me. I'd jump out of bed, open the screen door, and clap my hands a few times to curtail the fight. That usually worked and Max would haul his battered buns inside the house to sleep off his late night wake-up call, only to once again realize he was indeed a stranger in a strange land.

 

 

OUT AND ABOUT

By this time he was tri-lingual: English, Spanish and Mayan. But somehow his Fourth of July birthday must have given him away. Every stray seemed to know he was gringo through and through. He'd cat around in those early days, and often when we went back to the US for a visit, I'd hear reports on our return from the neighbors—Max was over, or we saw Max in the mangroves. Once we had to go back to the US for a few months and we left him with caretakers. Basically their only job was to feed him. I received a concerned email from a neighbor that said he'd lost all his hair and was as skinny as the pink panther. Obviously something was amiss.

NEIGHBOR ALERT

She administered to him. We'd assumed the simple task of feeding Max was taking place but on our return home, we saw a raggedy cat with no fur from his mid-section to his tail. The caretaker said he wasn't eating. After checking his food supply—now Whiskas—what happened to the bags of pricey Science Diet?—I discovered it was moldy. We dragged him to the vet. Malnutrition had caused the hair loss and the ungas. Ung-what? It was a fungus, the vet explained, and if we applied a topical cream it would go away.

From then on we asked the neighbor to check in on him if we were gone. Although Max was usually an outdoor cat who used a flapper door for easy in and out privileges, for a while he shrank from any open door. We were flummoxed—he loved being outside. A few days later the gardener found a four-foot boa in the front yard. We assumed that was Max's reasoning for avoiding the great outdoors. We marveled at what he must have seen on those dark jungle nights, and how he managed to stay alive.

INSIDE THE WALLS

But there was no way he'd stay inside full time. Not his style. Early on he'd cavort inside and out of our gated property, throwing caution to the wind as he ran across the street. But a few years later he started avoiding going out of the gate as the road, now paved, got busier and busier. He hung back and restricted himself to a life within the high walls of Casa Maya. His nine lives must have come knocking. Over the years we understood why our vet named him Milagro Gato. When he made his first visit to the vet at the tender age of six, he'd earned that nickname. 

"Why milagro gato? Miracle cat?" I'd asked. 

"Oh," replied our savvy vet. "No cat can live in the jungle that long. He's un milagro."

Truer words were never spoken.

Footnote: Max retired at the age of 17 to the central coast of California.

ISLA AND ME

     

Paul and Me at No Name Restaurant on Isla Mujeres

Waking at Maria's on Isla Mujeres was paradise personified. Nestled in a low comfortable bed in the corner of the rustic stucco room, I stretched and took in the slightly musty smells that accompanied a Mexico vacation. A thick branch of fuchsia-colored bougainvillea spilled across the screened window, leaving way for a clear view of the Caribbean. I heard waves lapping on the shore. Maybe this was perfection personified. Time to greet the day and find out. I crawled out of bed.

A few hours later Paul and I were hopping out of a taxi onto the main malecon of Isla right across from the No Name restaurant. It was 11 a.m. and the streets were quiet except for a few vendors who had set up their wares, mostly fruit and vegetables. Ivory colored jicama with a bright dash of chili pepper was arranged on one cart. Too early for that. Another vendor sold bunches of small ripe bananas tied with rope. Next to the banana vendor, a faded blue cart displayed cups of mangoes sliced like tropical flowers, gorgeous and edible. The owner, sitting on a stool next to her cart, smiled as she peeled more sticky fruit into an art form all its own. I paused.

     "Mango, por favor?"

     "Cinco pesos."

     "Gracias." I said as I dug the coin from my bolsa and handed it over. "Que bonita dia!" What a lovely day.

     "Si, por supuesto," she answered.  "Where are you from?"

     "San Francisco, California."

     "Aaah, California!" she smiled big. "I know someone from California. I was in a movie. The people in the movie, they were from California."

     Her conversation strained the bounds of my newly acquired adult ed Spanish. Slowly I put her words in comprehensive order. The struggle was worth it. We were talking—in Spanish!  Did she say ciné?  Aka movie?

     "Of course!  Against All Odds!  This was that street, the street Jeff Bridges went up to ask if anyone had seen the woman he was searching for on that small island.  This island! And wait a minute!

     "Paul!  I think this woman is the one from Against All Odds!"

     "Yes, yes," she said, now beaming a huge smile my way.  "Jeff Bridges, movie, me!"

     "You're famous!  Famosa!"

      She started laughing and Paul and I broke into laughter, too.  "It's her," he agreed.  "We're right where they filmed the movie."

     Against All Odds, filmed in three Mexico locations--Isla Mujeres, Tulum and Chichen Itza--had been a catalyst for our Mexican sojourn.  We'd never seen water that color of turquoise, nor pyramids of any kind and the sultry movie with Bridges and Rachel Ward had catapulted us across the border.

     After saying our good byes with a few more exclamations on this mujera's fame, we walked to the plaza and the back down to the malecon.  Today we'd decided to go to the mainland.  We boarded the ferry for Cancun.

     Hours later after lunching at an outdoor cafe and shopping at Mercado 23 for silver and trinkets we ventured into the hotel zone to go to dinner on a splurge.  Someone had recommended a hotel-restaurant on the beach with great food and we thought a day and a dinner in Cancun would be fun.  The restaurant had all the amenities all right.  Beachside, low lights, candles. But where was dinner?  Talk about the slow food movement.  This one had crawled to a stop.  After our second request to the waiter about our dinners, we started to panic, slightly.

     "What time is the last ferry?" I asked Paul.

     "At 10."

     "Uh oh.  I'm beginning to wonder if we'll make it."

     "Let me call the waiter over and ask him to bring the check when he brings our dinner, so we can dash out of here."

     At 9:30 p.m. after gulping a delicious fish dinner, with our margarita high slowly fading into oblivion, we bolted out of the restaurant and into the arms of a waiting taxi driver.

     "Puerto Juarez, the dock!"

     As we sped off I caught sight of our waiter at the door, waving good bye.

     The trip to Puerto Juarez was longer than we thought, much longer.

     "We'll never make the ferry," I groaned, now desperately nervous.

     "You're probably right."

     As we pulled up at the dock, madly throwing pesos at the driver, Paul, first out of the cab, spotted what we didn't want to see.  "Oh, no!  It's already left!"

     "Oh, darn!  No.  No.  No!  Now what?" I cried.

     "We'll have to find a hotel here in Puerto Juarez," Paul said.

     I stomped around the dock's parking lot in a huff.  "God, could they have been any slower at the restaurant?  What are we going to do?  This place is a total dive!"

     "It's hotel time.  We've gotta go look for one.  Now."

     That brought me to my senses.  Forget about the warm breeze, the lapping water, the backside of our departing ferry now far in the distance.  It just sunk in; we had to find a hotel in this hood.  Yuck.  These were the early days, and Puerto Juarez hadn't gone through its beautification process yet.  Hardly.  Its most outstanding feature was the steely facade of a military base on the outskirts of town; nothing looked like a tourist mecca here.  Nothing at all.

     I dragged myself back to the pot-holed street and looked both ways.  About a block farther down the road I spotted a sign for a hotel.  As we approached I could tell from the looks of it this was not the Ritz.  Very unappealing.  Very unappealing, indeed.

     "A room," I choked looking at the hotel clerk. "How much per night?"

     "Thirty pesos."

     Oh great, three dollars.  "Can we see it, please?"

     As the clerk led us down a dilapidated, unlit walkway, around a towering banyan tree to a concrete building with a dented door, I knew that paradise wasn't waiting for me inside.  As he turned the key into an ancient lock and the door creaked open, the familiar tantalizing odor of bug spray wafted across the threshold.

     "We'll take it," Paul gagged, giving me the what can we do look as he turned his face away from the smell.  He was right.  In Puerto Juarez it was pretty much lights out by this time of night.

     We followed the clerk back to the office like dead men walking and shelled out thirty pesos.  On retrieving the key I asked if there was a place nearby to get a cold drink.

     "There's a cantina across the street."

     "How late are they open?" I asked.

     "Til midnight but we close the office here at 11 p.m.  If you stay out later, just ring the bell and I'll come let you in.  After you leave I'll close the gate behind you."

     We pushed open the authoritative gate, hearing the click of the lock behind us as we sauntered outside the hotel walls, about two meters high, with the de rigeure broken bottle top finish on top--definitely not a style choice--and wandered into the town's lone cantina.

     We each ordered a Pacifico.  One was all we could take.  It was nearing 11 and we didn't want to miss another deadline, not two in one day, even though we were on Mexican time.  But the thought of staying in that grungy hotel room with eau de DDT wafting about, well, we just couldn't go back too soon to that before we were sleepy enough to pass out.

     Good as his word, gate shut.  Paul was right behind me.  I turned the iron latch--it wasn't 11 yet--and nothing.  What?  I turned the latch again and pushed.  Nothing!

     "Oh, no.  Locked out.  Now we're locked out!"

     "He said to ring him," Paul, ever in control, responded.  Now he was turning and pushing the latch, too.

     "Where's the bell?  Is that it?  Toca, with the arrow pointing to it?  What a weird way to say ring.  Toca means take.  Take the bell?"

     "Just ring it already," Paul said.  Language class was over.

     "Toca, toca, toca," I said each time I pushed it.  "I don't hear anything.  Have we been gone that long?"

     "Try again."

     I pushed til my index finger went numb.  "Now we have a three dollar hotel room and no way to get into it! What are we going to do?"

     "Let me think a minute.  Over there.  At the end of the wall.  See where there's no broken bottles?

     "Yeah, what about it?" I asked, thinking bad thoughts.

     "I think it's time for a reverse jail break."

     "Don't be ridiculous!  You could never climb over that wall!" I said.  Who did he think he was?
Spiderman?

     "Not me, Juanitia," he smiled at me charmingly.  "Tu."

     "Me?" I choked, shocked.

     "But I'm in a skirt."

     "I promise I won't look."

     "Oh, shut up, " I said, realizing he was right.  That was the only way.  All hands on deck. "Okay."

     In the dim light of a lone street lamp we made our attack at the far end of the hotel wall.  Good thing it was dark out, I noted.  I wouldn't want to be caught dead climbing into this dive.

     Paul bent over and laced his palms together providing me a step up so I could then reach the one spot on the wall without broken glass.  I was just at the point of almost heaving myself over when I heard him gasp.  What the heck?

     "Buenos noches."

     Buenos noches?  Who could he be talking to?  In his conversation mode he'd backed away from his helping me over the wall stance and I was dangling unbecomingly about six feet above ground, with my skirt moving up my backside rapidly, not a fashion choice.

     I twisted to the side, no easy feat, and looked down on a Mexico policia.  Police!

     "What are you doing?" he asked.

     Paul:  "Helping her over the wall.  We're locked out, but we have a key, see?" He held up the church key that would open our room inside the gated, walled compound, from which we were firmly locked out.

     "Why not just ring the bell?"

     "Toca el timbre?" I asked.  He gazed up at me.  Could he see up my skirt?  I wondered.

     "Si, toca el timbre."

     "Locked out."

     "I'll try," the policia said.  Toca, toca, toca.  We waited.  All three of us.  Two by land, one by air.

     "They are asleep," he said matter of factly.  "It is late."

      That it was.  "But," he said with what I am sure must have been a smile on his face, "I'll help you."

     "How?" Paul asked.  "Call them?  Do you have their number?" as he scanned the sign for the name of the hotel. Hotel Fizal?  How in the world did they come up with that?

     "No, no.  We both push her."

     So with my bottom now being gently pushed by Paul and a gendarme, my skirt slowly hiking up in an unladylike manner, I made my way up and over Hotel Fizal's two meter wall.  I started to laugh as I touched dirt on the other side.

     "I'm in!" I yelled, feeling like one of the Dirty Dozen.

     As I started to walk down to the gate and let Paul in, I heard him speaking to the policia.  "Mil gracias, and buenos noches to you, too."

WHY THE MAYA?

Chac Mool at Chichen Itza

I've been totally entranced with the Maya since I started visiting Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula in the 1980s. Living in California made the west coast an easy destination, and I'd traveled extensively from Guadalajara and San Blas to Acapulco and back more times than I can remember, but had never ventured to the Yucatan or Quintana Roo.  But the pyramids had always beckoned, and it wasn't until I met Paul, who later became my husband, that I made the trek cross country to Mexico's east coast.  Well, I fell in love. Totally, unequivocally, hard.  I've never made it back to the west coast since.  There was just something about the Maya, the pyramids, the culture, and the outbackness of the Yucatan that did it for me.

AWESOME VACATIONS

We started out early on just having awesome vacations.  First we traveled to Isla Mujeres in 1983. It was so 'undiscovered', that when we went to a travel agent in San Francisco, she'd never heard of it.  We assured her it existed as a friend told me there were two great islands off the Cancun coast --Cozumel and Isla Mujeres.  She said if I wanted to get a more real feel for Mexico, go to Isla Mujeres, so we did.

We arrived on the last ferry from the mainland, in those days called the people's ferry, and by the time we reached the hotel, El Faro, out near North Beach, they'd given away our reservation.  It took them an hour to locate our room.  We discovered an outdoor bar under a palapa, settled in, tired from the long trip,  and sipped a cool drink while they figured things out. The air was warm, there was a light breeze, the stars were out.  I felt like I'd died and gone to heaven.  I could have just slept under that palapa.  I was falling in love.  With a place, with a country.  Ayyyy caramba!

FALLING FOR ISLA

Our adventure started the next day when we ran into the ferry captain at a little restaurant on the beach we nicknamed The No Name Cafe.  He was moonlighting as a waiter--his aunt owned it, he explained-- and he helped her out in the daytime.  This was our first clue that Mexico was different from where we'd come from.  People led different lives.  Completely different.  Waiter by day, ferry captain by night?  He was friendly and fun, and we said we'd be back.

The Author at the No Name Cafe

Although we liked El Faro, we'd heard about a romantic little place on the beach far out of town called Maria's.  It had only six rooms and a great French restaurant, and we knew it was hard to get reservations--at either place.  We hopped into a cab around noon and breezed on out there. Wow.  What a set-up.  The cabanas were situated down a garden path crowded on either side by bougainvilllas, flor de Maya, and hibiscus. The path itself was made from cement that had been hand stamped with little iguanas, just too cute to describe.  We saw the charming restaurant with zapote deck nestled on top of the cabanas.  It had a palapa roof, enormous jungly plants, white table cloths on the tables, candles and flowers, too.  This was the place!  We were ushered in by a waiter dressed in white; only one other couple was dining.

MARIA'S

He brought us the menu and we ordered French onion soup and little else that I can recall.  The day was hot and we were really there to try and get a reservation for the cabanas.  "Do you have any openings in the hotel?" I asked.

"You have to talk to Maria," the waiter told me.

A few minutes later Maria came out.  She was worldly, in her forties, dark-haired, curvaceous and quick.  She took a liking to us, sat down at our table and asked if we'd like a glass of wine.  "Por supuesto!"

She assured us she had one room, not her best, but if we were willing to take it, the couple who was occupying the best room would be leaving in two days.  A fait accompli!  We had a room at Maria's.

"Why don't you go down to my beach," she instructed, "and look at the large tortugos.  Sea turtles."

At Maria's on Isla Mujeres

SEA TURTLES

Following her instructions, we passed the compact kitchen and an enclosure for her live lobsters with scale nearby, then wandered down another garden path that soon led to the beach and there it was:  white sand, bleached out Adirondack chairs just waiting for someone like me to sit in them and that flat turquoise sea.  A wood stick cage with door wide open sat on the far side of Maria's dock.

"I want to put my feet in the water," I told Paul, as I ambled towards the sea.

Bath tub warm.  My favorite part about the Caribbean.  The water is so warm.  I waded in up to my ankles, stood and just stared, and then I saw him.  A huge sea turtle!  His green mottled body swam towards me with his flippers outspread.  He must have weighed three hundred pounds, and he was right in front of me.

WHAT COULD BE BETTER?

"He always goes in at night," I heard someone say.  Where did he come from?  I turned and recognized the desk clerk who was doubling as a beach sweeper, now standing next to me.  "Into the cage.  She has us let them out each day, but they always go into the cage at night, on their own."

"Interesting," I said.  "You'd think he'd want to be free."

"But we're at Maria's," he said.  "What could be better than this?"