Reminders of humanity in Mexico
Playa del Carmen, Mexico. Wikimedia commons photo
One of the greatest advantages of traveling the world is being reminded how similar we all are, regardless of culture, race, language or religion.
We are separated by invisible borders that we honor more than we should. At the end of the day, we’re all human beings on the same planet. If you strip away our skin and ego defenses, you can’t tell one nation from another.
Last week our family vacationed in Playa del Carmen, Quintana Roo, in Mexico. This city is located within the Riviera Maya region of the Yucatan Peninsula on the Caribbean Sea. The Yucatan Peninsula is bookended by Cancun in the north and Tulum in the south and is an absolutely beautiful part of our world, with jungles, an array of foliage and wildlife, Mayan ruins, cenotes and stunning waters.
Throughout my life, I’ve been to several different parts of Mexico and am always taken aback at how kind the people are. Not just the people on the resort, but everyone. They seem to take pride in their country and their work, and I really respect that. One evening in Playa del Carmen, we met an artist named Agustin Ehuan and watched him work. He creates most of his pieces through finger painting. In a city that can admittedly have a lot of touristy shops, it was refreshing to come in contact with a local artist and purchase three pieces of his work. Agustin was gracious and generous, and we plan to follow his creative journey.
We allowed ourselves to disconnect as best we could from work and life back home, enjoying activities like kayaking, boating, snorkeling, parasailing and swimming. With it being very hot and humid, we spent most of our time in the water or the shade, but one day we braved the heat and rode bikes to visit local ruins, then biked on in to the downtown port area of Playa del Carmen. We shopped and stopped by Parque Los Fundadores to see the Portal Maya sculpture, a soaring arch that pays homage to Mayan culture and serves as a popular backdrop for photographs.
Of all the water activities, snorkeling on a coral reef was by far my favorite. I felt like a mermaid, swimming along the reef and seeing the coral, schools of colorful fish and other marine organisms. The only problem was it wasn’t nearly long enough. We decided that next time we hope to charter our own snorkeling boat somehow so we can spend as much time as we want underwater.
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Teaching teens in a tumultuous world
Back at the resort, we experienced our first silent DJ party which was exhilarating. This is when all guests wear wireless headphones and a DJ broadcasts different channels of music through the headphones as opposed to over a loudspeaker. I’ve written recently and talked on my podcast about working to be more playful and less pensive. That night we danced and laughed for almost two hours straight and I must say, it felt amazing to be silly and carefree, making me wonder why I don’t do it more often.
With all this being said about beauty, excitement and whimsy, the trip wasn’t all fun and games. On our first full day, my younger son got stung by a jellyfish after being in the water for only 30 minutes. With three welts bubbling immediately, I rushed him over to a lifeguard who spoke minimal English while I spoke minimal Spanish, but with some simple words, hand gestures and the obvious evidence on my child’s thigh, the lifeguard understood what happened. He retrieved a spray bottle from his bag and vigorously sprayed the liquid on the welts. The strong smell of vinegar filled my nostrils. Come to find out, as I’m sure some of you may already know, after cleaning the sting with water, spraying household vinegar is the first thing you should do. We then went back to our room and I put a combination of high quality lavender essential oil and Aquaphor on the welts and a few hours later, the pain and swelling were gone.
Fast forward to our last morning in Mexico when three of the six of us woke up with significant gastrointestinal issues. We’re still not sure if it was something we ate or if we caught a virus, but nonetheless it was not fun to travel all day when feeling so puny. The good news is everyone was feeling almost 100 percent within 24 hours. Additionally, at the airport, we had a delay presumably because of the Crowdstrike outage and then just when we were about to board, the entire airport lost power and we had to wait another 45 minutes before that was resolved.
Despite some setbacks, when I look at pictures of the trip and think of all the laughs, inside jokes, people we met, food we ate and waters we touched, I feel nothing but joy and gratitude. I’m so very grateful that we got the opportunity to be together for a week in a place of kind, generous people and unparalleled beauty.
(Susanna Shetley is a writer, editor and digital media specialist. This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..)
