Our Pandemic Routine

So what does a travel blogger write about when all travel is on hiatus? I guess that’s what we’re about to find out.

It’s hot down here in Mexico, but there’s a nice breeze off the canal and until the other day it was hot and dry. But now the humidity is coming up and we just had our first two rain storms since the end of January. Across the street in Central Park, a public space being carved out of the jungle, where the trees block the ocean breeze, the heat, even early in the morning, is stultifying. I get back from Manito’s 7am walk dripping with sweat, which normally doesn’t bother me, except before my second cup of coffee. We’ve already moved up our exercise routines to beat the heat. On Monday and Wednesdays I go for a 3-mile walk, usually up to the end of what is called “Phase 4,” the last development phase of Puerto Aventuras. It’s where the rich folk are building their manses and parking their yachts. A great place to walk, hot though as summer arrives. On the days I walk, Lydia has started kayaking, taking much the same route, though she’s obviously in the water. On Tuesdays and Thursdays we go to the Beach Club and swim in the pool, or occasionally in Fatima Bay. On Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays we do a variety of things. We may play pickleball with friends, go for a walk in town, along the marina, or swim laps in our condo pool, which isn’t ideal, but still exercise.

Filling our afternoons, however, has become a little more problematic. We had planned to really increase our writing quota, but that hasn’t panned out so far. Call it more lack of motivation than writer’s block, although there’s some of that too. We continue with our Duolingo Spanish lessons every day. I think they’re helping a little. My vocabulary has improved and I can formulate complete sentences, when given enough time. But I’m still too shy to engage the locals, unless I have to. And because I’m still translating word for word, any exchange bogs down quickly. I’m encouraged enough to keep going, but it’s harder to see a time when I can successfully navigate a dinner table conversation in Spanish.

Manito takes up a fair amount of our time, between our walks and Lydia’s “scratch time.” And every other day or so our neighbor brings her dog Chico (a slightly corpulent chihuahua) by in the morning for a play date. I swear if we could ever take a video of these two it could go viral. The two of them run around our living room, then Manito sprints for the bed, leaving Chico in his wake. Then he starts the race again by leaping over Chico and they’re off once more, looping around the furniture, little legs trying to find traction on the smooth tile floor. As Manito tires, Chico is able to cut him off and the two become Mexican wrestlers, advantage Chico. Lydia thinks that in this era of no-live-sports the Chico-Manito battle could attract attention, maybe even the online betting parlors could post instant odds. I know, when there’s not much else to do we focus on strange things.

What’s not so odd is our local wildlife, though I guess the animals think it’s pretty weird not having to watch out for humans constantly. For instance, a cormorant has taken up residence on the buoy just off our living room. He sits there all day long, or so it seemed until I actually paid attention. He or she has a routine much like mine. He sits and watches the canal for long periods of time. Then he jumps in and swims the perimeter of his invisible domain, finally hauling himself out, which in his case is half jumping half flying, a few feet up onto the cement dock across the canal from us. There he struts up and down for a few minutes before disappearing into the neighbor’s pool – really a cenote – and reappearing, more often than not, with a fish. Once he swallows, he jumps back into the canal and swims to his buoy. He does this all day long and has been doing it now for almost two weeks.

The unplanned parts of my days, I guess, are not so radically different from our feathered, fish-loving friend. A lot of time is spent on the couch reading Covid news, playing Sudoku and talking with Lydia and Anne. Every now and then I get up to take Manito for a walk or get some water or a snack. For a change of scenery I’ll lay out in the sun and then head around the corner to the pool. Sometimes we hang there for a while, sometimes it’s just to cool off. Very occasionally I’ll shame myself into writing something. Cocktail time brings a change of pace and conversation, if not a change of scene. So the cormorant and I are not that far out of synch. The big difference is that he can leave if he wants to.

The other day Lydia and I drove into Playa del Carmen on an adventure, really just a couple of errands. Playa hasn’t been that easy to drive in since back in ‘90s. Almost no traffic. Three stops in just a matter of minutes. The last one found us at a mall on 5th Avenue, Playa’s central shopping area. The mall itself was closed, but Europea, a great liquor store was open – go figure, they close the breweries but leave the liquor stores alone. Walking into this beautiful mall, with guards all over but no customers, was a little apocalyptic feeling. I kind of expected zombies to appear around every corner. But it was great to get out of Puerto, even if just for an hour or two. No beer. No cash in the ATM. But a success nonetheless.

As I’m finishing this piece, I’m still digesting a story I just read in the New York Times about how Mexico is dramatically under-reporting Covid cases and deaths, especially in Mexico City. I compare this with Trump’s apparent next “blame”: that the numbers being reported by his own administration are way too high. It seems that both Trump and the Mexican President, AMLO, view this pandemic as inconvenient and a threat to their own agendas. On a more hopeful note, each country’s state and local governments – at least some of them – are trying hard to make up for their federal governments’ failures. Here, the crackdown continues, we started a 7pm-5am curfew yesterday.

I don’t know when we’ll be able to travel back to the States, so I’ll raise a virtual toast to readers. “Here’s to health and happiness. Wealth be damned.”

I just can’t toast with Mexican beer.