Cancun at its best

I may have boasted that I was going to stop through Cancun on the way home from Tampa. Silly me, for being so literal.

Let me just say that Cancun is fabulous from the air. Especially when you have a window seat. And you've been drinking. Since before noon.

Which, of course, is a function of having changed planes in Miami, so infamous among travelers that there's a webpage dedicated to Killing Time at Miami International Airport, not to mention a pee-your-pants funny article by Dave Barry, who includes this unbiased review of MIA:

• MIAMI AIRPORT: Sucks
  Perhaps you think I'm being harsh on MIA. Well, perhaps this is because you do not have to use it a lot. I do. Almost every week, I get on a plane there, and, if all goes according to plan, the plane lands in some other city. I am almost always struck by the fact that the other city's airport, big or small, is a WHOLE lot less hostile to travelers than MIA, the airport that proudly proclaims to visitors from all over the world: ``Welcome! You Are In A Hellhole!'' I have ranted before about the bad design, the confusion and the insanely overcrowded, last-chopper-out-of-Saigon ambience at MIA, so I'm not going to dwell on it here. Nor am I going to mention the Soviet-style monopoly food service, which, in some of the grimmer parts of the airport, offers a bill of fare consisting entirely of hot dogs that I believe were originally placed on the grill by Ponce de Leon. (Dave Barry, Maimi Herald, Sunday, August 2, 1998.)

It therefore makes perfect sense that there was a bar next to my boarding gate, and that it opens at 6 a.m.

Now, I've never been much of a drinker (except when I was in college, and whenever I attend TESOL conferences, as per my previous posting), but Miami International Airport actually inspired me to think the thought (man, I need a drink!) and drink the drink (no mojitos available, so I opted for a rum and ginger ale), all so that I could walk the walk of a now de-stressed traveler and actually enjoy the flight to Cancun.

And I was rewarded. If you've never flown over the Florida Keys, oh... my... god. It's spectacular (and that's not just the liquor talking). If you can't afford to charter a private plane, it may just be worth the chaos of MIA so that you can take in the seascape between Miami and Cancun.

If only we didn't have to land...

Okay, you do the math, since I clearly didn't.

It's mid-March. In Cancun. Where the vernal equinox is observed as it has been for centuries, with loud, newly braided co-eds flip-flopping their way to everlasting sun damage.

With nary a hotel room to be found, my choices consisted of sleeping on the beach (um... no) or catching the next bus home, to Merida.

This is where the act of traveling becomes a destination in and of itself. The taxi becomes the journey, the plane becomes the destination, and the destination becomes... another point of departure. This is where I am, because to wish it were any other way would be to deny reality.

And so I found myself talking to yet another taxi driver, this time en route to the bus terminal.

More and more, I'm convinced that taxi drivers are some of the wisest people on earth, transporting, as they do, over time, thousands of people of every stripe imaginable for the myriad reasons that prompt us to leave our homes for this thing called travel.

This driver, who indulged my request to take photographs "of the beautiful highway" through his windshield, was a real pro, fully protected from mishap by a dashboard St. Christopher, (color-coordinated!*) patron saint of taxi drivers. I can't say that I minded.

* Don't forget that you can click on any photo to see an enlarged version of it. Enjoy.