Then, as the sun sets on Friday night, the population of Chelem swells from around 5,000 to 20,000. The electric and water companies, in spite of being not just total monopolies but also outrageously expensive, somehow forget that this happens every year, and both systems fail, starting rolling brown- and blackouts that last all Summer. The one road in and out of town becomes clogged with a mixture of people in trucks hauling their full-sized appliances to their beach house to use for the week, mixed in with the normal slow-moving, nearly disabled vehicles held together by twine, roadside merchants selling absolutely every food product that can conceivably be made from a coconut, and $50,000 cars packed to overflowing with teenagers, creeping along, desperate to be seen.

And oh, the teenagers. These white-sunglass-and-moccasin-wearing children of the president of TelMex, or Banamex, or the police department cruise up and down our humble sand roads at 80 MpH, blaring music, throwing garbage and beer cans out of windows, and generally treating Chelem like their personal ashtrays for a solid week. Normally quiet beach houses are filled with spoiled, entitled teenagers who turn on every light in the house (presumably because owning a light bulb is a sign of great wealth and status), turn up the music, and hoot and holler until the wee hours of the morning. And because, in this child-worshipping culture, no child is ever punished or reprimanded, absolutely nothing can be done. They rip along, tearing up already shaky roads on every manner of vehicle that meets the following criteria: it must hurtle groups of 13-year-old girls stacked three-high on each other’s laps like Russian nesting dolls along at speeds in excess of 50MpH, it must make an obnoxious noise, and any garbage or, preferably, used diapers thrown from this vehicle must land in my driveway. This covers a lot of vehicles: dune buggys, go-carts, scooters, Jeeps on comically over-or-undersized tires, motorcycles, four-wheelers, and, I shit you not, sometimes a parachute that you use to fly along with an enormous fan strapped to your back.

And it’s not even 19-year-old girls in bikinis; that, I could endure. No, it is groups of boys, slippery, skeezy adolescent boys who will traipse right through your front yard with total abandon, who will jump from neighboring roofs onto your roof at five AM, who will lounge all over your deck, stealing everything that isn’t bolted down, and finally releasing an avalanche of beer cans and urine-filled soda bottles before wading out chest-deep into the ocean in their t-shirts to stand in a circle and bob up and down staring at each other.

I’m just sick to death of seeing our humble little towns, which are ignored almost year-round, be treated so badly for this week, and later, all of July and August. It’s as though this town only exists for shithead kids with no respect for property or authority to come through, make a mess, and act awful towards those of us who actually live here. “Oh, but Malcolm,” you’re saying, “It’s just cultural.” It’s not “cultural,” you jerk, it’s young kids who have always gotten to do whatever they felt like continuing to do just that, and it sucks. In fact, if there is anything “cultural” at play, it’s that children here seem to be allowed (encouraged!) to descend on quiet fishing villages were people actually have to live, and conduct themselves like total maniacs.

Don’t get me wrong; I have been that shithead kid. I’ve treated whole towns as my personal playthings, in drunken Summer months. I’ve been too loud in an otherwise quiet family seafood restaurant with a moose head on the wall. I’ve screamed at the top of my lungs while riding an inner tube along a perfectly lovely, picturesque river in upstate NY. I’ve thrown up blue Curacao-tinted New England Clam chowder up and down the Sperry Topsiders and seersucker shorts of Montauk. I get it. I guess all that’s changed, as I’ve gotten older and have a home of my own, is that I just want everyone to pipe down and get the hell offa my lawn.

Hacienda Xcanatun is a lovely place for a decent meal, but it’s the surrounding grounds that truly invite escape. The endorsement of Urbano Rentals I cannot condone, as I found the proprietors surly and strange, though their houses certainly are magnificent. And now more than before I am curious to get inside the suites at Rosas y Xocolate; I’ve seen the handsome lobby and sunny luncheon patio and the location on the Paseo de Montejo is obviously unparalleled. (To think I used to live one block back from there!) Of the dining options I can only comment on La Pigua, which was less than impressive when we ate there last month. I wish they’d taken it up to Los Taquitos de PM. I love that they’ve included Cuzama in things to do. We heart this little cenote pueblo and have been seven times, with every group of visitors. And their comparison of La68 to Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, while somewhat ridiculous, is not entirely inaccurate. It is a soothing, artsy space and tonight they are showing Woody Allen’s Bananas, which I should totally go and see. So glad NYM agrees that a day on the Ruta Puuc, culminating in Uxmal, is insanely great.

Since the winter of last year I have said to anyone who will listen, without agenda or compensation, that Camden, Maine is the cutest little town in America. And I had harbored hopes of moving there one day. While we’ve decided to set up shop in Portland for the next year, which is forty-five minutes south of the mid coast, I hope to visit this magical setting often and throughout the seasons. Since I’ve only been there in January I cannot speak to all the farmers fares, farms and and festivals remarked upon in the article, but they do recommend Cappy’s Chowder House, where Malcolm and I enjoyed a very cozy meal. And the thing they don’t say is that when you drive down into the village, past French and Brawn market and The Owl and Turtle bookshop and you catch your first glimpse of the library on a hill overlooking the ocean you will literally lose your breath and experience in a flash your own idyllic life of old books and brisk walks and babies in little red wagons. At least, if you’re anything like me.

There are many amazing places I have yet to go, in fact I haven’t seen most; but it is quite cool that two towns I know well or would like to, and will always go back to, are on the New York Mag map.

If there are some ex-pats who have not embraced it, don’t worry: some are posting on their own blogs and don’t have the time, I suspect, to devote to a board like Yolisto; some of it is still Merida Insider hangover; and some of it, I think, is that there is a schism in the ex-pat community between those who have come to Yucatan because it’s cheap and warm, and those who have come down to live in the embrace of culture that is Yucatan.

The “schism” that Josh perceives is, I think, definitely real, and I wanted to talk about that for a minute. There is definitely, sometimes, an “us and them” attitude here that is less palpable between foreigners and Mexicans, and more within our own community. There seem to be two camps (there are actually more like 200 camps, but let’s focus, here): those that have come to Yucatan seeking warm weather and cheap margaritas, and those that arrive here in pursuit of a lifelong interest in Yucatecan and Mayan culture. The former think that the latter shouldn’t be spending so much time worrying about the regional authenticity of the Shaman-blessed clay they use to build their bathroom sinks, and the latter think that the former are bunch of beer-swilling, flipflop-wearing ex-convicts. They’re probably both right.

What I wonder about, though, is the right of anyone to question anyone else’s motivations for doing anything, let alone passing judgment on someone’s worthiness to live in a particular place. I also question the notion that a deep-seated fascination with an area’s culture is necessarily a prerequisite for having the “right” to live there. If you didn’t get to live somewhere unless you loved every facet of the history and culture of that place, there wouldn’t be anyone in Flint, Michigan or Calais, Maine. Look, people live where they live for a ton of reasons, whether it’s following a job, finding a place where your kid can go to school without being killed, moving after getting a divorce, moving in order to be closer to family, or really, really liking the pizza somewhere else. Everyone ends up somewhere, and I’m not sure that love of sunshine is any more or less valid a reason for living in a place than anything else.

What we have always tried to focus on, both in our personal interactions and through Yolisto, has been instead the one thing that we all have in common as people who left their home countries: That simply by virtue of being here, we have, one and all, decided not to have ordinary lives. And isn’t that more interesting than our differences?

The first of many in my battery is this molcajete. A three-legged mortal and pestle, it is a pre-Hispanic tool.  Malcolm knew I wanted one and tasked Marcelo with finding a good example. And while I would like to imagine a blind, arthritic octagenarian carving the stone with careful craftsmanship and divine grace, it may not be of such romantic origin. But I have seen commonplace magic here, and know it does exist. In a remote pueblo I used the bathroom in a one-room home that doubles as a convience store and also houses the family loom.

I loved the natural history museum more than almost anything when I was a little girl. My dad and I would spend rainy autumn Saturdays investigating the sarcophagi and textiles, the pottery, jewelry, masks and treasures of people who lived once upon a time. We didn’t have any such artifacts at home. So I would bury myself in the Funk and Wagnalls and books borrowed from the library on archeology, anthropology and ancient history, collecting pieces of the puzzle in my mind. Now I have evidence in my hands, one of myriad keys to understanding our past.

While we wait for CFE to show up, here is a (somewhat crappy) video I shot yesterday, in the storm. Enjoy!

Last winter came a red tide, and the destitute went down to the water with buckets and barrels and nets to collect sickly fish washing up from the terrible-colored ocean. Collectively their effort made a serpentine track in the sand spanning my peripheral vision; for the first time I could imagine the end of the world. Almost every day I see the wild boy and his family, who sometimes haul away our garbage. They are the color of clay and I wonder if they speak though I know they have voices. And of course the dogs –  skinny, mangy, sick and sometimes mangled in the road. Almost worse is when you stop seeing the packs of strays, because you know the poisoner’s work has been done. Garbage buried in the sand, stacked awkwardly and scattered at the roadside dump, sometimes on fire burnining your nose and eyes. The squalor doesn’t seem cheerful, thought it isn’t threatening either. It’s like nature in that it cares not a whit about you.

Some of the sights defy, transcend, or subvert my expectations. The blind man comes to mind. He drinks and ends up supine next to the rope. But as often as he is walking alone he has a companion guiding his way and holding him steady. He looks like no one else in Chelem. Also, he is handsome. The laundress’s house is a little filthy. However, if ever I need an article of clothing washed and dried in an emergency, she goes out of her way to help me. Her family calls her Anita though there is nothing diminutive about her appearance. And the ocean. I’ve never seen an ocean that changes more than the Gulf. Within minutes and over months it is so variable, sometimes as brown as the Mississippi in my mind, then roiling and crashing foam from the west, moving gently away in the gloaming, and every so often gives us a glimpse of divine green blue. It has at times frightened me; it is constantly in motion; it spits up prehistoric creatures with spiny bloated bodies.

Walking with this ocean I have experienced many facets of earthly beauty and found a peace I would not expect from a place such as this.

It’s a tenuous, temporary town built on a marsh between an unforgiving sea and the rio. It could go at any time. But what couldn’t?

Sea Change
If Merida was an ordered English garden, Progreso felt like a fetid swamp populated with unhelpful and sometimes sinister creatures. Fewer people spoke English, and there were many more from other parts of Mexico –  swarthy opportunists in a shady port. It was isolating and far less pleasant. It was then that we met Mari and Marcelo, who became our housekeeper and groundskeeper respectively, but more than that, the people with whom we spoke most often, saw everyday, and depended upon in myriad and unexpected ways. When we locked ourselves out of our house, we found them and they sourced a locksmith. When one day inexplicably there was no water from the faucets, they explained that it was a normal occurrence and directed us to the grassy Gulf for water we could flush with. And when we needed a party organized for the day after our wedding, we called on them to rent tables and chairs and chickens and pickled onions. Because they needed us for income and we needed them to survive the wilds of Yucalpeten they learned to understand our garbled, simple speech and theirs – Mayan-inflected, uneducated, shushy and smiling – was the type we, to this day, best understand and likely imitate.

The Third Act
In which I became kind of an asshole. And all of a sudden, I was sick of Mexico. I wanted to go, I was bored, I was lonely, I was tired of not being understood, despite my efforts. I had always been a good student, adept at languages, but my progress had plateaued and I felt frustrated by my inablitity to communicate. I enjoy a chat, a casual conversation, an extemporaneous dialog-based interaction, if you will. I have been able to make myself understood verbally since I was nine months old. I take pleasure in words, both written and spoken, and here I could do nothing that didn’t elicit laughter or a confused expression. I quit Spanish and all its imperfect tenses. It proved not at all difficult to become insulated/isolated/alienated. Our own house in Chelem was becoming ever more comfortable and Americanized. We had Skye satellite, which meant TV in English, a Vonage phone connection and high speed internet access. I had become the worst kind of expatriated American: we live behind bulwarks and don’t mingle with the nationals.

Resolution
A lot has changed in the last few months. I feel different, more myself but also better than ever. I’m taking stock and challenging this uncharacteristic complacency. I’m finding pleasure in the little things again, Gracias a Dios. I want to be good again here, to be interested and invested and generous and forgiving. It is easier, knowing we are going, to feel lighter, to seek new sights, to accept setbacks and participate as an engaged yet somewhat removed citizen of this experiment. I did not become fluent in Spanish, not even close. But I can on occasion make a little joke, say something not devastatingly clever but at least pleasant and appropriate and understood. That communion means a lot in everyday matters. We have ingratiated ourselves just a little after all; through persistence and patience and practice, we have developed some common ground, though to achieve nuance and verbal dexterity would require more effort than I am willing to exert, I am sorry to say. I’m torn. I hate the thought of leaving incompetent and yet we are beginning the arduous process of extracting ourselves from the only life we’ve known for four years: I have no emotional energy to spare. There will be regrets. I could have tried harder. But rather than thinking of this ending as a final exam, I’ll choose to close the chapter. I know we’ll be back and I hope we will travel to Barcelona, Buenos Aires, and beyond. I will continue my education and learn from this language because one day when I am freezing and cursing the cold and unhappy, I’ll bet I will dream of Mexico and those intimations will come to me in Spanish.