Looking for a pleasant spot in Mexico, free of beach vendors, sleepy and reminiscent of the mexico of the Sixties?

I recommend to you Zamas, just south of Tulum, on the east coast of Mexico.

I meant to post something about just after we returned in February, but time got away from me.  A recent mailing from the hotel jogged my memory–so here is my experience:

We rented a car in Cancun and drove a couple of hours south.  A shuttle would do as well and save some money.  Taxis abound in Tulum and will take you where you want.  The ruins there are astounding, but if you want to really be impressed, seek out Chichenitza, about 2 1/2 hours away.  It is worth it to read up on Mayan culture and the history of the area before.  Then hire an English speaking guide when you get there to fill out the details.

Another diviersion isn the area are the local cenotes: freshwater, crystal clear pools that dot the countryside.  The clarity of the water is incredible, the swimming fabulous and the underwater rock formations, awesome.

Back at the hotel Zamas, you can arrange an in room massage (the rooms are clean and nicely turned out with great bathrooms.  No air conditioning, but good fans and mosquito netting)), a snorkel trip, a fishing expedition, or scuba diving.  The restaurant has very good food: Mexican/French and very fresh fish.  In fact, the evenings catch arrived on the beach one afternoon, courtesy of a couple of local young men.

The bar has great drinks and there is live music: a different band nearly every night.  Dance in the sand at the water’s edge, under the stars.  It’s heaven.

Next chance I have we’ll return.  I just hope it is still as unspoiled as I remember.  Don’t tell anyone.

I spend most of the summer with only weekend visitations from my husband.  I am on our boat in the waters of British Columbia.  He has a day job and, for some reason, they demand that he actually be at that job five out of seven days a week.  Harsh, I know.

I look forward to him arriving via float plane most Fridays for his two day sojourn…most of the time.  But, did you ever have a run of days when just about everything goes wrong?  Not uncommon on a boat, I admit.  In fact, when and if we ever get another boat, we may name her Murphy, for that famous law applies with particular regularity at sea.

The boat was running fine.  The tender, with a newly overhauled outboard was running, in fact, like new.  Enter: engineer-husband. 

Day one: a fuse blows in one of the heads and the lights below are nada.  But, said engineer-husband loves a project: idle hands and all that.  In no time (well, actually several hours), the problem is solved and the lights are back up.

Day two: Being a former military pilot, engineer-husband loves speed.  He jumps in the tender and decides to exercise the new-furbished outboard.  Boom.  It does something commonly know to most men as “throwing a rod”.  It sounds to me like the horse-power equivalent to throwing a shoe…except no farrier could fix this.  We now need a brand new outboard.  Ouch.

So, next time anyone asks how much it costs to have your husband fly up for the weekend, I will quote the famous credit card commercial:

Plane ticket to parts unknown: $250

Hourly rate electrical work ( in-house labor): $100

Brand new Honda Fifty: $9500

Weekend with your wife: Priceless.

WALL-E is a robot with a pure and gentle heart.  He is a charming and endearing character with a big job:  cleaning up the trash left behind on earth by humanity before they jumped ship and headed for the cleanliness of outer space. 

It’s a decent message and one, I admit, we all need to heed.  However, as sweet and soulful WALL-E and the movie are, it still boils down to yet another self-loathing poke at humanity.  Wall-E’s earth wasn’t ravaged by war or a meteoric catastrophe, but by mans greed and neglect.

The film focuses on how self-indulgent we are as a species and how we must change.  There is no good news here about humanity, only our whims and downfalls are illustrated.  We have destroyed the world.  We have no place in it.  We should be ejected, and have been.  Just like the semi-documentary recently airing, Life After People.  As though we are somehow apart from the general habitation of the earth, a pariah.

We are, after all, animals.  We have no less a right to be here.  We may make mis-steps, but history has shown we are well able, and in most cases, well on the way, to good stewardship of this planet.  I tend to want to opt for the optimism here, for I believe it is ONLY in optimism that solutions are found.

I confess that, as cute as WALL-E is, and as beautifully done the movie was, I came away wondering why man seems to hate himself, and his place in the world, so much.

I have no idea who April is (to whom the following clip was dedicated), but I’ll wager she either wasn’t old enough at the time to remember Woodstock, or is too old now to still have it in her memory.

Below is yet another example that perhaps nobody really remembers the Sixties…not even as they were happening.  However, memory or not, it is good for a smile.  And, if you haven’t heard of Woodstock, the Beatles or Joe Cocker, look up the real words to the song Joe’s singing….

The fourth of July and summer is finally here in Seattle…sort of.  No rain, cool, cloudy skies and the sun pokes through at 3pm.  Fine with me.  I am a native: webbed feet and pale skin.

If the frivolity of the Fourth doesn’t make you smile, maybe this will.

Watch at least twice if you’re ever having a bad day.  I guarantee a cure!

I will posting a little less frequently over the summer, but bear with me.  I am blessed to be able to spend the next few weeks on a boat along the northwest coast of Canada, something my family and I have been doing for thirty years now.  When I can get a cell signal I will employ the technology to post something.

Have a wonderful, sunny, safe summer, all.

And Happy 4th!!!

The final day of our crossing and there is good news: We have coveted a tour of the bridge and, thanks to the celebrity of the friends we are traveling with, all four of us have received an invitation—but, mum’s the word.

This is not an easy ticket and, if words gets out (as it did with the steak tartare), were cooked, most likely by the volcanic glare of some senior officer if not from the captain himself.

We are met outside the bridge by the cheery captain’s secretary.  She escorts us onto the bridge and directs us to the port-side station where a young man is waiting.  This is the third officer, aboard the QM2 for only three months and straight from college.  He is all of 23 years old.  Those lithe and youthful hands at the helm of the largest ocean liner in the world—at least for the purposes of our tour (This fact later gives me pause when, in the middle of the night, we are awakened by some alarm.  Is it an emergency?  Should I don my life-jacket and proceed to my station or merely pass it off as a drill as so many did aboard the Titanic, later coming to regret?  Picturing the handsome face of the impish third officer, I fall back to sleep…).

The bridge is immense and library quiet, with wings on each side affording full port and starboard views the length of the ship.  There are windows on the floor at each side allowing a long look down (13 stories) the hull of the ship to the sea.

There are systems and redundant systems, alarms (yes, I know) and back up alarms, electronic navigation and paper charts—just in case.  The captain saunters by and leans across the console to explain the toggles and dials.  He answers questions, offers wit, raises his bushy eyebrows and chuckles at a comment here and there, as only the British can do so charmingly.

He is proud of this liner, proud to be commanding her, and he has every right to be, for the Queen Mary 2 is the pride of Cunard, if not the entire sea.  Everyone deserves a crossing, at least once, if for no other reason to understand a pace of time that seems to be disappearing: to enjoy time moment by moment.  The endpoint is not THE point.  It is in the passage of time that our lives are found, not in the punctuation mark at the end. 

Maybe trite but, none-the-less, true.

Our steward is East Indian.  His English is impeccable, but none-the-less a second language.  He appears willing to do anything for us, at anytime.  I think that if I dropped by Blackberry overboard he would not simply TRY to fetch it, he WOULD fetch it.

We decide to have a civilized lunch with our friends in our cabin: Bombay Curry from the kitchen…special order.  And Bloody Mary’s(we are on vacation, after all.).

We cite the ingredients: tomato juice, Tabasco, celery salt, lemon juice—oh, and Worcestershire.

This last word brings a look of constrenation to Stanley’s face (that can’t possibly be his real name, I think).

I repeat: Worcestershire.

Stanley nods and disappears.

We retire to the veranda to observe the ocean, calm as a rug, as it changes from deep blue to teal with the transition of depth beneath the keel as we glide from the Atlantic trench onto the Atlantic shelf.

We return to our stateroom and our supplies have been delivered: vodka, tomato juice, Tabasco, celery salt, lemons and—-a glass of scotch on ice?

Moments later, with drinks in hand, we welcome Stanley back as he brings our curry.

There must be some mistake, I say.  We didn’t order the scotch.  And where’s the Worcestershire?

To which Stanley replies, “Mum asked for a Whiskey chaser.”

It’s all in the pronunciation.

Did I mention we were joined on our voyage by some friends?  I highly recommend rounding out a table for four with good company.  It makes the people watching much more fun and it doubles or triples the probability of real entertainment—like being asked to leave because you’re having too much fun, but, I digress.

Three of the six evenings on board are formal and each formal night has a theme, the final one of our voyage was dubbed the Ascot Ball.

Hats were an option.

If you didn’t bring one, happily there was a hat making class (oh, boy!) the afternoon before the ball.

I chose to languish in the spa instead.  Alas, when the hat contest rolled around that night, no one in or party had a “proper topper”, as it were.  But, never fear, husband-engineer had it figured out.

On a side table in the ballroom stood a tall glass vase of white lilies begging to be donned. and paraded (ask me if there might have been a Martini involved…)

If it hasn’t occurred to you yet, the British can be a serious people.  Decorum, particularly on the QM2, looms like a grand umbrella.

The hat parade was in full swing.  The crowd was largely focused on the high drama of hat picking, and the engineer-husband removes the vase from its stand and hoists it above his head.

Our coy little party erupts into laughter and suddenly the attention of a senior ships officer is beaded our direction.  His eyes narrow, his steps quickly to the scene of the frivolity and delivers a glare that translates somewhere in between “leave now” and “you will go ashore on the next iceberg.”

The vase is replaced to the table and we retreat. I feel like Cornwall, ready to rebel.  And what would Cornwall have done?

Another Martini, corporal.

I must pause here in the middle of my QM2 posts, to commemorate the summer solstice—Boeing style.

As you may have guessed by now, my husband is employed by the Boeing Company.  He works in flight test and has the opportunity to be among the first up in the various aircraft.

I contend that the “test schedule” is an oxymoran.  Nothing ever seems to go as planned, on the day planned, or even on the plane, planned.

Nearly a full year ago a test was initiated via the “schedule” to test the landing lights of the prized 737 (which is delivered at a rate of roughly one per day here in Seattle).  This test can oly be done at night, during a long enough wedge of time to get good results, and with the lowest ambiant light conditions possible (read: not anywhere near Seattle).

Due to other more pressing test issues, the test is pushed back…and pushed back…and pushed back.  From last fall into deep winter, then spring.  Now we are at summer solstice: the longest day of the year, the longest daylight and the shortest sliver of darkness.

OK!  Let’s fly!

So, after working a full day, the flight test crew takes off into the night…the very short night to try to complete a test before civil twilight dawns at 4am….

It is a great motivating factor, trying to beat the sun.  Test complete, they are all home by 5am…

The new test on the schedule: hot weather testing.  No doubt it will slide until December.

We hear from the captain at 12:10pm each day.  He delivers the ships position, sea conditions, etc.  Today he points out the fact that at approximately 2:30pm. we will pass over the Titanic.  Why he feels compelled to tell us this, I don’t know.  It’s enough for me that the theme song to said movie seems to play endlessly in the elevators and companion-ways….British humor?

The captain is fond of reminding us that we are in the middle of nowhere: something I can glean by simply looking out any porthole.

All of this happens just after the ship’s bell is sounded to mark noon.  And noon arrives an hour later every day.  The clocks are rolled forward during each night.

I can’t say there is no “jet-lag”, but “liner-lag” would be a better description: slower and more persuasive than the shock of a full six hur change all at once.

Breakfast attendance rolled forward noticeably on a daily basis until, near the end of the crossing, the dining rooms were fullest fifteen minutes before breakfast was over.

As the week progressed, so did the hours at which we took all our meals.  First day: breakfast at 8am, lunch at noon, dinner at 7pm.  Day 3: breakfast at 9am, lunch at 1pm, dinner at 8pm, until the last day when breakfast became lunch and the restaurants peaked at 9:30pm for dinner.  Some of the older crowd, no doubt, ate breakfast before they went to bed.

But, there was much more to the crossing than meals.  The Canyon Ranch Spa operates a terrific facility on board complete with large hydrotherapy pool and several steam rooms.  The fitness room is a large and as well-equipped as any I’ve seen and, if you choose, three laps around the promenade deck equals 1.1 miles (if you can brave the frequent 50 knot wind speed in your face).

How many can say they have hoofed it across the Atlantic?