Mexican Surprises

What I never expected:

That half of the vacationing families I met in the Yucatan would be from Brooklyn, 2 from Boerum Hill, 1 from Park Slope.

That my daughter would keep asking to go home to Brooklyn whenever the sun got in her eyes.

That my kids would be so delighted to encounter an oversized bottle of Corona.

That the City of Cancun would be extremely hard for me to navigate and undermine my confidence in my sense of direction.

That I would overhear people talking about encountering a waterspout while on a boating trip off shore of the resort.

That my son would teach himself how to swim in the hours he spent in the hot tub.

That I would get to see a total eclipse of the moon while I stood on the beach my last night there.

That it would feel so good to put on my favorite kind of socks today after wearing sandles for a week.

That I would have to throw out a full water bottle at the security checkpoint at the Cancun airport and then have to buy a new one in the terminal for 3.50.

That the resort where we stayed, a peaceful lovely place called Shangri-La, in Playa del Carmen, would be torn down in the next year or so to make room for a new multistory place courtesy of Hilton.

That I would tear up when it was time to leave the amazing but expensive snorkeling enclave called Xel-ha.

That a day of traveling back to New York, which began at 4:30 in the morning, could wind up being fairly painless.

That I couldn't get enough of photographing all the store fronts with their lively hand-painted signs. There are some very skillful commercial painters in Playa del Carmen or maybe Mexico at large.

That in my desire to feed such images to my camera, I would greatly annoy my daughter. Well, maybe that's not surprising.

That I would miss Mexico so much. Vive Mexico. I just wish it were as cheap as it used to be, or I was richer.

Below, Shangri-La