A Return

Blergh. I've been opening the blogger.com page for three days now. I returned home from a little trip to Guatemala, Belize, and Mexico late Saturday, and I suppose I've just been processing ever since. I have a new found admiration for bloggers who post almost daily, regardless of what's happening in their lives. For me, it seems I must arrive upon some perfectly appropriate insight to share with my imagined audience :-)

It's taken a couple of Bikram classes to "reset" me. The trip... wow. How to sum up such an

experience? Sometimes, language is a way in, and sometimes it's a barrier laden with cliches. Parts of the trip, like waking up to the sound of the Caribbean from my cabana on the beach, were like this: Tulum, Mexico Mayan Ruins, Tikkal

It's not Zico! Parts of the trip, though, such as the relentlessly hot, air condition-free hotel rooms in Flores, Guatemala, rendered me brain-dead, baffled, like the moment when your eyes set upon "Alaskan" coconut water. Yeah, you yogis think you’ll be ready for the heat, but it’s one thing for sweat for 90 minutes, knowing that at some point, the buckets of liquid will stop oozing from your pores. When there’s no end in sight, though, it’s a completely different story.

I've got an endless list of the "good" things to talk about. The food. The crumbling churches in Antigua. The jungle surrounding Tikkal. Jumping into cool water after riding in a van for hours through Mexico. Did I mention the food? Camaron del ajo, conch steak, ceviche, ceviche, ceviche. And, randomly, the best nachos I've had in my life.  And there were challenges: riding in vans for hours. Watching soldiers pile out of their trucks to surround a nearby vehicle, enormous guns aimed at the driver. Having sweaty Apocalypse Now nights, sleeping in dead, humid air, because a local politician cut the power to our electricity (i.e., fans) so people couldn't watch a TV program portraying him in a bad light. And then there are the spells of pure joy and connection to experience, found usually in unexpected moments, like the tiny gecko that graced my hotel room in Mexico, as if to say adios. Eating dinner by candlelight because the power was off. Realizing on the 8th hour of a cramped van ride that this is it, this beautiful ride is what I came here for. The real experience defies expectations, right? Mi amigo de Playa del Carmen  _______________________________________________________________ *Sorry for the crappy formatting, y'all. I suck at blogger.