Looking back at Cancun

When I look back at the time spent in Cancun, a tender smile illuminates my face, it’s still hard to conceive how those blank days and moments I couldn’t foresee, turned into all these amazing memories I now take with me. Everyday was new, everyday was inspiring, somehow everyday the detail of what remains untold makes this cultural ecstasy worth sharing.

By saying this I do not mean everyday was merely filled of happiness, partying or and drinking. I am not that kind of tourist, this is… if I am a tourist at all. What I really mean is that I made the most of my freedom and allowed Cancun and its passing people to fill it with experiences, allowed it to fill my life with their own lifes and learn about whatever came my way.

It was a complete “trip”, from the moment I met my borrowed Mexican family, the always inspiring CS family, my fellow Portuguese explorers, the tourists, the workers from the dive shop, not only the divers but also the ones who don’t feel attracted to the underwater world but are simply good at what they do.

The cliché of my beloved long walks on the beach, an hour long walk, two hours long,… just me, along side with the water holding hands with the sun, (or with two heavy coconuts), running, playing games with strangers, possibly finding some secret forgotten drug lord plantation or… a coconut drinking society… of course!

These steps I have walked brought me nearer to the sea. The one who makes you feel so small, so ignorant, so vulnerable to all it’s might, it pulls you into the currents, tests your skills and introduces you to sea people… the ones who will rescue you… again! Seamen, sailors, fishermen, the ones whose blood is partially salt water, the ones who after a long day in it, or on it, dine by it, eating what it provides, while the future sailor wives dance salsa on top on the tables, making me, a small Latin European who spent all her teenage weekends dancing in Portuguese clubs, seem like I can’t dance at all. I was not taught salsa in the warm cover of the night, listening to the rhythm of the sea as a child, I can’t beat that! But I could join them… so I did.

I could write so much more about it, I could repeat “Ruta 16” version the seamen: “Sea People of Puerto Juarez”, I could do it but I wont, seen that I lost my “eyes” nearly a month ago. The forgotten untold stories keep me going, so my friends can read them, so many other things can happen … well that’s a different complete chapter, and this is about the Cultural Ecstasy, how it slaps you, changes you, and shows you life, a different lifestyle, a life that is not yours to change, but it’s yours to respect. (I could possibly do a chapter on Cultural Ecstasy, the traveling fuel too).

The travellers, the divers, the sea people, the family people made my days better, the dirty Mexicans, the Latin big-headed macho men made it tiring, made me feel like giving them free lectures, not only I do say I have a (invisible) boyfriend now, as I also feel like asking them about their mothers, does your mother have a boyfriend? Is she a “sexy princessa”? What would your mother feel like if a taxi driver decided to go slower just to get her to spend time with him? I am not very sure on how to deal with this now, but I have plenty of time left in Latin America to use different techniques… or to simply learn a martial art…

Course not all time spent with Latin men was bad, I did have the pleasure of spontaneous massage, dinner and a strip by three different good looking man in the same night, between laughs, walks and ice-cream, all in good faith. As I have been on roadtrips, children parties, gatherings where I was just one more person, as part of an interesting group of people rather than a “target female”, which is always nice.

It has been stress versus tranquility; it has been the pleasure of solitude versus the delight of playing “Lobos” during a real sushi night; the conversations with myself versus the long chats with hundreds of strangers; learning about the day Zona Hoteleira and the night loud, fun, North American centre of visual pollution that it becomes (yes I am aware this is an European opinion) or a can call it… “ The Las Vegas Looking Stressful Glamour” vs the serenity of the empty beaches it hides where some work 9 to 5, 9 pm to 5 am, the “Ecological workers” who watch in the night the big clumsy turtles leaving their 90 babies behind each, hoping to meet one of them one day, out there in the Great Blue. The ecological carers make sure drunk tourists don’t scare the turtles away, or step on their eggs and once the mother turtle is gone, they act like foster parents, take them to a manmade cradle and look after them until it’s time for them to be released into the nature realm. It has been the peace, and slow pace 100 feet below surface love vs. the 60 feet high exhilarating bungee jump fear, the same old things you do everyday vs. driving a moped for the first time; the calm days vs. the franticness of the lack of sleep in a nutshell stability vs. vulnerability.

Now when I look back at this city where an Island has territory in the mainland and not the other way around, I look back with that old smile, that same smile I have felt before, when you walk into the dark unknown and you leave with the light of knowledge, of experience, the realisation of your ignorance, the certainty of this new understanding you take with you, and the awareness of a new unknown that you will leave behind as a mystery.

By the way, does anyone have a spare guitar?... Thank you Roger.

Wedding Bubbles.

As part of living your life, you try to make your dreams come true, and by doing so you cross path everyday with other people who are doing the same. They might not be living the same dream, but they are the very best they can to let the world guide them on their personal journeys.

So you wake up early, you put your clothes on, you wish you had at least 4h more hours of sleep. You get in a strangers car, let the road rock you to sleep a bit further, and before you realise you are in parking lot with hundreds of lost people trying to figure out what’s happening. You find yourself back in the car, going through unfamiliar paved roads, dirt roads, winding roads, whilst you let your skin absorb some of those extremely needed good energies the sun has to offer.

You get to the beach, walk in the sand, swim, breathe, put your gear, swim weighing a lot more than you used too… and you thought you needed to loose some weight?!

Before you realise you are surrounded by people, you don’t know how many people are there with, but it really doesn’t matter, cause you are all together doing the same thing… you are going down!

Two groups are formed, chants of support, teasing chants, till the bell rings, and then only then, you all get negative together… negative for the better, negative for someone else’s dreams.

The visibility decreases as more and more of you get down together. The bride and the groom appear, not only the main people of the day, but also the “owners” of the day, the “owners” of today’ dream. They smile, the kiss, they bind their lifes together, forever, or at least for how long forever can actually last. You hope they last, it’s everyday two people gather such a big group of different people in order to, not only celebrate their “boda” but to make underwater magic happen. Magic between Latin Europe and Latin America, an union biding dreams and a common love… the Ocean.

There are the “usual” pictures, people smiling, dancing underwater, kisses, hugs, and those things weddings have just in a different… pressure. Just instead of lighters there are people waving their emergency regulator and bubbling everything up.

Italian, Mexican, Portuguese, Brazilian, American, Chilean, Argentinian, French, Spanish emerge slowly from the waters, and slowly find out they were 12 people short from making breaking the record of the biggest wedding water… but every single one of them got to be 1/250 of someone else’s’ dream.

Free Dreams

The wind blows, the boat rocks, I am on the way for another diving adventure, I look around observe the people around me. The sky above has this perfect mixture of grey and blue, it’s not really blue, and neither is the sea.

As the boat carries on, taking everyone a bit further I look around and let myself feel smaller and smaller, a smile grows in my face. I look down, very soon we are all going to be under that cover, a water cover which hides a doorless world. Those water underneath me are the limit to underwater world, where starfishes, turtles and stingrays wait to be found.

The people on boat the start to get ready. Some came from far, some from close, some only go underwater sometimes, others do it everyday, maybe out of a bet, out of fascination, out of love for the unknown, for something greater than us. Something a lot people seem to be looking for: something greater. It does exist its right there beneath me.

The Mexican Insurance seller who is also an instructor, the bleached Canadian blonde living in Mexico, the nervous Polish girl, the excitable American family, the Argentian doctor living in California, the water obsessed South African living in Boston, they all have one thing in commom,… me. Why me? Well, they are a few of the many people I meet this week on a boat, wanting to go to learn, to breathe underwater, to take pictures, to explore a new endless world. They are all on different levels, on different expertises, but they will jump grabbing their masks, their regulators, hoping for the best.

Some people feel some panic, some people get scared, and I do too, I feel my heart beating faster, feels harder to breathe and I get scared right when they tell me “go”. It’s hard to be a slighty claustrophobic person who loves doing this. But then we start descending slowly, and a new world comes to life, soon enough all the emotions are replaced by new sensations.

It’s like for the first time when someone tells you “Focus, don’t think about anything” you can actually do it. It’s a world where sound, colour, movement everything is different, everything is slower. The main sound, nearly… the only sound is your breath, the calming sound of knowing you are breathing underwater, looking at a wreck, looking at a fish, watching the world going, getting mesmerised by every reef, getting lost in every wreck, and intense beauty of it all… and it’s free.

Well as free as putting some free old ideas into practice, some free hard work and diving can be free too!