Cancun Journal: October 19

October 20, 2007

A final, beautiful day, keeping our streak alive this year of perfect vacation weather.

Saying goodbye to Eduardo, one of the excellent beach waiters, he tells me that there were two topless women on the beach very early this morning. “Is that unusual?” I ask, because I’ve not seen that behavior here. He tells me that when Europeans are at the resort, most of the women are topless. But since this week’s visitors are virtually all American, you practically never see it.

What is it with American repression about sexuality? (He told me neither the hotel management nor the staff care either way.)

I paid the bill during the day to avoid the crush tonight and tomorrow. We’ll eschew the vans and take a private taxi back to the airport, where the authorities desire your presence three hours before flight time! (I remember that demand in Chile, where I wound up spending 2.5 hours sitting at the gate with nary an air club in sight.)

Dinner was so extraordinary last night, that we’ve returned to the Ritz but, on the captain’s suggestion, head to Casita’s, which is on the beach. It’s $100 just for them to set up a table, so I doubted there would be a crowd (there were three tables occupied in the Ritz Grill last night, and five in the J.W. Marriot main restaurant the night prior—I find that Americans here aren’t huge spenders). There are four tables set up, though you can’t see from one to the other.

We are escorted past the pools to the beachfront, along a lighted boardwalk set in the sand. Our table, lighted from below, is in a cabana with sheer mesh sides and an open front ten yards from the surf. The ocean breeze cools us as we sip Champagne and then dine on shrimp, crab, lobster, oysters, tuna, and sea bass. I make a deal with the waiter—he speaks English and I speak Spanish.

We stare at cruise ships, tiny specks of light in the pitch black, traversing the horizon, as we end our Cancun vacation. We are all traveling somewhere, on the journeys of our lives.