blog, day one (March 17 in the Yucatan)
Greek yogurt. The year is 2025 and I am walking around a grocery store in Quintana Roo, Mexico. I am on the Yucatan Peninsula, a place I had never dreamed I would make a journey to. The magic of this part of Mexico is unparalleled, and the five weeks I have spent here have nourished my mind, my heart, and my soul. It almost seems sacrilegious that I am walking around a grocery store, but despite the joy in my heart and stars in my eyes I am still a part of the gears that keep on turning, of the manic machine that is the “real world”.
It’s funny to me that because of industrialization I am able to purchase Greek yogurt all the way in Mexico. The distance between Greece and Mexico is 6,822 miles. The distance from the island of Crete to the Yucatan Peninsula is 6,734 miles. There’s something a little joyful and a little odd and a little eery about reading the words “Frutos Rojos” and “Oikos” on the same label. I wonder what my Greek ancestors might think about this marketing mashup. Frutos Rojos Oikos. Moo, moo, moo. I bought the yogurt for around 33 pesos, which ends up being around $1.50 USD. I guess that it is around the same price that I would pay for the Icelandic yogurt that I usually eat in the United States, but maybe the quality isn’t as great. Who knows, maybe it’s better because it is both Mexican and Mediterranean.
The phenomenon that everything in Mexico is cheaper than in the United States has embraced me in it’s smoke and mirrors like a fog machine at a night club. Everything here is cheaper, I dance in the fog, spinning around in circles. Like a little kid having a full on in-depth conversation with a robotic fortune teller at a carnival, I have been sucked into the gravitational vortex that everything is cheaper in Mexico. My eyes have widened as I do the mental math of things being “half off”, I have been practically dancing in the fog machine waving around a giant coupon that says “vacation - 1/2 price”, pirouetting in the fog machine. The illusion of cheaper living in Mexico is a feature that seduces many a young and poor American into crossing the border. Why not live for 1/2 price? It’s not like your boss is going to be paying you what you’re worth anytime soon, anyway.
So here I am at 29, standing in front of the Greek yogurt. I have a little devil on my shoulder that is holding a little sign that says “666” - and he is asking me to walk over to the Manchego cheese and purchase this cheese instead of going for the yogurt. The Manchego is around $119 pesos - and in my picky brain, non-organic cheese that is questionably refrigerated for $119 pesos (close to $10 USD) - is out of the question. I am standing in front of the Greek yogurt and I can’t quite make a decision - this yogurt probably isn’t Greek!! The mediterranean in me is saying. I start going to a sad place in my head where I see cows being put out to pasture. I see a field of cows suffering in the summer heat, they are neglected and thirsty.
Moo, moo. Moo, moo. The little devil who is standing on my shoulder ends up turning into a cow. He morphs from angry little German man to cow. Oh my! I didn’t realize that you had the ability to shape shift - I scratch my right ear. All of a sudden the angry little devil has four legs, and utters, and he is saying - Moo, moo, Lizzie. Moo. This is utterly sad, my dear - you have been standing underneath these bright lights and staring at this yogurt for at least 10 minutes. Moo, moo, vamanos!
A techno remix of the Gary Jule’s song “Mad World” is playing in the background of this store. The lights are incredibly, painfully bright. A singer with a high pitched voice that sounds as if she is about 15 years old is on the vocals, I wonder if I forgot the secret password to the nightclub. Is there a secret passageway behind the toilet paper? Are there special tortillas I was supposed to find that would lead me to a night club upon actually paying at the self checkout? I wonder if a disco ball is going to drop from the ceiling of the grocery store. I hope a disco ball is going to drop from the ceiling of the grocery store.
The fantasy that life is less expensive in Mexico than it is in the United States is something that draws a lot of young Americans into the vortex of the Yucatan Peninsula. I mean, okay, that and the fact that there are giant temples here.
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But back to the yogurt. The fantasy that the cost of living in Mexico is more affordable than it is in the United States has some bits of truth to it - and at the same time, living in Mexico - like living in any country in the world, developed or undeveloped, comes with unseen costs. And isn’t that the absolute wisdom that we all wake up to when the sun rises and our iPhones rudely awaken us in the morning.
I rented a bike along my journeys, because renting a car for me as a solo traveler seemed unnecessary as well as greedy. There’s also just something pretty unsatisfying about paying $45 USD (so 900 pesos) a day to drive a clunky 2017 Dodge sedan around. The bike I rented is not perfect, but it gets me around and it helps me get to the beach and to the most important part of my day as a solo and hungry traveler- vegan tacos. I’ve gotten pretty savvy at dodging the extremely aggressive taxi drivers who seem like they might actually actively want to hit cyclists and pedestrians. So riding this rental bike through the streets of Playa has started to feel like I am in a real life game of Pac-man.
When I returned to my bike at 11 am on Sunday morning, the lock of the bike I had so carefully locked up to a street sign, was now not only a bike with a lock - but it was a bike with a lock with a carjack in between the lock. There were many things I considered and meditated on in my Mexico dreamscape, but I didn’t really imagine that anyone would try to steal my rental bike by putting a carjack in it. I don’t know how expensive carjacks are, but apparently they are great aids in attempted bike burglary.
I guess that this may be my karma for being a tourist, in Mexico or in any place else. Apparently this bike lock was made of absolute Kryptonite, because the lock didn’t break. The car jack was simply stuck in the lock, and the thief had given up. I was too tired for this incident to completely register in my brain, and upon seeing the bike I thought maybe it had been hit by a car. I asked someone walking down the street to check out the situation, and this kind man (also a tourist) - informed me gently that there was a carjack in my bike lock. “Huh?” I asked. “Yes, miss..this is a carjack in your bike lock”. “A….carjack… in my …bike lock?” I replied, a bit baffled.
“Yeah…see..this is a carjack and it looks like they stuck it in the lock of your bike to try to crack the lock open and steel the bike…but doing that didn’t work. They just left the carjack in the lock.” “Oh.” I have zero bike stealing experience so this didn’t really register to me. “Do you have a screwdriver?” “What?” I said back. “If you have a screwdriver I can help you get the carjack out of the bike lock.” Oh, okay! I said. Let me just…check upstairs.
I wasn’t really sure if there was a screwdriver in the apartment I was staying in, so I walked up the stairs to the apartment as asked my host “hey…do you have a screwdriver…someone…. tried to steal my rental bike”. My tail was practically between my legs as I put on my “I’m an American tourist” costume (complete with a rent a bike, the words “hola, gracias, and un poco”, and a burning passionate love for guacamole). “Oh..where did you leave it” Gabo asked me. Upon formulating the answer to Gabo's question my American tourist costume started to fill out with a pair of flamingo flip flops and a button down dad shirt. “Oh..well... locked it to the street sign”. To be fair, there weren't many other places to lock up the bike. Gabo didn’t need to respond to this moment of stupidity because silence in these instances really does do a situation like this justice. He responded, “Oh, you should be careful with that…bring it inside of the apartment next time. Yes, let me see if I have a screwdriver”. Rummage, rummage, rummage. Thirty seconds later, after rummaging through the cupboard, Gabo pulled out the tool kit. In a moment of efficiency and opportunity that only Gabo could make, he handed me the tool kit and then threw a bunch of lint rollers into it and asked me to toss them into the garbage on the way to my almost, but not quite, stolen bike.
I ran down the two flights of stairs and returned to the scene of the crime with a toolkit that included four screwdrivers. "Is this going to work?" I asked myself in the back of my mind. "Is it really possible to unscrew a car jack with a screwdriver?". Oh, girl, the places you'll go. Like a boss, this good Samaritan that I had solicited on the street rummaged through the tool kit, grabbed a screwdriver, and successfully got the carjack out of the bike lock. It fell to the pavement. I was overjoyed, and thanked this pedestrian for his kindness, a stranger who was just taking his daily walk on planet Earth.