BAH Visits the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico
Cozumel -- Playa del Carmen -- Tulum -- Cancun -- Chichen Itza
After Cozumel, we took the ferry back across to the mainland and spent a couple days in Playa del Carmen. This is our hotel there, the Barrio Latino at 5th Ave and 4th St, about 200 yards from an absolutely gorgeous beach sprinkled with topless women. Even if there hadn't been topless women on the beach, I think my favorite town was Playa del Carmen. The hotel was nice, too. They wanted 410 pesos per night for a room with air conditioning, but we bartered them down to 300 pesos. I gotta tell you, you just cannot beat living in paradise for 30 bucks a night. It ought to be against the law. Again, the staff was nice, even if they didn't speak much English. The owner was actually a displaced Italian, but he was rarely around, which left Pedro at the front desk from about 7 a.m. to sometime after midnight. Our maid was Olga (How a Mexican girl got that name is beyond me). She and I had an interesting conversation one afternoon while Betty was shopping -- interesting because she didn't speak a single word of English and my Spanish is wretched. Betty was interested in getting her hair braided, and I was trying to see if Olga could do it and what she would charge. Olga did a lot of talking, from which all I could recognize was the word caballo, from which I gathered that she wanted to charge me some ridiculous amount just to put Betty's hair in a pony tail (either that or she was telling me how she used to braid her horse's hair when she was a little girl). Olga kept the room nice and clean, though, for which I personally slipped her 50 pesos when we checked out. I told Betty that we should take her back with us to the States. For 50 pesos a day, she'd probably live in our guest room and keep the house immaculately clean. Like Pedro, she seemed to put in very long hours, which I attribute to a good Mexican work ethic. Our guide in Chichen Itza, for example, when I asked him if he had an email address, told me that he didn't have time for email because he left his house at seven each morning and didn't get home until midnight -- seven days a week.
There was a hammock slung across the front of our room, and we probably spent as much time relaxing there as in the room itself. Betty couldn't get enough of that shopping stuff in town, so here's me one afternoon when I told her to just go without me. We really liked the hammocks, so we set out to buy our own to bring home. The one pictured above is actually the cheaper model made by the locals, which most of the merchants were selling for 300 pesos. I bartered one down to 200 pesos, but the day I took this picture (yeah, the camera was set on timer and I'm faking being asleep) Betty went out and got the better hammock (heavier cord) for 180 pesos. I don't know how she managed it. The same hammock in the States would cost $60-100 or more. She really should have bought two for that price, but keep in mind that we were carrying everything on our backs and the hammocks are actually bulky and heavy.
Betty loved the hammock so much that one night when we got back real late and showered, she threw on my tank top and refused to come into the room. I told her she needed to at least come in and put some underwear on, but she wouldn't listen. I finally had to pick her up and take her in and put her to bed. Another night we were sitting out there together in the hammock listening to the young couple next door (who hadn't paid for air conditioning and therefore had their windows open) making love. There's something rather special about the sound of a beautiful young woman gasping in orgasm -- not a sound I've heard before when I wasn't actually involved in the activity -- and I think I'll remember it for a long time. Afterward, Betty and I went inside and made a lot of noise of our own, but of course our windows were closed. (A side note: Betty's gonna kill me for using this picture. At least I used one where nothing was exposed, though, hon.)
Our last night in Playa del Carmen, Betty got her hair braided. Isn't she beautiful? This was done by an 18-year-old named Leonardo. I started out liking Leonardo, but the little peckerhead ripped us off. He originally wanted 300 pesos to do this, but we bartered him down to 180. Knowing how all these Mexicans operate, I asked him up front, "Now for 180 pesos, Senora will get beads, si?" thinking that he'd do all the braiding and then explain that beads cost extra. He assured me that she would indeed get beads. "Quantos beads?" "She can get as many beads as she wants," Leonard assured me. "Tres beads?" "Si." "Tres beads on each braid?" "Si, Senor." What he never said was that she could sure get as many as she wanted, but only one was included with the cost of the braiding. For extra beads, he explained when the braiding was done, it was another 100 pesos. Betty thought it would look stupid with only one bead per braid, so the hairdo wound up costing us 280 pesos (about $28 U.S.). Still, Betty assures me that something like this would cost about $60 in the States. After all, it took the guy about an hour and fifteen minutes to do it. I don't want to say the guy intentionally cheated us, any more than any of the people down there will intentionally steal from you or behave dishonestly, but they do have a different business ethic than I do. And it's always amazing how well they understand or speak English before some conflict arises. Leonardo had no trouble understanding me before he went after that additional 100 pesos, but once the disagreement arose, he just couldn't understand enough English to grasp why I felt it was unfair to charge us 100 pesos for 25 cents worth of cheap plastic beads. In a place where their entire livelihood comes from tourists (the Yucatan exports absolutely nothing except for the sap/rubber from which bubble gum is made) who are generally a whole lot cheaper than I am, though, perhaps you can't blame them. And if their business ethics are now cultural, it's the tourists who are to blame for it. You go down there expecting bargains. I don't know anyone down there who pulls their money out of their pocket when a merchant states his initial price for anything. Regardless, Leonardo did a nice job. And it was worth the $28 to finally realize my Bo Derek fantasy that night back at the hotel!