CANCUN, Quintana Roo — President
Bush the first was mocked for referring to “the vision thing,” but he was onto
something.
In the 1960s, the Yucatan
barrier island that would become Cancun was a coconut plantation looked after
by three caretakers, a series of sand dunes in the shape of a seven that ran
for miles in each direction. Quintana Roo was a territory, not yet a state.
There was no airport, no city,
no road. One day some bureaucrats woke up and said, “We think this Caribbean
tourism thing is going to take off.”
Construction began in the early
1970s. My mother-in-law discovered the place in 1984. By then it was very much
a resort, albeit one in which businesses observed the siesta.
Now there is too much money at
stake and there are too many gringos underfoot to take time for afternoon naps.
Where my wife and I now stay was
dune grass in 1988 when we first came down together. Today it’s in the middle of Zona Hotelera.
The plumbing has caught up with
the vision and Cancun is a very sanitized place. Reverse-osmosis plants provide
water in the resort, and the bowel-searing episodes of Montezuma’s revenge that
once folded gringos half in two are a fading memory.
In those days milk was poured
warm from a box and the butter tasted funny. Once each trip we would go to the
Blue Bayou, at the Hyatt, for an expensive but reliable — the butter
notwithstanding — American meal.
My wife returned from her first
trip in love with the place but craving hamburgers and mashed potatoes.
Booze, on the other hand, was an
abundant resource, and downtown drinking was a raucous, spontaneous and mostly
outdoor affair. There was no such thing as last call, as far as anyone can
remember, and at places like Mi Ranchito free tequila slammers came around
every few minutes to anyone loose enough to join the conga line wiggling
beneath waiters standing on chairs. Which was everyone.
The best part was the peso. At
2,250 to a U.S. dollar, our pockets were stuffed full of money and no one had
any idea what they were paying for anything.
Cancun still sparkles by day,
but its nightlife has been watered down by all-inclusive resorts and glitzy
shopping malls. Yes, the spring breakers are crazy, but what else is new? In
our time, people who never went crazy anywhere else went out of their minds
here.
Now we sit sober on the beach
with our e-readers. Whether or not the tourism bureau saw quite that far ahead
I’m not prepared to say.
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