Mehico.

After six months of traveling around the country in a motor coach, with its tiny shower and cozy bedroom, its efficiency kitchen and mini living spaces, we left our coach in Syracuse and headed in our little Jeep back home to Westchester.

We spent a night in the glorious and welcoming comfort of our dear friends Maggie and Fred’s’ home, then headed for their getaway on the lake in Goshen, Connecticut, for two wonderful days of doing nothing: sitting by the fire, watching TV, drinking Cosmos made by Fred and eating wonderful meals made by Maggie. We spent a night out at our favorite haunt, Amalfi’s in Briarcliff Manor, then were treated to a delicious meal at Kathy Higgins’ house. I spent a day by myself in New York City, getting my poor neglected head of hair righted, seeing loved friends and dropping in at the office.

In the daytime, we got our health checked out by the doctors in Mt. Kisco, dropped off one bag of dry cleaning, the sum total of six months of on-the-road living, and bought shoes and sweaters for ourselves.

At the end of the week, having lived off the generosity and kindness of Mag & Fred, we took off for Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, with Marty and Joyce Kaplan. We’ve now been in Mexico for five days, and I’m sitting on the veranda of our time-share, watching the sun go down, drinking a glass of wine and planning the next visit to the spa, where I will have another wonderful hot-stone massage.

If you’ve never had a hot-stone massage, let me recommend one to you. I am as limp as a half-cooked noodle, my muscles singing from the gentle, warm treat they just enjoyed, and trying to keep my eyes from closing. John is snoring in the bedroom, Marty just gave up on his book, and Joyce is still in the hot tub back at the spa. How decadent can one vacation be.

Cabo is one of the most beautiful places in the world. The people are welcoming, kind and friendly. You can walk the streets at night without worry, and the sunsets are not to be believed.

The whales are here, but they’re not close to shore, as they were last year, when I had a junky litttle camera that never caught them as they danced and pirouetted near the shore. The whale show was the reason I asked for and received a fabulous Canon camera for my birthday, but it looks like we’ll have to move our lazy selves off our terrace and into a motor boat to see them. That’s okay. We have all the time in the world, and it’ll be an adventure. I only hope that I get some decent shots.

Cabo is growing exponentially, and the prime seaside homes are going for over a million, and some are in the ten-million-dollar-and-up range. It makes me very grateful that we spent the money we did seven years ago to buy a timeshare here in one of the prettiest places around.

For all its newfound sophistication, and despite John Travolta’s fiftieth birthday party which brought it into the headlines big time, Cabo still has some of the aspects of a small town. There’s a paper called the Gringo Gazette, which this week carried a paid advertisement that read “DAVE ANDERSON, DEAD BEAT. Sponge painter, owner of Baja Finishes. This is a small town, you need to pay your bills! Aren’t you running out of people to rip off yet? We see you can afford to pay for sex at Mermaids, why can’t you pay your bills?

I guess ad space is pretty cheap. A couple of pages back, another ad reads “Cross Roads Country Club Doesn’t Live Up To Its Name” You’d think it was a slam at a place that disappointed some would-be golfer, but no. It’s a paean to the food, the owner, and the services. As far as I could see, there is no connection between the body of the ad and the headline. Not even a play on words. But they did get me to read it.

The publisher of the paper, identified as one Carrie Duncan, H.H. – now what can that mean? –is a California blonde of a certain age, who also owns a restaurant in town. Everybody here also owns a restaurant.

This week’s editorial talks about a plane trip she took up to California, where she purchased some t-shirts to sell down here. Returning to Cabo, she was radioed by the border police and told to land, which she did. As they were searching her plane for contraband, they discovered a Home Depot tool box which she told them had “cat shit” in it. The guard reached into the box, and came up with a handful of “cat shit,” which of course infuriated him, but she was allowed to continue on her way. Cat shit, as humorously reported in the local newspaper, as a good way to transport taxable goods across the border. Not exactly New York Times kind of language. I doubt they would even allow “cat poop.”

And so, the sun has set, my wine is low in the glass, my hair needs drying and my husband needs to be wakened before he spends the night in his bathing suit, his dirty feet sticking off the end of the bed.

It’s a low, slow Mexican kind of night, and I am having a wonderful time. All too soon it will be over and we’ll head back to Syracuse to pick up the bus and continue on our other kind of vacation.
MEHICO
It’s been a lovely interlude. Gracias, universe.