01.02.07 Day 15, Mexico Trip 1

I think it is near to impossible to be sitting by the ocean and feel any sort of angry, sad, dreary feeling. It is just so great here. Today we decided to stay again at the little hotel at Playa Azul. Levi is sick but it has been nothing too major. It is such a great feeling to wake up in the morning and walk across the street to the ocean.

I have finished 3 of the 5 books I brought with me and am half way through the fourth. Helio thinks I am crazy as he has never read an entire book in his life. I read, Levi and Helio chase after people on the beach who have caught swordfish and pose with it like they caught it themselves. I didn’t realize that a swordfish is so blue. -Very pretty.

Our hotel room is sort of like a cave. I am really glad that I didn’t make Helio take us somewhere else though. The whole trip here I kept hearing myself repeat in my head, “I hate Mexico” and now that we have arrived here at Playa Azul I really don’t think that anymore. I love it here and wish we could have stayed here the whole time. I see why some people give up their whole lives to just go a be shore men. I guess I kind of understand Hemmingway now. I still don’t like any of his writing, but I do like the ocean and this sort of life. Although, I still have to say, it seems like people have nothing to do here and just lay in hammocks and wait for people to come by for them to talk to. I prefer to be a little busier than that.

I got comfortable with our hotel room and then when we returned from three hour favor of driving to pick up a friend’s wife from work it was dark. The electrical pole that is right outside our room was sparking- our roof is made out of dried palm branches. When Helio asked me what are you staring at as I was frozen in my tracks staring up at the potential source of the end of my life, I just pointed up. He went to talk to the hotel staff about it and of course came back from his conversation, reporting, “they say, that it always does that, not to worry, nothing will happen” You would never get away with something like that back home. I will be happy to be back in the land of code regulation and common sense in a couple weeks.


Helio has a family friend who lives here on what I would call an island. His name is something but I don’t remember- they call him Bebo. On one side of the strip of land the hotel is on, there is the ocean, on the back side is what they call Agua Dulce- freshwater. They fish for shrimp there. It is beautiful at night and I never want to go back to Jona. It is so gross and dirty there. Bebo is a fisherman. He sleeps in a hammock in the day and waits until it is dark to go out and fish by moonlight. These are not ordinary fisherman, they don’t use a motor on their boat, they use paddles. They also don’t use fishing poles, they use nets. The boats are super low to the water and I refuse to “try it out” as I have been asked. I keep remembering a story my mom told me about how she was somewhere in Mexico and in order to get to a different location they had to take a boat and she saw her life flash before her eyes during that ride. I don’t want to have a similar experience.

Helio was so smart and brought the coffee pot with on our new “Travel Mexico” trip. It is the one thing that brings some sort of familiarity to my day. That coffee pot has seen its travels, starting all the way from
Walgreens on Hiawatha.




I finally got full and had a hot shower. While day dreaming in the first hot shower of course my mind made the parallel of full belly and a hot shower, finally, it is almost like I have been in jail for the last couple weeks. Not anymore, now I am living in paradise, the name of the hotel tells me so- Paraiso, Playa Azul.

Our bathroom is a toilet on one wall and a shower spicket on the opposite wall. I am so so happy to have a hot shower that I think that I have taken the longest showers I have ever had in my life. When I am standing in the hot stream I can’t help but think of the water pulling the caulk up around the toilet, but I don’t have to live here, so I will just continue to shower and let the water pool around the toilet.