Real connections between people in Puerto Morelos
At Ojo de Agua on a Saturday afternoon, a pelican took the fish I was grilling right off the plate, flew twenty meters, and then, as I stood there with my arms out, dropped it back on the sand. Slightly eaten. Slightly sandy. Mine again. I ate the half that was left. I would like to thank the pelican for this unusual form of customer service. I would also like to say that I know the other half is somewhere. I am not angry. I am watching.
Did anyone find a snorkel mask with a yellow strap, mended with black thread along an edge? I think I left it on the sand near the muelle pier on a Thursday morning, about a ten minute walk from the plaza. The mask is old and not worth much to anyone else, but it is the mask that has ever sealed properly for me, and the reef is right there. I will check this board again on Sunday.
You had tied a hammock between two parked golf carts near the plaza on a Sunday afternoon and were reading an actual paperback with your feet up, like it was a living room. Nobody said anything. A policeman walked past and nodded respectfully. I stood there with a bag of mangoes feeling like I had missed a memo. Other people were looking at you and none of them looked cross. I would like to join the next one. I will bring my own golf cart, if I can find one.
My snorkel strap broke at the reef off Puerto Morelos and a man floating nearby handed me his spare without a word. We ended up following the same turtle for twenty minutes. On the beach we compared how many fish we had counted. His number was eighty. Mine was thirty. We have a standing swim every Saturday and the count has still not been settled. Last week we agreed on a number by splitting it. We both cheated. We both know.
At noon on a bench in the plaza in Puerto Morelos I had no lunch and about forty pesos. A woman on the next bench unwrapped a sandwich without asking, split it in half, and put one half on the bench between us. We watched a lizard cross the paving stones. She left before I thought to ask her name. It was ham and avocado. I can still taste it. I made one the next day and it was not the same. I think the missing ingredient was a stranger.
My first low season here I learned to keep small pesos in my pocket. Everyday purchases are in pesos, and around the town plaza in September, when it is quiet and the heat is heavy, the small stalls seem to like exact money more than they would in February. Break your larger notes at a shop with a full till, then spend the small ones at the stalls. I used to hold up a queue with a big note and a hopeful face.
My bicycle tire went flat near Ojo de Agua at midday and I walked it for a kilometer in the heat. A fisherman mending a net on the sand got up without being asked and brought a hand pump from his truck. He pumped the tire himself, checked it with his thumb and went back to the net. I thanked him four times. He nodded once each time. I have cycled past every Sunday since with two cold drinks in my basket. He is usually mending. I think it is the same net.
I drove down here from Miami with two cats and a vague plan, and last week the grey one sat on the windowsill for an hour watching a sky the colour of dishwater. It turned out to be nothing, but it made me realise I do not have a plan. Hurricane season runs from June to November, and I live in Centro, with a carrier I have never got a cat into at the first attempt. What do people with pets here do when a hurricane warning goes up?
In the evening at the leaning lighthouse in Puerto Morelos you photographed it from three different angles and the last one was lying flat on the sand. I was on a bench eating mango with chili and could not stop watching. You stood up covered in sand, saw me, and held the camera out like you were offering to share. The photograph was good. The mango was better. I said, it leans on purpose, you know. You said, I know. We both looked at it. It leaned.
