Hammock Review:
Cancun, Mexico
I thought I came to Mexico for hammocks, not medical care.
It turns out I came for both.
And just like “work before pleasure,” the brethren saying “medical care before hammocks” is also quite true. I was unaware how true this saying was (or that it even existed) until I had this experience.
Please note: if you are experiencing an actual medical emergency, stop reading this Hammock Review and call 9-1-1. But if you are drinking Black Velvet Whisky, continue reading.
Living in Maine, I work a hodgepodge of jobs as most locals do. It is not unusual to know someone with a name like Jimmy Beal (my apologies if this accurately describes an actual person named Jimmy Beal; that would be coincidence) who is a part-time sternman on a lobster boat, a carpenter, and a seller of moose antlers to tourists (on a completely commission-dependent, cash-only, tax-exempt basis) when the fiddlehead supply he normally hawks has run dry. For me, I teach writing, work at the airport, look on the ground for stray coins of larger denominations (quarters and dimes, yes; nickels and pennies, no), and work tourist jobs in Bar Harbor. All of these (minus the coin hunting) are part-time gigs.
Who am I kidding? The coin hunting is part-time too–-if I am too lazy to reach down and pick up the coin, or too well-positioned in a hammock to do so.
The Bar Harbor jobs are seasonal. For those not familiar, Bar Harbor is a nice little town on Mount Desert Island (MDI) that features fresh lobster, fresh blueberries, gorgeous views, Acadia National Park, and a wonderful, breezy summer climate that attracts millions of tourists and thousands of summer residents each year. Workers flock from all over North America, Jamaica, Eastern Europe, and the Philippines as well as other corners of the globe to work in Bar Harbor for its harefooted tourist season.
In essence, Bar Harbor transforms from a ghost town in the winter, to a small pseudo-city block in the summer. It has, for those couple select months of the year, seemingly all one would need.
There is perhaps only one thing Bar Harbor is missing.
Hammocks.
And perhaps because of the dearth of hammocks (and/or because of its geographical location) in the winter, Bar Harbor becomes dark, cold, windy, frigid, and--did I mention?--very, very, very dark. The tourists, the summer residents, the workers, the birds, the bees, and the cruise ships all pack their bags and leave. The stores close. The restaurants close. The hotels close. Seasonal employment ends.
My last day in Bar Harbor for the season unfolded as such: before saying my goodbyes, I worked the cash register at the gift shop like a champ, performing the impressive multitasking of daydreaming about hammocks while simultaneously repetitiously calculating basic math equations like:
shot-glass-featuring-moose
+
refrigerator-magnet-featuring-lobster
+
sales tax
=
or:
shot-glass-featuring-lobster
+
refrigerator-magnet-featuring-moose
+
sales tax
=
Later, after successfully completing such arithmetic and so proving my mind beautiful, I went to the end-of-season party for my other job, where I stuffed lobster and clams in my mouth and subsequently washed them down my throat with wine and a Manhattan. I am not very skillful or agile at deconstructing lobster. But I am very skillful and agile at gluttony, so it all worked out well. #Balance #(LikeABalancedEquation)
Besides, this was a necessary step in preparing for hammocks. Some people use a tanning bed to prep their skin for the sun on the beach they’ll be graced with during an upcoming tropical vacation. I do no such thing. However, I do ready myself for the gluttony involved in the hammock lifestyle. One must up their alcohol-tolerance and stretch their stomach a little. In a way, this is not completely dissimilar to how football players perform calisthenics before practice. You want to warm up the muscles before a workout. Others may relate it to a baseball player doing a rehab assignment in the Minors before working their way back up to the Big Leagues. But one could equally reason that Spring Training is a more apt metaphor for hammock preparations—if done in February or March. If performed during the heat of summer, the NFL’s training camp would be a more fitting comparison. One may use the NBA or NHL preseason for such analogizing purposes if autumn has begun. You can’t really go wrong with any of these as hammock indulgence is a very physical pursuit, just like sports are, a fact few reasonable people would argue against. Still, others may go a different direction altogether and use the metaphor of studying for a test or an exam (an important one for board certification) because of hammocks’ inherent ties to intellectualism (citation: Hammock Reviews). We could endlessly astutely evaluate and ascertain the merits and flaws endowed in each of these comparisons, but whatever works best for you is fine with me, as I won’t belabor the point.
After finishing my hammock warmups, I said my goodbyes at the second job. Bar Harbor was shutting down behind me and hammocks were opening up before me. Joni Mitchell touched on this, however indirectly and discreetly, in her song “The Circle Game,” packed with ultra-subtle gluttonous undertones.
I got home and packed my bags, without subtly: clothes, warm and cozy but barely folded directly from the dryer to the modest suitcase. For me, packing should not take more than 10 minutes when you are heading towards a hammock. What does one really need when the destination is the ultimate all-inclusive (apologies to sweetlivinproductions.com and its great tremendous all-inclusive package) known as the hammock?
Given my time constraints--I had to drive several hours to the airport to catch an early morning flight--I had time to either shower and clean myself up or watch the World Series.
Life is all about choices and crossroads (Frost, Robert).
I chose the World Series.
Mistake.
Not because Zack Greinke ran out of steam and the Nationals came back to win: I didn’t really care about the specific outcome; I couldn’t be that emotionally involved as long as my beloved Pirates were not playing in the Fall Classic, which is a surer fact than death or taxes with this current ownership (Twain certainly would have included the Pirates, with their unwavering futility, in his famous quote had he not died a century before Never-Care-About-Winning-You-Greedy-POS-Who-Takes-Advantage-Of-The-Loyalty-Of-The-Great-Pittsburgh-Fanbase Robert Nutting became our owner).
The reason watching the World Series rather than showering was a mistake is something we will reveal later; we are building a little suspense in what has already been established–-or at least should have already been guessed by the reader–-to barely be a suspenseful story. Please work with us here. #Charity #Karma
As I drove to the airport, I called my friend Carolina; we video chatted on WhatsApp (there were too few drivers on the Maine roads at night for this to be dangerous, as anyone with enough money to not stick around for the long, cold, dark Maine winters had already fled south). She, more precisely than hammocks, was why I was going to Mexico. She is not a long-lost lover or anything like that, but rather a long lost friend--but not lost. Just a longtime friend.
This would be the third time I had seen her in person. Evidently we meet every six or seven years.
I first met her on my last day of college, almost. The year was 2006. I had a little bit of time between the end of college and the beginning of graduate school. Late at night, after drinking considerably, I shopped for a plane ticket to somewhere in South America. I was going to go to Chile, I think; perhaps Ecuador was also an option. I had an open mind, a super saturated liver (that’s what drinking alcohol does, right?), a passport, a credit card, and internet access, so really anywhere one could buy a ticket on the great global marketplace of the world wide web was within the realm of possibilities. My sister mentioned a friend in Brazil. So I bought a cheap ticket off a discount website that took mixed airlines, like mixing a bad cocktail one could transform into a good cocktail by drinking it in a hammock, to Brazil where I would eventually lay in a hammock in Salvador, in some of my early Hammock Review intern work that paved the way for what you see now. #ResumeBuilding #ClimbingTheHammockLadder #RomeWasn’tBuiltInADay.
I put all of my belongings that I did not take with me from my apartment into my car and left for Brazil.
During my layover in JFK, I had to change terminals and go through security again. Because New York is typically a little more stringent on security than Pittsburgh, being the home of Fred Rogers and the associated characters of his neighborhood, none of whom worked for TSA (and because a terrorist attack in England just occurred that caused a new rule regarding carry-on liquids), my large cologne collection was taken from me (I thought I was cool at the time having cologne; now that I am mature I realize you do not need cologne to be cool: you only need hammocks). Oh well. Hammock problems. Except: there are no real problems when hammocks are involved.
When I got to São Paulo, I learned something else: Americans need a visa to get into Brazil.* The Immigration Officer, surprised that I had been incorrectly** checked in*** back in Pittsburgh without a visa, told me the I needed to go back to the United States. I retreated back to a corner of the airport to brainstorm an alternate/better solution. I didn’t speak a lick of Portuguese, but I found some nice old lady who talked to me in Spanish and gave me the idea of buying a ticket to Buenos Aires and applying for a Brazilian visa from there. So I went to Argentina for a week, got my visa for Brazil, and arrived in São Paulo a week later. That is where I met Carolina.
And that is how I ended up with my arm, nearly shoulder deep, up a horse’s butt.
Carolina was in veterinarian school, after all, and that’s what they do in veterinarian school, evidently, when working with big animals: stick hands and arms up butts. I think I was checking to see if a fetus was okay or something like that. Probably--or more likely possibly--that fetus has grown into a full-fledged stallion today, the stud of Universidade de São Paolo, perhaps.
All because of me.
Whatever fate had in store for that fetus--show horse, racehorse, farm horse, rocking horse, or whatever horse--Carolina and I ran around like racehorses or wild horses, if we are to continue on this horse train.
In other words, we were constantly on the move.
I thought I could handle being on the move. In college, I had done more than my fair share of partying. I knew how to drink and stay up all night and still do things in the morning, like go to class, work, or the gym.
But that did not prepare me for Carolina. She was absolutely on another level compared to me. We went out partying and dancing every night. We came back to her apartment late at night, slept one hour, got up, and then went to her veterinarian school where she was at the top of her class.
I was amazed.
I spent most of my time there in São Paulo, but also visited another one of my sister’s friend’s--Augusto, a wonderfully sunny and friendly man, in Salvador, a wonderfully sunny and hammock-friendly place; when I checked my bag for the flight, my Axe body spray (the one good smell they hadn’t taken in JFK) was stolen. I guess I wasn’t meant to smell good on this trip.
But one doesn’t need to smell good in a hammock.
Neither does one need to smell good at a vet school–-even the top one in South America Carolina attended–-where I met Rodrigo amongst others, who taught me my first Portuguese word, isopor, which means Styrofoam. Many coolers are constructed from Styrofoam, you may note. Many people keep beers in coolers, you may also note. That is why that was an important word to learn: that’s where the beer is.
There I also met Sofia, who I also became friends with. The next time I would see Carolina was 7 years later at Sofia’s wedding in Oklahoma.
I ended up driving there with Sofia’s cousin who lived in Pennsylvania. It was a memorable and fun road trip with a woman I had never known before I picked her up at her college in the middle-of-nowhere, Pennsylvania (more of the Keystone state in is the middle of nowhere than some people realize: outside of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, it is mostly rural). Carolina was in Sofia’s wedding party there in Ponca City, Oklahoma as Sofia had married a nice Sooner, Matthew.
As I don’t see Carolina often, but we communicate frequently on WhatsApp and Facebook, I was excited to see her as I drove through the Maine night towards an airport that would ultimately, in a roundabout way, bring me to Cancun.
After flying from Portland, Maine to Detroit, I boarded a flight from Detroit to Cancun and fell fast asleep.
I woke up (after several times of intermittently waking up to accept the free Cheez-Its) in Cancun.
I didn’t know where I would stay that night.
But I knew my requirement for lodging: it needed to have a hammock.
I discussed this with a cabbie outside of the airport. I knew this would be an expensive conversation, at least more expensive than having no standards by taking up less of his time and going to any run-of-the-mill hammock-less place.
But hammocks would be worth it. #ValeLaPena
If hammocks weren’t involved—or if I had a specific hammock waiting for me–-I would have taken buses. Not only the cheaper option, but also the more adventurous one. You meet locals. You don’t have the easy way out where the taxicab driver basically takes you where you are going. You can get lost on buses. That is good. It is the purpose of travel: adventure. However, taxicabs can be an adventure too. When getting into a taxicab upon arrival in a new place and the cabdriver asks you where you want to go, you might reply: “Where do you think I should go?” But such a game is another story for another day.
I wasn’t there for games. Or I was there for games–-those involving hammocks, not the wonderfully rich roulette of cabdriver morals. Instead, I admit, I was evangelizing my hammock morals onto the cabbie. But I had faith the cabbie would come through; whereas if left to my own devices on a bus, I might go broke on bus fare before ever finding a hammock. #PennyWisePoundFoolish
I was seeking a hammock-graced place on the economical side because I didn’t have enough money to stay at a resort (by not enough money, I mean not that it would have been a poor financial decision, which I am very capable of making, but rather I would have run out of all the money I had and actually been broke). So the cabbie called place after place: many were affordable, but ignorantly lacked hammocks. He periodically reiterated that a certain lodging was cheap and tried to take me there, but I stayed resolute in my requirement for hammocks.
Never settle for less than what you deserve in life.
The cabbie called and called.
I reminded him he need not call anymore and could take another client if he wished. But he was just as resolute as me--either because of his own love for hammocks or because of a desire to get my 40 dollars, plus generous tip for his pro-hammock stance. #HammockFever #HammockProsperity
Finally he landed upon a place with hammocks. Selina Cancun Downtown. Jackpot. After once being so far, hammocks now seemed so close.
18.4 kilometers, to be exact.
So I got there, and the beauty was it was still around noontime. So much time to enjoy hammocks, etc. I checked in, but had to wait three hours until my room was ready.
No biggie.
I sat down at the bar and ordered a beer. It was hot. That was fine. It would be comfortable when I took off a couple of my shirts (to help succeed in packing light, I normally wear a lot of clothes when I travel, which can also be used as pillows and allows for adaptability to varying temperatures).
It was time, after all, to transition from the traveling mode to the arrival mode, from wearing all of your clothes in Maine to wearing very little of them in Cancun, from lugging around luggage (even though I didn’t have that much) to laying on hammocks.
I felt much better.
Then I felt something on my right arm.
I looked down.
A disgusting tick lodged in my right bicep!
Gross.
Really gross.
The tick’s legs were moving around as they tend to do when they–-still alive!--twist themselves inside of you, like the turning of the screw Henry James was possibly referring to (I had no idea in high school what he was talking about, and never checked on it since, but this dumb little tick doing it's disgusting act on my right arm seems to fit the phrase–-and the feeling one experiences of reading that book as a teenager, and probably an adult).
Extremely gross.
Very unhammock-like.
Now, part of my tick-avoidance program had been not exercising to thus have smaller biceps that ticks would have a harder time finding. That had not worked.
This was a fear come true.
Of course, like everyone else in life, I have fears. I have found it helpful to consolidate my fears–-much like one consolidates debt–-onto specific items.
I sometimes fear heights.
I fear going to the doctor–-even when healthy.
I fear snakes.
I fear Tom Brady.
I fear ticks.
That’s about it. There is probably some other stuff (like if a massive dude came and threatened to punch me in the face, I would probably fear him)–-but those listed above are my main fears. And while not consistently reaching the level of phobias, they sometimes cross that line, especially when an NFL team is up late against New England and decides to put the game in the hands of their defense (“[so and so coach, a fucking moron who must have never watched the Patriots play before] is going to trust their defense,” I have heard countless announcers say in such situations, without properly adjectivitizing the coach like I have done for you here) by punting the ball back to Tom Brady.
I’m not sure if that’s a phobia or just logical hatred.
I feel similarly about ticks. I really hate ticks.
When I was a kid growing up on 26 acres in Ohio, we had ticks everywhere. And they were gross. I did not like them then. But the grossness was a short-term occurrence. They were dog ticks. After you got rid of them, that was it–-you were over and done with it.
Until the next tick.
For there were a lot of them.
But again, it was just a repeated short-term problem. Like Mike Shanahan-era Denver Broncos running backs in his annoyingly effective zone run play scheme that cockblocked other more lovely AFC teams from having the success they deserved around the turn of the millennium.
It was something you could deal with. Not a long-term, multi-decade problem like Tom Brady.
When I first moved to Maine in 1999, I never saw ticks. I never feared Tom Brady.
If I thought about him at all, it was as a sports-obsessed teenager who was aware of even slightly-above-meddling platoon collegiate athletes, but never feared him or even had the slightest inclination that he could cause Pittsburgh harm, never thought he could grow up and go all Sid Bream on us in continuing the tradition of unathletic players of platooning origins polluting all of our Three Rivers pristine hopes and dreams.
If I had thought about ticks at all, I would have thought I had moved out of the great tick population center of countryside Ohio to Maine, a place seemingly too cold for dangerous things like snakes or ticks or the Atlanta Braves, who already had sent my Pirates packing in the baseball abyss long ago.
Then I faintly heard about some person getting a weird disease: Lyme.
I didn’t think much of it. And when I did, the actual fruit of a “lime” entered my mind and I wondered what the association was before returning to not caring about it. That is not a lame attempt at a pun; that is actually true.
Later, as the years passed and Tom Brady starting winning Super Bowl with the Patriots, I started hearing more and more about deer ticks, Lyme Disease, and its strange and mysterious deleterious health effects.
I started seeing the ticks themselves and how people were suffering from Lyme Disease.
It was an invasion.
I started fearing the deer tick, like I feared Tom Brady.
It is a reasonable fear. This, because knowing I have a fear of going to the doctor, the last thing I want is something that gives me mysterious symptoms–-anything from fatigue to potentially massive joint pain and immobility, anything from short-term memory loss to long-term memory loss–-that I have to go to the doctor multiple times for to figure out what the heck is going on.
Something, yes, that could make me immobilized and helpless while I watch Tom Brady toss endless third-down conversions to another deer tick-sized turning and twisting short, quick slot receiver on the way to another Patriots victory.
Yes, that is a reasonable fear.
And there, in my right arm, much less pliable (TB12 Method reference/joke; if you don’t understand, save yourself some time by avoiding pseudoscience and don’t research it) than Brady’s dangerous right arm, I saw that fear, of a terrible and trembling nature, come true.
A tick.
I had flown from Maine, basically the deer tick capital of the world (though to be fair, everywhere seems like the deer tick capital of the world, nowadays).
I had not escaped the invasion.
I had not escaped New England unscathed.
This wasn’t a dog tick. This was a deer tick.
Fucking Tom Brady.
How should I take it out though? People say you should use tweezers or some other tool I did not have available to me (I pack light, remember?). Of course there was a hammock nearby, but ticks are not something hammocks mess with.
This small part of the mystery was solved by the bartender, who used the lime tongs to remove the deer tick. I am not much one for puns—usually–-but I do want to note that there must be some possibility for some sort of pun when you think that the LIME tongs removed the potentially LYME-disease carrying tick: oh how I hope the dad-joke writers are at large in our vast Hammock Review reading audience!
But we know for sure that problem solvers and solution-oriented people of high intellect are a massive part of our readership. And so they will certainly indulge in this step-by-step process of eliminating the deer tick problem (at least in this one instance).
So Step 1 (removing the tick) was done.
Step 2 was drinking my beer.
Step 3 was cursing the tick (which actually was probably done as Step 0 as well, just repeated).
Step 4 was ordering another beer and thinking about where the tick came from. This is something everyone ponders when getting a deer tick after not having been deep in the woods, the obvious place one should get them. It’s this odd sense of temporary consternation of seemingly needing to know where it came from, the idea lodged in your mind just like the tick burrowed in your layers of your skin. Such a riddle perplexes the mind until one get an answer–or the a hammock****.
So where did the tick come from? It was lodged pretty deep in my arm, that little bugger (good pun, dad-joke writers?), so it probably came from the previous day. Was it from the end-of-season party I had gone to? Was it simply from walking the streets of Bar Harbor? Did one fall on me from the bushes as I closed the gate to hop in my car? Was it on the airplane from Portland to Detroit?
Whatever the case may have been, I felt like if I had taken a shower and washed my clothes rather than watched the World Series, I would have found the tick or it would have been washed away before it could attach itself to me.
But, really, no one knows.
And will never know–-until we watch the pending Netflix production, of course.
I finished my beer and went to a local pharmacy, who informed me Doxycycline required a prescription.
Shit.
But, not shit: there was a doctor next door.
And further not shit: literally five minutes later (and I mean literally) and 50 pesos later (about two dollars and fifty cents American), I had my prescription. I went to the pharmacy and got three weeks worth of Doxycycline.
I forget the name of the doctor who gave me the prescription. But I’ll never forget the doctor whom I really put my trust in–-Dr. Simi.
There were a lot of reasons to trust Dr. Simi.
He comes from a distinguished lineage of trustful mustaches.
If you trust the Monopoly Man, which you should because of his mustache, you will trust Dr. Simi, which you also should—also because of his mustache. It is one of those bushy mustaches that says you will pass go and collect 200 dollars and maybe get some good fried chicken made with a secret recipe (*spoiler alert*: fried and fattening is the secret).
It is not one of those cop mustaches that looks like it is going to intimidate you, give you a ticket, arrest you, or possibly start a scene from a pornographic film if you are (un)lucky (depending on your desires–no judgment here).
But it is the type of mustache that says you can trust this medication is real.
Because, evidently, Mexico has a problem with counterfeit medicine. This is according to Mexican government agencies, American government agencies, doctors, pharmaceutical companies, and the internet. There are a variety of contributing factors it seems, and Americans going down there to seek cheap medicine (not necessarily for tick bites) is evidently one of them.
But this is a Hammock Review, not an investigation in pharmaceutical counterfeits one might make a (boring) Netflix documentary mini-series about. The point is: when there is a lot of mistrust going around, there is a need for someone trustworthy to step up. Dr. Simi is that guy, that oasis in the desert*****.
Dr. Simi is at the peak of his profession, literally on the top of mountains.
He can make the sun rise, as seen in this photograph posted by someone on the internet, who might have had a knee injury at one point in their life until Dr. Simi gave them medical advice that then allowed them to climb the nearest mountain to see a beautiful sunrise, but slightly unfortunately encountered a cloudy, yet still beautiful, day.
**”Incorrectly” may not be the most appropriate word choice here when it could perhaps me more accurately described as a common act of Pittsburgh kindness or charity, a sort of bank/check-in error in my favor, for had I not been allowed to check-in in Pittsburgh, really the whole ticket would have been forfeited. There would have been no way to change that multi-airline ticket purchased online through a third party. Pittsburgh kindness we can call it, mixed with a little thing known as hammock luck.
***The whole check-in process was probably only allowed to happen because of the confusion of the multiple-airline ticket bought from a third party back in 2006. While something similar could conceivably happen today, it is less like with the computer systems involved that aid customer service agents in preventing such a happy mishap.
Dr. Simi also maintains a positive attitude.
If he has two free hands, he gives two thumbs up.
And a wink.
His old school sensibility of cool hats should also be noted and duly congratulated.
If you think those are just some internet photographs that he is posing for, well let me show you some that include my very own hand, in a Dr. Simi-inspired thumbs-up pose.
What’s inside Dr. Simi’s great bag of tricks?
Simi Sunscreen (emphasis on the + for the 50+ SPF; you know Dr. Simi always brings his A game and is just being modest)
After another day and night of doing this (as noted earlier, I needed to be fully rested to hang out with my friend Carolina, so I could keep up with her), it was time to see Carolina.
It was time for time to dilate.
According to hammock reviews, time dilation occurs when I see Carolina.
There is something so powerful in seeing an old friend, the way that time really does feel like it bends and folds over. Where six years ago feels like a month ago, while simultaneously feeling like a lifetime ago. Like everything is just the same as the last time you saw them, but also completely different. It is so strange. Like being in The Twilight Zone. Or being drunk. It is surreal.
Such a feeling of intoxication is an appropriate transition to begin drinking and get intoxicated.
As I did with Carolina.
It was so great to catch up with an old friend. Meeting an old friend at a bar (or wherever) is one of the greatest joys in life, I believe. Even greater, I daresay, than laying in a hammock.
Lord, please forgive me for my blasphemy.
After barhopping and catching up, we returned to our respective abodes late.
We would get up early for our tour to the Mayan city.
Chichén Itzá.
Now I’m not normally into tours–-
“How can you say you’re not normally into tours?” Carolina asked me, when I mentioned this to her. “You travel the world.”
Well, I do love traveling. But I revel in the spontaneity of it. I like the freedom of being able to do what I want at virtually any moment. I like to wander off with complete spontaneity, like my feet are a mind in a hammock, walking the mental streets into similes that don’t make much sense. I do not like to normally have anything more scheduled than finding a hammock. I am not normally into doing your standard tourist tour like this one was.
But I am not anti-tour, like I am anti-deer tick or anti-Tom Brady. Taking a tour like this was a good way to visit Chichén Itzá, and it was well worth breaking this non-taking-of-a-tour norm, not completely unlike breaking down and eating an off-brand Slim Jim when no scripted wrestling six-time world champion***** Macho Man Randy Savage–approved Slim Jim is available.
There were no Slim Jims–-perhaps because Mayans were into sacrifices other than chickens in machines that mechanically separated them (mechanically separated chicken is the third, but perhaps most crucial, ingredient in a Slim Jim)--but there was awesome food at the restaurant we stopped at on our way to see the awesome temples and other awesome ancient structures.
“Awesome” really is an appropriate word for the whole experience.
It was wonderful to just stroll around and be in awe of the ancient architecture.
That was one of the nice things about Chichén Itzá and this tour: it satisfied my traveling craving of wandering around aimlessly and strolling. There was that lack of structure within the structure. In other words, we got a lot of time to simply wander around and check out whatever we wanted.
Possibly my favorite structure, because I like the name, was The Temple of the Bearded Man, “perhaps the best preserved of the buildings that surround the Great Ball Court, the Temple gets its name from a strange bearded man who heads the scene.”
It is almost as though the bearded man is enjoying some games for eternity at the Great Ball Court. And why should he not with the great beard and all?
It is as though his beard continues to grow over thousands of years as he continues to enjoy the leisurely activity he loves so much.
Only The Temple of the Mustached Man could be better–-or The Temple with the Mustached Man in a Hammock.
Thousands of years from now, people will think such inspiring thoughts about Dr. Simi structures, when the sick masses will make pilgrimages to be cured by the sacred mustache, digging up his dolls in search of sacred healing, or simple competent medical care.
But silly, whimsical, and perhaps ignorant thoughts aside, it is amazing to enjoy the spiritual energy while walking around a place like this. The cultures who are long forgotten–until we go on one of those classic touristic tours, I say I usually don’t do. And we marvel at those structures:
“How were they made so long ago without our modern technology?”
Without our backhoes and scaffolds?
Without our engineering schools?
Without our Carnegie Project to help excavate and restore such wonders?
Without our Dr. Simis****** to treat the workers who toiled away at low wages?
And then we walk back onto our world.
Our tour bus.
And go to a cenote.
The sacred cenote.
Back in the day, the Mayans would put human and gold sacrifices into the cenote to please the rain god Chaac, in all likelihood to end droughts and make it rain.*******
So in the early 1900s, Edward Herbert Thompson, a greedy Patriots fan from Worcester, Mass, decided to start dredging the cenote to get his hands on some of those valuables, a precursor and foreshadowing to a common New England practice, which would eventually culminate in Deflategate: Brady deflating footballs, like Thompson was (in a sense) deflating cenotes.
But before that I had to get a bathing suit. I actually had not read anything about the tour or how we were supposed to prepare, even though the information had been sent to me. On the way into the cenote, I bought swimming trunks last minute—the last one at the shop, a kids’ extra large. They looked funny on me, but it worked.
Carolina’s mom asked, “Are you sure you’re a gringo?” for my continued lack of preparedness that she felt was at odds with gringo, who she had viewed as always prepared. I would like to take a moment now to emphasize that I appreciate this because the lack of preparedness is congruent with spontaneity and the hammock lifestyle.
The lack of panic.
For the most part.
I did have a moment of panic on our way back to the bus when I realized I didn’t have my phone. Where could it be?
This was not Dr. Simi’s expertise, so he could not help me. I ran back to the men’s restroom where we had changed for the cenote and luckily there was my phone, stuffed in the back of the locker I had used.
Phew.
Back on the bus.
Carolina’s mom didn’t ask me about the gringo thing this time, apparently almost losing the phone was on brand.
Plus we were all tired.
Everyone on the bus was.
It was a quiet bus ride back.
I laid against the window and slept much of the way.
At one point I awoke and took note of the rest of the bus sleeping as well.
Even Carolina.
The nonstop superhero in my mind of being on-the-go, of interweaving intellectualism with partying, of living life to the fullest and mixing everything together in life’s cocktail, except sleep. At least that had been my long-held vision of her. But I suppose none of us stay 18. I suppose life makes us all older. And that’s why God invented hammocks. Even Carolina needs to rest sometime, even she needs a hammock.
Time slows us all. Well not Dr. Simi or the bearded Mayan sports fan of stone.
But us humans.
She is only human after all.
And a damn good human.
I already knew I was human, and well aware I was getting older; I was heading back to rest at an Airbnb rather than the hostel.
See, knowing I was going to meet with Carolina and knowing I was going to want to lay in some hammocks, I had actually done something I had rarely done in life before a trip.
Prepare.
Not by performing a tick check or packing swim trunks, as noted above.
But I did prepare.
Like a gringo.
Sort of.
Not by booking a room at one of the resorts.
Not by booking a room anywhere for my first two nights in Cancun.
But by booking a room for my last two nights at an Airbnb downtown.
There were other travelers also staying there. I met a nice artistic couple from the Southern Cone, making their way up through Latin America engaging in various outdoor painting projects.
More importantly though–-in no offense to the couple–-the Airbnb had a hammock.
Two actually (perfect for the couple, when they needed to rest from all the painting).
And perfect for me when I needed to rest as well.
By booking an Airbnb with a hammock, specifically the nights of the trip that overlapped with visiting Carolina.
See I was always going to see hammocks in Cancun. I made sure of it. The previous hammocks were the spontaneous bonus ones. The following hammocks were the planned ones. There are, as should be well-documented throughout these Hammock Reviews, a variety of hammocks for a variety of occasions.
On this occasion, in this chapter of life, there is a thing in life as the pre-Carolina hammocks as seen earlier and post-Carolina hammocks, as seen now.
Post-Carolina Hammocks, on call.
Me in Post-Carolina Hammock.
Me reenacting sleep in a Post-Carolina Hammock.
Me reenacting groggily waking up from reenacting sleeping Post-Carolina Cancun Hammock and thus making an excuse for the blurry photo (you are kind of groggy and the world is blurry when you just have woken up).
Me reenacting falling back asleep in Post-Carolina Hammock.
Me reenacting waking back up in Post-Carolina Hammock.
Carolina and I agreed to meet later that night after regrouping from sleep in each of our abodes.
But something about time bending, about time dilation is that you still get older.
And, as they say, you are not in São Paulo anymore, Dorothy.
In other words, we fell asleep for the night.
We said our goodbyes the next day over the phone.
But something about time bending again.
It does come back around.
The old becomes young again.
The old Carolina (meaning the young one) rises and says, “this cannot be it.”
So there was an encore at the resort Carolina was staying at.
The last day of gluttony.
I packed the little I had brought with me—sans the two deer ticks—at the Airbnb and headed to Carolina’s resort, which was closer than the airport from where I had been in downtown Cancun.
I could join Carolina at the resort for just a $50 day guest pass.
I could eat and drink more than $50.
And I did.
A perfect sunny day, we mixed in swimming in the pool with beach work (laying on the beach mixed with strolling on the beach mixed with swimming in the ocean).
As the evening approached, we said our goodbyes and plans to meet again, in another 6 or 7 years: 2025 or 2026.
I hopped in the cab.
“Oh shit!” my driver’s license!
Time lapsing and bending into a moment of soberness. I ran back in to the resort and grabbed my license had to give when I originally entered.
Safely back in the cab, I was off to the airport.
Time slowly bent straight back on the way home.
But it is always ready to bend again.
Dr. Simi will always have his mustache.
Bogart and Bergman always have Paris.
And in seven more years I will see Carolina again, somewhere in the world.
It was a great time in Cancun.
Ticks be damned.
Those little creatures had no idea what they were up against; they never stood a chance against me, Carolina, Dr. Simi, hammocks, and the ancient Mayans.
Chaac always preferred hammocks (and gold and dead bodies) over ticks.
There is a reason he didn’t accept tick sacrifices.
*This was the case back in 2006. The entry requirements for Americans have since change, perhaps because of this situation.
****As detective streaming series are all the rage nowadays, I would like to draw the attention of the Hollywood producers in our large readership to this portion of the Hammock Review and consider this as potential material for a future possible (high budget) series; as some of the material for your series seems to be getting thin, this subject matter would continue that trajectory with even thinner material that is even more of a stretch, but still featuring a worthy protagonist, the Hammock Review writer, of the necessary suave and sex appeal, not to mention demonstration of grit (by taking on the tick enemy), to justify such a costly production.
*****I also did talk with my brother, a doctor without a mustache, who informed me it would be unlikely someone would counterfeit Doxycycline because the real thing is so cheap to produce itself.
*****Just like the Steelers are six-time champions in an unscripted sport.
******Correction: Dr. Simi. Singular. There is, and always will be, only one Dr. Simi. Even if there are a lot of dolls in his likeness.
*******Still how strippers currently make their bread, but Chaac has loosened up on the death aspect and seems content with just nudity or almost-nudity-with-pasties, depending on the state lines and local town ordinances
Simi Supplements: don’t just kill Lyme Disease with antibiotics; build yourself up naturally, so no disease is a match for your now-much-stronger immune system and body.
Dr. Simi naturally has an amazing line of dolls that would be a great gift for anyone you know. There is so much going on positively with Dr. Simi, that people have wondered if he can save Mexico’s healthcare system and we wonder if he can save the Other Internet, as he is really an oasis of positivity in an internet drowning in negativity. It is really worth your time to spend hours doing a deep dive on Dr. Simi. Finding out about Dr. Simi is like a happier version of the Gin Blossoms song “Found Out About You.”
So having received the best medical services that mustaches can provide, and having my health saved by the world’s premier doctor, it was time for more beer.
And relaxation.
I strolled around the neighborhood.
Then, I went to my room to rest up before going downstairs and using the hammock.
My intended nap turned into a whole night of sleeping, so the hammock would have to wait until the next day.
How ironic, perhaps, that I had to rest before using a hammock.
And how much more suspenseful it is that Hammock Review readers have to wait longer before reading about and seeing the hammock in Cancun.
We should pause here to note the dad joke possibilities of suspenseful and hammocks that also suspend. I’ll let somewhat else finish the job, because those jokes are not my style (no kids). But in a world so serious, any type of humor is to be appreciated–-and I would like to contribute to it, even in the slightest forms.
So suspenseful puns laid to rest, I woke up and took a shower. I was now ready to go use a hammock.
To prepare myself for such an event, I ordered a coffee and beer (#Balance) at the bar. While I drank the beer, I picked at what seemed like some kind of pimple or bump on the back of my neck. But you can’t generally pull off a pimple–-and I pulled off this bump.
Another tick.
You may be thinking there is going to be a repeat of what happened the day prior, of the long, drawn out stories of doctors and whatnot. Well, there is nothing that needs to be said now. For I already had my defense mechanisms in me. Dr. Simi is sort of the antithesis of malaria, once in your system, always in your system. To meet Dr. Simi is to know him for a lifetime.
In other words, there was no need to worry about this second tick. Dr. Simi wasn’t. And I felt good antibiotics already pumping through my system, complemented with alcohol.
Hammock time for real now.
Hammock.
That may look like me doing a handstand out of the hammock (if you are completely trashed on cheap, disgusting Whisky), but don’t be fooled by our tricky camera angles and our advanced, nontraditional, postmodern photography techniques. Those are not my legs in the picture, but rather a painting by someone who retroactively used my legs as a model–-and then did an awful job of painting because those legs do not look like an accurate representation of my legs.
Me in hammock.
A swing–-why not?--maybe a distant relative of the hammock? Hard to say, I haven’t done the genealogy or DNA testing just yet.