Real connections between people in Tulum
One Thursday afternoon on a corner in Aldea Zama a man showed me how to open a coconut with a machete, step by step, holding my wrist and saying, slowly, slowly. I have done it forty times since and I still hear him say it. I never asked his name. The corner has a different cart on it now. If you are somewhere else, I have a coconut for you, and ten fingers, which I credit entirely to your teaching.
About a dozen of us stood in the water at Gran Cenote watching a small turtle swim slowly across the pool, all trying to be completely silent and failing in different ways. Somebody sneezed. Somebody apologised to the turtle. Somebody's stomach made a noise like a door. The turtle did not care. When it left, a man whispered, thank you, and we all thanked the turtle. I have not told anyone how seriously I meant it.
Where: Avenida Tulum, beside a colectivo van. Line: 'This is the town. The beach is a different place.' The driver said it patiently to a man in a swim shirt holding a towel. Next: the driver added that everything costs more the closer you get to the water, and the man nodded as if he had been told a secret. He got in anyway. I have said that sentence to myself more than once in my own first year.
You pedalled through Tulum Pueblo one Wednesday morning with a full sized cactus in the front basket, wobbling, with a look that said I know what I am doing. I was outside a shop holding a coconut. I wanted to ask where the cactus was going. I also wanted to ask whether the cactus had been consulted. You went around the corner. I have seen eleven plants on bicycles since. None of them have had your confidence.
After a storm on Thursday the street flooded at a corner in Region 15 and I was stuck there, looking at my shoes. A woman on the other side said, take them off, we all do. We waded across holding our sandals and by the end we were laughing at how we looked. She is now the first person I call when it rains. We keep a spare towel at each other's door. It has not rained for nine days. We have called each other anyway. It is a reliable friendship and it is waterproof.
The beach at Playa Paraiso was almost empty at sunset on Tuesday and the handful of us who were there ended up standing in the water without planning to. Nobody spoke. A man took out a small flute, played three notes and put it away again. The sky turned the colour of a peach. Everyone left separately, in different directions. I have not found the flute man again. I have asked two vendors. Both said, which notes? I hummed them. Both nodded, politely, and sold me a drink.
A storm rolled through La Veleta in the night and I had left my bicycle outside by mistake. In the morning it was under a tarp with a rock on each corner and a small note in Spanish that said, lock the chain next time. I never found out which neighbour did it. The chain has been locked every night since. I leave a mango on the wall on Fridays. It is gone by Saturday. The tarp is still on the bike. I do not have the heart.
Around midnight I realised my phone was in the back of a taxi I had taken from Tulum Pueblo, and I did not know the driver's name. The next morning a man with the same car found me on the main road, rolled down the window and held it out. He had waited at the same corner for two hours. I tried to pay him. He refused and drove off. I do not know how he found me. I think he asked every person on that road, one by one, and I would like to thank each of them.
I buy fruit in the morning at the Mercado Municipal, where the smell of cut pineapple reaches the street before the stalls do. Then I go home and work. Most days the connection is fine until the afternoon rain, and then it slows or drops for an hour. My neighbours shrug and say it is normal. Is it normal for home wifi in Tulum to get worse when the rain comes, and what do long-time residents do about it?
I was crossing the road in Aldea Zama on a Wednesday morning, holding a coconut with a straw and trying not to spill it. You rode past on a yellow bicycle and said, nice coconut. Just that. I said, thanks. You laughed and turned the corner. It is a small thing, but nobody had said anything nice about my choices for days. I have bought a coconut every morning since. Nobody has said anything. I have started to say it to myself.
