Mexican Musings on my Birthday

Some of you might recall my ill-fated trip to do a psychedelic toad toxin retreat in Mexico for my birthday in January. A witch told me no (no, really) and so I suddenly had several days with no plan. I was supposed to swing through Valladolid, a beautiful colonial city in the Yucatan, for one night on my way to the retreat, but I decided to go deep and just stay there for most of my newly unplanned days because, well, why the hell not?

I had never been there before, but the promise of pretty architecture and an endless number of cenotes to explore made it seem like at least a small tonic for the disappointment of skipping the retreat. So I put my butt on a bus from Cozumel, via Playa del Carmen, and set off on a mission to salvage my birthday trip somehow. Let’s face it – tripping balls on toad toxin was going to be hard to top, but I was intent to try.

I booked myself the very nicest room at an inexpensive hotel in an old colonial mansion – my favorite trick for feeling a little bit bougie when traveling on a budget. But you guys, when you walk up to your room and the first thing out of your mouth is, “Oh holy shit,” you know you did good…

It was billed as a king room with a balcony, and what it was was a gorgeous 4-poster bed with an entire second-story garden patio overlooking the pool and courtyard. I could not BELIEVE it was all for me – literally the most luxurious accommodations I’ve ever stumbled into. Some things are worth an extra $40 a night – I loved every single minute of my time there. It was a spectacular place to spend my birthday, albeit alone. I did buy myself a little cake and a bottle of wine and a bouquet of flowers because hey, if you aren’t going to treat yourself like you’re special, who is?

Valladolid now ranks as my favorite place in Mexico (sorry Cozumel). I loved this little city so, so, so much. There is no diving – which is my first love, but it is surrounded by magnificently beautiful cenotes, so on my birthday, I booked a taxi driver named Tiago to take me to what sounded like the best cenotes in the area. True story – I got in the car with a list of cenotes I wanted to see, and, between my average Spanish and his average English, we determined that my list was shit and he would be in charge of where we went. He did not disappoint – I literally felt like I was discovering places that no one else found – I was usually alone or nearly alone in places so beautiful they were other-worldly. Quite possibly the best $100 I’ve ever spent. Except for Global Entry – THAT is the best $100 I’ve ever spent, to be honest. Anyway…

I discovered that Tiago’s birthday was the following day, so we had a rather festive day with some road beers and a little tequila – well for me, not for him. Okay, maybe he had one. There are a LOT of cenote photos here – I just couldn’t make myself edit them out – but the reality is that I could have done this for five days straight and not seen them all. I saw some pretty great ones though…

If you know me, you know I hate touristy joints for the most part – like, if everyone around me is speaking English, I feel like I’ve failed. haha. So I looked for the most localish cantina I could find to have a birthday drink at the end of the day, and I figured I’d found it when the music screeched to a stop and everyone turned around to stare when I walked into a festive place called Joyita a half dozen blocks from my hotel. Okay, that didn’t *exactly* happen, but pretty damn close.

The manager nearly pushed a guy off a barstool to make room for me at the bar and, as the only white person and the only woman in the joint as far as I could see, I knew I created a bit of a spectacle when I sat down. The bartenders looked at me nervously. Every group of men at the bar watched from the corner of their eye, wondering what was going to happen when I tried to order a drink, and also, wondering what the F I was doing in there. This was not a tourist bar – hell, this was barely a tourist town – and English wasn’t going to get me far here and neither was an order for a cosmopolitan. I love places like this.

In my best Spanish, I ordered a michelada and everyone breathed a sigh of relief and went back to what they were doing. Haha. I mean, kind of. One guy came over and asked if he could take a selfie with me – just to share with his friends, he said (?). The guy next to me regaled me with stories in broken English about the time he visited the United States and about how much he loved the Red Sox – or some team like that. He was pretty hammered but entertaining, and he was doing great until he touched me, and then the manager came over and told him to get the F away from me. LOL. For real. Suddenly he was relegated to a group of guys around the corner of the bar. Then the bartenders set down plates of botanas for me – complimentary snacks that a lot of cantinas serve up to locals – and I knew that I’d arrived. I’d watched them scoop the meat snacks and beans and shit out of plastic bins sitting on the back of the bar, and I can’t believe I didn’t die of dysentery, but it was delicious. The new guy next to me shared his mandarin orange slices dipped in chili powder with me – also delicious. Before I left, the manager asked me out and told me he will wait for me until I come back to Valladolid. Haha. Okay. I’ll be back, you nice guy, whatever your name was. LOL. It was a good night.

Back at my room, I sat on my ridiculously luxurious patio with the bottle of red wine, a little cake I’d picked up at a market along the way, and a small bouquet of flowers with an insanely aromatic lily in the center. As I sipped my wine and picked at the cake, I wondered about things – my life, the witch, the toad toxin retreat, and what exactly I was doing there. I’m not going to lie – 2021 was a shit year. So was 2020, actually. And I realized as I soaked in this Mexican darkness that traveling had become my bandaid for wounds that felt too fresh, to inescapable, when sitting in the solace of my living room. It’s hard to think about being pissed off at life or people or COVID when you are plunging into a cold cenote or getting lost in a random Mexican city or wondering if you are going to die of dysentery from bar snacks. You don’t have to deal with deep questions like what’s next for your life when you are just desperately trying to figure out which bus you are supposed to be on.

I love to travel – the adventure of a new place is like cocaine for me. But as I sat there with myself on my birthday surrounded by nothing but inky darkness, some very average red wine and a surprisingly good convenience store cake, I understood that we can travel to run *to* things, or we can travel to run away from them, and I was probably leaning a little too hard towards the latter. It was time to go home and figure out what I wanted to run towards rather than run away from.

I’m still sorting out those details, but happy 2022 everyone – I’m hoping to make this circle around the sun my best one yet. I hope you all are part of it