On the Rocks.: mexico

Showing posts with label mexico. Show all posts

Home again, home again.

I'm back. I have to admit, it's a lot easier to come back to this home than to our previous one, mostly because we arrived to weather nice enough to enjoy a casual salad on an outdoor patio on our way home from the airport.

We had such a great trip. Like last year, the weather was perfect, the hotel was awesome (and so super cheap), and we explored some different parts of the area. Plenty of photos to come on F-book soon...perhaps some here as well. They have lots of blog-worthy moments among them.

But perhaps none so blog-worthy as one particular moment, exactly a week ago this very minute, in fact.

We had headed out to try to get to a beach we'd stumbled across last year, almost by accident. A huge stretch of deserted white sand, crashing waves, and a pod of whales playing in the surf. It even had mist. It was the most perfect spot and we were only sorry to not have found it sooner so we could have planned a day around relaxing in the sand, away from the Del Boca Vista crowd who had invaded our hotel with their retarded questions ("You take Canadian money here, right?") and their prosthetic hips. Gorgeous. Anyways, back to the beach. We really wanted to go back to take more pictures, but had heard through the Mexican grapevine (which speaks really fast, but I can understand most of it) that the Government had purchased the entire beach and surrounding area and scheduled it for development starting immediately.

The tiny socialist inside of me finds this devastating.

Regardless, Mom, Dad, Kurt and I headed off to see how far we could get down the crappy beach road (about 4 km of pot-hole filled red dusty dirt) before getting stopped by a Mexican with a machine gun, which is pretty standard. We got to the point where the beach was in view, but yes...a machine-gun armed Mexican told us we couldn't take the car any further, but we were welcome to walk down to the beach. We did, and thankfully found the beach untouched so far, minus a fence and the little thatched beach palapas (shelters) that were there last year. Dad headed off to birdwatch in the crocodile-infested marsh, Mom found a spot in the sand to sit and "play with her new camera", and Kurt suggested that we walk down the beach.

Can you smell where this is going? Because I couldn't.

It was hot already, even though it was a bit overcast, and just like last year, our footprints were the only ones along the sand. And, like last year, there was a salty mist over the beach and a pod of whales playing way out in the water. It was so, so beautiful. And it got even more beautiful when my favorite guy got down on one knee in the sand (which turned into two, because it's hard to kneel in sand), took a little box out of his pocket, and asked me to marry him. I didn't even look at the ring (seriously) because I was crying harder than I did at the end of "The Notebook", but I did say yes. Obviously.

I had thought awhile back that this was perhaps a possibility on this trip, but talked myself out of it when I realized that having complete control of our bank accounts AND doing all of the packing would have made it impossible for him to sneak a ring in. Plus, as usual, his natural casualness and total lack of that scared deer look that most of us have when about to do something somewhat nerve-wracking meant that I was positive by the time we got on the plane to go to Mexico that I had been totally wrong about it all and purposely put it out of my head for the trip, thankfully, so I was totally shocked when he put the ring on my finger.

However, it is a well known fact that Kurt is actually smarter than I am and knows me much better than I thought. He bought the ring before we even moved here, way back in the fall, and had it shipped to my parents to bring with them, knowing full well that the chances of me finding it were pretty good in a one-bedroom apartment. The whole thing was planned also knowing how important it was for me to have my parents around when it happened. They've missed so many exciting parts of my life in the past few years, and it meant a lot to me to be able to walk back down the beach and share it with them as well. We all headed to another favorite beach for a delicious lunch of freshly-caught garlic shrimp to celebrate.

I'm very, very happy. I don't think I've gone five minutes without looking at my ring since that moment, and pretty much spent the rest of the week smiling. We made the obvious phone calls to family and a couple of friends before our phone cards ran out, and the shoddy internet connection at the hotel meant that there wasn't much else we could do until we got back. That's ok though. Being able to change our F-book status to "engaged" gave us (me) something to look forward to on the way home.

OH...the ring. Round solitaire set in platinum. It's my dream ring...and it's even the perfect size. I absolutely love it.

I'M GETTING MARRIED!

Holy crap.

Nueve...ocho...siete...seis...

At the very end of next week, I'll be falling asleep to the sounds of the waves in Mexico. This will beat the hell out of falling asleep to the sounds of waves provided by the 'Tropical Beach' MP3 file that we normally listen to at night. Though, the MP3 DOES have some loud bird noises which I have grown to appreciate...even though they woke me up and completely freaked me out the first time I heard them. It was like splash...splash...SPLASH...splash...spBAK BAK BAK BAK BAK BAAWK BAAWK BAAWK BAAAAWK...splash...splash...BAK bak bak...and so on. Sounds ridiculous, but it actually is quite soothing. I also enjoy 'Amazon Rainstorm', but Kurt doesn't think it promotes sleep as much as it might just make you need to use the bathroom.

Anyways, real waves will be a nice change of pace. As will restaurant meals for under $10 (for both, beer included) and poolside reading of beach-worthy girly books (last year was the Something Borrowed/Something Blue duo - the ultimate in beach reading).

We've been counting down the sleeps to our Mexican vacation since we planned it last year. Some may think that, living here, we may not need a warm winter break, but I assure you we do. Besides the fact that we are not nearly as hot as we would be if this island was placed much further south (where everyone thinks it is), we are also dying for a vacation. It's business as usual around here with work and our weekends are the same as everyone else - groceries, laundry, shopping, etc., and with all of the stress that took over our lives in the last part of 2007, we honestly do need a break. It's also a chance to spend some quality time with my parents, who will be there at the same time.

What used to be a 2 airplane trip has now been bumped up to 3 airplanes, each way. So, in order to ensure that both of us AND our luggage shows up on the other end and we don't spend the week wearing the same clothes, waiting for our luggage, we're going to attempt to pack our vacation into carry-on luggage only. This...is challenging. Summer clothes are lighter and pack up small, which is good news. We're there for 10 days...not such good news. Also, we're bringing Christmas presents, my camera, a huge hardcover John Grisham novel that Kurt is insisting on for the beach but which happens to be larger than my laptop, and a whole whack of travel-sized toiletries, because I'll be damned if I lose one more thing to that big bin. Last time it was the precious Raspberry Cointreau jam from Wakefield, Québec. The time before that, it was my toothpaste and moisturizer...both of which appeared to fit the guidelines but were wrestled from my hands anyway. It was good moisturizer and practically brand new...they're not retarded.

Anyways, we're coming down to lift-off. I can't pretend that I'm not also just really excited to get off of this rock, even if it's only for 10 days. It's feeling smaller and smaller all the time, and I'm getting a bit stir-crazy.

Olé.

On the Rocks.

Home again, home again.

Nueve...ocho...siete...seis...

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