Back from Mexico
January was a truly shit month for most everyone, and an even worse one for many; an (often literal) dumpster fire of the most epic proportions, not just the headlines and the fires, but somehow everything. Including cruelly cold weather on the East Coast. Paul and I were both feeling stressed and unhappy ourselves, for one (increasingly good) reason or another. By the time it became obvious to us that taking our annual February trip to Los Angeles would be a super-bad read of the room, we cancelled our reservations.
But it was clear that we both really, obviously, needed a vacation. L.A.—great as it is—never really feels like time off, in the same way that maybe New York doesn’t. So if not L.A., then somewhere, and make that somewhere warm, a place that we can feel the sun on our faces and shed all but the most essential of layers. I know nothing of such vacations—high school was the last time I took such a trip—so we called a travel agent of Paul’s acquaintance and requested she set us up.
Our top request regarding destination was that it be a single flight away; I’m a nervous traveler who is forever anticipating things going wrong, so a connecting flight or even ferry can become a source of boundless anticipatory anxiety. So she found several places for us in Riviera Maya, just south of Cancun, on the way to Tulum. The priority was a nice, calm beach, decent food, a room that feels private and has a plunge pool, and a property not so large that you have to take shuttle vans to get everywhere. I’m not really a resort person, but right then, a resort vacation sounded perfect. All you have to really do is show up.
The travel agent presented us with several good options, and in the end we chose an all-inclusive resort. I’ve never done that before but it seemed like the wiser option: I’m an incorrigible raider of minibars, and tacker-on-of-charges. We stayed for five nights, which is a pretty ideal amount of time—enough to properly settle in, but not so much that one grows antsy. What follows are the highs and lows of the trip.
Highlights:
