January 31, 1996

Well, this is going to come as a surprise to some of you, but I am starting this message aboard a Fairchild FH-227, twin-engine prop plane en route from Cancun to Merida, Mexico. We left St. Louis this morning (temperature about 2 degrees) and windchill don't-know-what. We were supposed to take off at 7 AM and arrive at 9:55 PM, but a) the plane was too cold-which I believe since we still needed blankets when we did board at about 7:30) and b) one of the flight attendants was in a wreck on the way to the airport and they had to find another one, wake her up and get her to the airport. We left at 8:20. We flew charter on American Transair-a 727, totally full. Flight fine, snacks not bad, fellow passengers tending to get a start on the party.

Arrived at 11 AM. Airport bathroom free but two of the three toilets in the ladies room didn't work, and it appears that the third one quit after I used it. Our flight to Merida left at 6:20 so we had some time to kill. Found a locker for $3, stashed most of our stuff. The guide book said that if we took any form of transportation from the airport to Cancun, it would cost us $7 each, but if we walked out of the airport, it became negotiable. So we did, and after walking only about 10 minutes in the bright sun and 80-some degree temperature, we accepted a cab ride for $6 total.

We really weren't interested in seeing all of the hotels in Cancun or any of them for that matter and the beach was pretty far, so we opted to go to the mercado (market) for lunch. The guidebook said it was a good place for a cheap lunch, and after being in Chile, we were familiar with the scene. In general, it feels like visiting Chile was good preparation for this. The mercado was not a tourist place, or at least not primarily. Actually, it was partly like a shopping mall and partly like an open-air market. The architecture was very spanish. Part of it was very run down, and part was not. The bathroom in the two sections followed suit-the price of admission and paper was the same, 2 pesos (30 cents), although neither featured toilet seats. We saw a lot of very huge "houseplants" like a ficus tree, purple wandering jews, crotons, yucca and diffenbachia (sp?). Actually, on the way we saw a lot of coconut palms, and they had bunches of yellow coconuts on them, just below the leaves. A common sight, I'm sure, but first for me. We hit the mercado during the siesta time, which is taken seriously in Mexico, so things were very quiet and many of the nicer shops actually did not reopen until 5 PM. We ate at the restaurant (La Chaya) that advertised a vegetarian lunch (most of these places have various fixed lunches). It was very much like in Chile, except in Chile the mercado was indoors and her there was no building overarching the whole thing. We ate outdoors, althoug there was a ceiling fan, which was off, so I guess there was a real ceiling. My lunch was a cabbage soup, tortillas, something with cheese and tomato dribbled over some fried tortilla chips (literally thick fried chunks of the same tortillas), some sort of salad with shredded beets, cabbage and carrots with bits of cilantro, fresh corn off the cob and rice. Vally had chips with salsa and some sort of fish with green sauce. The man at the next table was drinking a very green drink and we decided to try it. They told us that the drink was made from Chaya. Chaya is a plant (which we quickly learned to recognize and looks like it too could easily be a houseplant). According to the back of the menu, this plant was used by the Maya and the leaves are a good source of protein, vitamins, calcium, etc., comparable in some ways to meat. Also it has medicinal properties and is now being studies and revived. Anyway, the drink was quite good although it appeared to have a lot of sugar and possibly lemon in it, so it might have been green lemonade. The whole lmeal, including tip was 44 pesos or about $6, not counting the 2 pesos we gave to beggars who came up to the table.

After we ate we wandered around the market, looking at the produce in the two large produce stands-HUGE papays, lots of mangos and other interesting things but most of the produce looked a bit bedraggled. We spent the afternoon wandering and sitting. We had no interest in buying anything, although there were two Indian women doing beautiful embroidered blouses (huipils, says the guidebook). Finally we decided to go back to the airport. The cabs are omnipresent and all we had to do was think about getting one, and one stopped. We negotiated the price back down to $6 and went back to the airport. We needed to kill time so we sat at an airport restaurant and ate a snack. Unlike the mercado which was very Mexican, this could have been anywhere. Most of the Americans were very brown, so I guess they were leaving. We saw some Japanese tourists at the ticket counter with a Japanese man who wore an airport employee badge (and, Vally noted, white women's moccasins) so we assume that the Cancun airport has an offical Japanese interpreter.

Anyway, so here we are on the plane and I will stop here, until there is more to report, expect for one little tale. I wanted to get to sleep early last night because we had to get up at 5:30 AM. I decided to try some melatonin, so that when I got to bed I wouldn't be lying there in total frustration, unable to sleep. Vally decided to try it too. Well, it was interesting! I took one pill (3 mg) at about 8:15 and by about 8:50 I felt like whatever else needed to be done could wait because I was too sleepy to care. Not that I actually fell asleep all that fast, but I was very happy to be lying in bed. Vally, on the other hand, came to bed and couldn't fall asleep so he decided to get up. He said he could hardly walk! I think if we need to do this again, like when we are dealing with jet lag, we may have to change the dosage. Well, my ears are really in agony and I think we're landing.

Later....