Travel adventures
“Cancun? Really? That doesn’t seem like your kind of place.” I’ve heard that about sixty-three times, maybe more, since opportunities to go to the Mayan Riviera have shown up in my inbox. And yeah, looking at the massive developments along the strip in Cancun’s hotel zone, the critics have a point. I’m not a Vegas …
Six lane arterials lined with strip malls. Subdivisions bordered from each other with high concrete or brick walls. Huge swaths of asphalt in front of box stores. Few things make me feel more alienated than these cookie cutter American suburbs. Yesterday, we sat behind a big black Ford Explorer with a sticker in the window …
It’s Saturday night at Crossroads, a Mexican restaurant in Tucson. The mariachi band is starting their evening. There are four musicians — there’s trumpet, a violin, a little five string guitar (a vihuela) and guitarron — that big bass guitar. The guitarron player is a woman with a wide brown face and a body that …
I am in an open sided building, a combination of upright posts and corrugated metal on a concrete slab. There’s a little kitchen area, I’m making coffee on a rusty propane fueled two burner stove. It’s morning, the grass is wet. Fields stretch out around me, I’m not sure what’s growing, it’s grassy, wide blades, …
Two guys are opening their surf shack. One of them is digging perfectly spaced holes in the sand, the other is dropping bright yellow umbrellas into the holes and popping them open. A man sits on the stone wall facing the surf, barefoot, a cell phone glued to his head, a deep frown marking his …