Tulum Part 05 / Day of the Iguana
The iguana at the Tulum ruins gets its own post. The ruins will get their own post later.
Tulum Part 04 / Tulum Nights
Well, the first night. I hadn’t made my plans to attend the wedding until it was too late to book a room at the main hotel, where 90% of the guests were staying. I am happy with my choice, a tiny adjacent property on the beach. Well, I chose the cheaper room option that wasn’t quite on the beach; maybe it was 40 feet from the beach. Anyway, I decided to venture out on my own that night, which was not the safe proposition since I don’t typically feel comfortable venturing out on my own. By venturing out, I mean I merely chose to stay at my hotel and go to a wine-tasting that my hotel restaurant was having.
This was my first wine-tasting. I think we sampled five or six wines. Honestly, I don’t really care to know about the grapes or the soil. But I can pretend to be interested. The key take-away (oh, man, corporate meeting lingo…take-away? really, Dave?) was that Mexico has some good wine, but doesn’t export much of it to the States. I asked our wine expert why that’s the case, and I got some hazy answer dealing with trade rules. But my mind was a bit hazy by then, so maybe I just didn’t follow. What did we have? Some other kind of blanc besides sauvignon. Chenin blanc? A fumé blanc? I think there was one of each. La Cetto? That’s the winery that made these two. Then there were two or three others wines. It doesn’t matter. All I recall is that every wine I had was obviously better than the $10 bottles of whatever I am used to drinking. And what I remember most, mostly because I took a photo to remember it by, was the last wine, which was the best wine.
Monte Xanic Cabernet Sauvignon – Merlot 2008. Only 390 pesos according to this website. I paid considerably more to buy a bottle for the table of wedding guest folk I had dinner with after the wine-tasting. (Wine-tastings apparently increase my joviality and generosity.) No need to comment about these wines if you know anything about them. I won’t understand. But I’m buying this wine if I ever see it. There’s another wine from Tulum Night 3 that was also outstanding. That wine, I think I saw at Whole Foods. It’s an Argentine Malbec.
Ah, here’s the foursome who joined me at the wine-tasting. It’s “Claire” and “Nick” from London, and “Jan” and “Trevor” from Brisbane. I’ll use pseudonyms to protect their identities. Screw it. I’ll use their real names. That’s Claire and Nick and Jan and Trevor. (I didn’t say they were good pseudonyms.) And that’s me after some wine. Yeah, I shouldn’t post such pics on the internet. I don’y care. Wine and moon-face. Great. Motivation to look better at my next wine-tasting. Anyway, I spent most of the time talking to Claire, who despite a life of privilege and globetrotting, enjoyed coaching me on all the adventures I ought to go on. It helped that I mentioned having gotten a new kidney. There’s my one and only conversation-starter. So, according to Claire, I MUST go to Rome…and as long as I’m in Europe, I must go to London and Paris and Barcelona. And I must go to Buenos Aire. And Australia. And I hate to admit it, but when Claire and Nick asked if there was anything worthwhile to see in North Carolina, I felt compelled to say, “No, not really”. I mean, c’mon. I know, I’m terrible.
Actually, what’s terrible is that I pretty much have no pictures of any of my friends, the people I actually know. I’ve got one group shot, and it’s with THESE people. I could post some pics that others took that are up on The Facebook, but then I’d be engaging in bad web etiquette. If you know me on Facebook, I’m tagged. And it’s horrifying, because the pics confirm what I’ve known for a long time, that I have no neck.
It’s been awhile since I’ve been verbose, hasn’t it? Not just verbose, but writing without a net.
Oh, and what’s this? The wine guy starting talking about tequila, and he brought out “the best” tequila, or at least one of the best. It can’t be that luxurious, because I got some at the duty-free shop at the Cancun Airport. Anyway, we got a free sample of the Clase Azul. Buy the tequila, and you get the fancy bottle!
And what Tulum night would be complete without a coconut tree bathed in moonlight?
Top 379 preview / Kelly Clarkson alert
I didn’t mean to have any songs from 2011/2012. Damn you, Kelly Clarkson.
Spotify link to album versionBy the way, Kelly Clarkson is coming to DPAC on January 31. Tickets on sale Saturday 10AM.
Tulum Part 03 / Tulum Sunset
Just the same sunset shot from the same vantage point over and over again. Yup, I’m really drawing this out. No idea how many pics are to come because I’ve only unloaded one camera so far, and I’ve only gone through about 20% of those. These are from the Coolpix I got a year ago so I could take decent Asheville and Austin pics. I’ve still got the good camera to unload. And then who knows what’s on the cell phone.
The sunrise pics are a lot better than these sunset pics. But I didn’t take those until Sunday. We’re only on Thursday, 5:00 PM.
Tulum Part 02 / The Road To Tulum
This will be by far the lamest photo blog post of the series. I took pictures while I was driving down Highway 307. Just not pictures of anything interesting, like scooterists (scooterists?) and fascinating subcompact cars that aren’t sold in the States and the topes (massive speed bump things) and police checkpoints with police carrying semi-automatic rifles. (You probably don’t want to be spotted taking pictures of the latter.)
Nonetheless, I’m going to dump about 10 of them right here. They’re part of the story. Part 3 will actually have pics of Tulum.
More fun with CMV
When I landed at Miami International Airport on Thursday morning en route to Cancun, I made a call to the nephrology office in Charlotte to return the voicemail they had left on Wednesday. They had my latest CMV results. Despite my intensive course of Valcyte, my CMV level of increased. If the next lab result didn’t show any change or got worse, we’d have to consider “other options”. Well, #*&$, I thought. And then I put it out of my mind and went on with the getting busy living stuff.
I called back today to ask what my level is at now. And just like that, I’m now negative for CMV.
So this is good.
Now if I can only come off the damn prednisone. Everyone’s got these great wedding photos, and I’m looking like the Stay-Puff Marshmallow Man (which is partially my own fault for wearing my size-too-big guayabera shirt from a 2004 wedding), but my face is looking moon-like, if not full-moon-face yet.
Tulum Part 01 / Puerto Morelos
I’ll be trying to prolong the hangover of my Tulum trip as long as I can. Also, it takes time for me to curate hundreds of photos. So, it will take me awhile to rattle off my photos and whatever slight narrative I have to offer. I don’t do travel narrative well, so I really will try to keep it brief.
As for the photos, they did seem to get progressively better as the trip progressed.
Newbie Mexico Tourist Lesson #1: The rental car company will extort you. The website says $15/day, but it’s more like $95/day. You must get insurance. Yeah, but my car insurance would cover– Yeah, but if you don’t opt for all four insurance options, Thrifty (and I can only speak for Thrifty) will put a hold of between $1500-$4000 on your credit card. But I’m not going to get into an accident! They won’t really charge me anything. Ok, between the topes and the unmarked lanes and lax abidance of stop signs, go ahead and roll the dice on that one. I did not. And given the freedom the car gave me, I’m glad I got it instead of using a shuttle service to get from Cancun to Tulum. I do wish I had not been “upgraded” to a Dodge Avenger, however. We bailed out Chrysler so they could keep making crap like that?
(I’m not doing so well on my brevity.)
Puerto Morelos…I stopped there because I had asked Thrifty for a recommendation of a place to eat once I left the airport and would be on Highway 307 to Tulum. It seems to be a sleepy coastal town with not much too tout, and there’s nothing wrong with that. I got to see the Caribbean. I got to eat some good food (at Pelicanos). I got to see a dog that reminded me of Herman. I got to experience bargaining at a tourist gift shop.
Newbie Mexico Tourist Lesson #2: Merchants will try to extort the stupid Americanos who don’t enjoy bargaining. How much? 600 pesos, my amigo. Um… Let me wrap it up for you. Tell me how much you want to pay. Hand-painted! Well, 600 pesos is a bit steep. Um…400? See…amigo…hand-painted! I can’t. How much you give me for this? I’ll give you 500. Ok, deal. But, amigo, you give me tip? Um, no, I just gave you a tip by giving you 500 pesos for something that is worth much less. (Trinket would have been reasonably priced at about 250 pesos.)
Newbie Mexico Tourist Lesson #3: Merchants/service providers will always tell you when you’re supposed to tip (and sometimes how much) so you don’t have to guess, like the musicians who wouldn’t play me a second song until I had sufficiently tipped them for the first, which I really hadn’t asked for, given I was dining alone, and NO, I didn’t want something romantic. (I told them to play something “happy”; they obliged, and they earned a pretty good tip.)
So, yeah, far better pictures (and pretty much no complaining) to come. But I really liked the dog…and the shrimp tacos.
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The complete Tulum MX Flickr set (so far)
Top 379 preview (Tulum edition, part 2) / It’s even better when performed with maracasian interpretative dance
It is, or, at least, I think so.
This song would not even have been on the Top 379 radar had it not been a pivotal element of the Tulum wedding. It certainly shall be now. Because…imagine it with maracas and interpretative dance…
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maracasian – pertaining to maracas; source: none/unknown/I made it up
Top 379 preview
Waiting for a bag at RDU. Cyndi Lauper is keeping me company. Many Tulum posts to come.
Get busy living
Geez, I feel like a cross between Sandra Bullock in While You Were Sleeping and Morgan Freeman in The Shawshenk Redemption (watch Red cross the border). (Lucy wants to go to Europe to get her passport stamped. Red doesn’t have a passport. Red goes to Mexico, but he’s going to see the Pacific. I’ll be seeing the Atlantic.)
