Somewhere in Mexico | #1

It was after midnight by the time I got through customs and to be honest I still didn’t know where the hell I was going at that point.

It’s not like I hadn’t thought about it on the plane but it just wasn’t much of a concern.

I figured I would get an Uber into Cancun and find a place to stay for the night. Or maybe I would just set my bag down outside and sleep right there at the airport and get a cheap domestic flight somewhere else the next morning.

No big deal I’ll figure something out.

But then I get out into the parking lot and open the Uber app on my phone and try to put my location into the little from field and nothing is happening. I’m thinking maybe I just have a bad connection or something so I keep trying to refresh the page until I realize…oh, I bet the damn cartels own all the cab companies and they outlawed Uber.

So now Uber is off the table and like I said, it’s after midnight so there’s only a handful of cab drivers lingering around and I don’t speak Spanish so I’m basically just standing there with my bag feeling like a Schmuck.

Then a pretty young French girl walks up and asks me where I’m going.

No idea, I tell her.

Long story short she’s going south to meet friends but the cab is going to cost her $100 so she’s basically wondering if I might be going in the same direction and if I would be interested in sharing the cost.

I look at the map and decide that by going south I can get dropped off in Playa del Carmen and then find a place to stay there. It seems like a good enough plan so me and the girl get in the backseat of the cab and take off.

I’m looking out my window as we drive along the highway.

It’s very dark and I start wondering how I could be so sure that I’m really in Mexico. I mean obviously I bought the plane ticket and went through customs and got my passport stamped and now I’m sitting in the back of a Mexican guy’s cab, but just from looking out the window on this dark highway, it feels like we could be anywhere in the world and it would appear exactly the same. So in this particular moment what is it that makes my brain so confident that we’re really in Mexico?

Anyway, I’m playing around with that idea while the girl beside me is on her phone.

About 40 minutes later we arrive in Playa del Carmen and the cabbie drives around the streets while I lean forward and look through the windshield for a good spot to get out. The whole place is jammed with spring breakers. Broken beer bottles. Puddles of puke. Pounding music. Coke boogers and barefoot girls in skimpy sequined outfits arguing with their blacked out boyfriends about some other bitch.

This will do, I shout to the cabbie.

He doesn’t have to pull over because we’re stuck in traffic anyway so I slide open the van door and step out into the middle of the street with my bag. By this point in our relationship the French girl seems thoroughly confused by my existence. I hand her some cash, tell her goodbye and that it was nice meeting her and then close the door.

It’s around 2am now so I get a cheap room at the first hotel that will take me in at that hour.

Once inside my room I close the door behind me, strip my clothes, take a hot shower, wrap a bath towel around my body, then lay on the bed and stare up at the rotating ceiling fan blades until I fall asleep.