My nephew and god

I'm a pretty good uncle. I take my nephew Antonio skatingboarding. I don't freak out when he curses, I just tell him not to do it becuase it'll become habit and get him in trouble. And when he asks about god I try to be one of the few adults in his life that does not push their own dogma on him.

Once, when he was really asking about god a-lot, I took him on a tour of the areas chuches, temples, synagogues and mosques. We talked about Budhism, Catholicism, Islam, Judaism and Konko (Konko's a Japanese American religion. I learned something too.) And of course we talked about atheism, which I admited was where I fell, but I encouraged the kid to determine his beliefs on his own. He got all kinds of literature from each holy place we visited.

He was freaked out when Ali gave us a tour of the local mosque and we got to really feel what it's like to be in the minority. The mosque was packed with over a hundred kids studying and when we entered every eye was on us. My nephew hid behind me and begged to leave. Then he saw an adult swat a kid on the head for paying attention to us instead of his lessons.

My nephew doesn't get spanked so this had his eyes opening all the way. I didn't want him developing a prejudice again Muslims or Arabs but I also didn't want to pretend I was okay with people hitting each other.

Ali heard him say, "That guy hit that kid." on our way out and tried to explain.

"Oh yes. That childs mother has drive an hour to get him here. It is very difficult for her, but very important, so his teacher has to make sure he does his studies." We nodded and thanked Ali for the tour. When we got outside I did my best.

"It's not okay for an adult to hit a kid, but don' t think that's a Muslim thing. My dad used to get swatted at Chatholic school." I don't know what I was thinking. If he's going to be prejudice against Muslims he might as well not like Catholics either? Oh well, I was doing my best.

I'm not always so successful at letting him make up his own mind. Like the time he told me he believed in God. He in fact spent some time telling me how cool god was and I began to get impatient.

"That's cool." I replied. "You believe in God then eh?"

"Yep. I do."

"Great. How about Santa Clause, is he real too?"

"Yes. Duh!"

"Okay, what about the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy."

"Yeah."

"Okay. That's cool. Santa Clause, The Easter Bunny and The Tooth Fairy... Oh, and God. Sounds good."

I was torn between thinking myself an asshole and congratulating myself on being so clever.

Mexico, Belize, Guatamala part four; the journey home

Well here it is. I'll keep updating these, with pictures and with corrections as Steve reads it and helps me with my bad memory of certain events. I wish I'd kept a journal durring the trip, as it's been hard writing this ten years later. Enjoy.

Oh, and if you want to start with Part One, Click Here.

The not so deluxe bus we took over the border, back into Mexico, dropped us at another ruin. I was all ruined out and this one was not impressive to begin with as not much was left and it was over run with tourists like us. We had a quick walk and got back to hitch hiking.
It was obvious we were back in tourtist-ville as once again car after car carrying our fellow Americans passed us up with fearfull expressions on their faces. We were munching on these penuts with some kind of spice on them and avacodos and starting to not feel so good.
Finally a diesel pulled over. We hopped in and met the drive who was heading all the way to Merida. This was great as that's where we meant to be. We climbed in and off we went.

The diesel shook something awful on the beat up highway. Steve lay down for a bit while the driver and I gave each other language lessons. First the important stuff. He wanted to know what we called our police officers in the States. I told him we called them pigs, and after dong his best pig impersonation to show me he understood, he had a good long laugh. Then he told me they call cops pero. He had a hell of a time explaining pero to me. He was biting his arm, biting his wallet and starting to scare me a bit. Finally I got it. Pero is spanish for dog. Steve sat up. I have no idea if he managed any sleeping, but we switched places and I attempted a nap. That diesel bounced something crazy. That drivers spine must have been tore up.

We reached Merida, coming into to town through the seedy side. A couple of strip clubs and bars, which our new friend advised us to avoid. He reached a restaurant and after we hopped out he backed the diesel into a spot we wouldn't have believe it would fit into. We said goodby and made our way to a hotel.

The hotel was cool. It looked like and may have been an old mission. We got a room for next to nothing, but more than we'd paid anywhere else, and we hung our hammocks in the room as the bed was not something I wanted to sleep on. We put some insect chalk on the ropes of our hammocks to keep cockroaches from finding us in our sleep and we went to check out the town.

Downtown Merida was pretty cool. The first bar we found had an outdoor patio and we sat and had some beers. Then the bar was invaded by high school kids, young high school kids, like 15 and 16 year olds, and they were boozing it up. I felt like the old guy at a teenagers party so we headed for the exit. A drunk kid asked where we were going and suggested a bar around the corner.

"You guys gotta check it out. You can get anything you want there."

Ha. This kid was a pip. "Anything eh?" I asked him. "Like what? Crack, H, ecstacy? They got girls?"

And then a teachers hand wrapped tightly around my arm, an experience I was sure I was done with. "You need to leave. We are not interested." she said to me.

"I"m sorry. There's been a misunderstanding. I can certainly understood how this looks to you, and you've every right to be concerned." This is how I should have responded. But, I had a little flashback to my wonderful experiences with teachers as a kid and this came out; "Take your fucking hand off of me. I'm not one of your drunk kids and I will touch you back. Now before you go judging me, why are you getting teenager drunk in Mexico anyway? You misunderstood what was going on and if you keep behaving like this someone's going to get hurt." I made some attempt to explain the misunderstanding.

"Okay fine, I'm sure your great people. You were leaving, so just go."

I wanted to stay with her all night, just following her around, bugging the hell out of her. She was every teacher I'd ever hated. Steve persuaded me to let it go. We split.

We found another bar, a long narrow one with some great spanish disco playing in the back. There were a few American's who came to Mexico to play pro-ball and one very cute and in love with the world girl who kept everyone dancing. The bartender came around with Tequila which he poured straight in our mouths and we all had a great time. Steve and I went back to the hotel and crashed.

In the morning we rolled out of our hammocks and headed to the Merida market. The market was crowded with narrow aisles and tables selling all manner of crap. Cheap jewelry, perfumes, CDs, and clothes. We picked up some guayaberas, the cool mexican dress shirts. We also bought a couple of hammocks. Our hammocks were small backpacking hammocks, not nearly as comfortable as full size hammocks like you'd find people sleeping in throughout the yucatan, but they'd sold us on the comfort of a hammock, especially in the heat. Sleeping in a bed is like having a blanket on half your body holding he heat in. So, when we met a man who explained that his village was one big hammock making factory and that he made the long trip home only once a month to get more hammocks, we bought his story and two of his hammocks.

We enjoyed the market but we were starting to get antsy about getting to cancun on time to catch our flights out in a couple of days. I also think Steve was gettinig antsy about my dumb ass being out of money and getting deeper and deeper into him for funds. We were living as cheaply as possible and we were still eating the horrible spicy peanut mix which was rotting us from the inside.

We did find an area with lots of backpackers and not so obnoxious types waiting for buses and what not and we milled around a bit. We noticed a couple of girls laughing at us. I had to know.

"Hi." my oh so clever opener.

"Hello" in cute German accent with more giggling.

"I'm just wondering, what's so funny?"

"Oh. It's your backpacks. They are so stupid."

"Thank you."

"No, we mean no offense, they are just, very funny."

They explained what was dumb about our backpacks; the lack of stupport, etc. and showed us their superior German backpacks. Then we traded travel itineraries. They were heading over to the west side of Mexico and then into the States. They were looking to get a room for the night and wondered if we'd share one with them. Sure we would.

So, here I was, in Mexico, checking into a room with two gorgeous German girls. I had no interest in cheating on Bryna but I knew that I may have been putting myself in a situation where I'd be tempted, so, I talked about Bryna, as much as possible. A goofy defense mechanism, but if these girls had had any interest in helping me compose a letter to Penthouse magazine they dropped their plans. Of course it's likely that they really were just looking to get a cheaper room rate and hang out with two friendly guys. Steve did not talk of any girlfriend and he didn't get any smooches thrown at him either. It is of course also possible that I blocked Steve from recieving such affections. Sorry Steve.

The girl's were convinced that we needed to stay in Mexico longer and travel with them a bit. I was almost persuaded myself, but instead we hitched to Cancun the next morning.

We got a ride pretty quick and naturally we were dropped off in the middle of the tourist area known as the peninsula, as this is where Americans of course would want to be. The peninsula is hell on earth. It's the worst vision of America recreated in Mexico for American college kids, mostly those under 21. They can't drink in the bars in Florida, so they come to Cancun. We walked into the lobby of a plush hotel and we were told rooms were sixty bucks. We told them we stayed in a room last night for five bucks and they laughed at us. Outside the hotel one of the bellhops suggested we got to downtown Cancun where we'd find a cheaper room.

We walked around Cancun a bit. Drunk college kids bungie jumped from cranes, vomited in the streets, howled at girls and otherwise represented our country well. A guy sold us on a booze cruise. I was interested in getting on the boat and doing some snorkelling not the all you can drink bar but the price he agreed to give us after we repeatedly told him we weren't interested seemed pretty fair, and we had managed to hitch to Cancun in less time than expected to we had one full day to spare. We made arrangements to meet the boat the next morning and then we found a bus downtown.

A couple of frat boys were on the bus with us. They would be trying to relate to the driver one minute telling him what a cool place Cancun is and how lucky he was to live there, the next minute they'd be yelling at him to stop and asking him where the hell he was going. I'm sure the driver felt very lucky to be a resident of Cancun at that moment. Downtown was actually pretty nice and it became quickly evident that this is where the older Mexican tourists would come for a nice time. We found a great little restaurant and a cheap room.

In the morning we got ripped off by a cab driver, and we didn't have time to fight with him, and we caught our boat. Once on the boat we were told admission didn't include snorkelling gear and that we'd have to cough up more dough. We had plenty of time to fight now and eventually we got our gear.

Snorkeling in Cancun sucked. The reef wasn't too impressive. Too much traffic kept the water murky and made a less than ideal environment for animals to thrive in. I advised an obese man to not sit on a large brain coral.

"What? This is a rock dude."

"No. I know it looks like one, but it's actually an animal, a coral."

He didn't care, so I lied and told him that the longer he sat on it the more of his own skin would be washing down the drain when he got in the shower that night. He hopped of the coral.

The operators on the boat weren't real concerned for the well being of their passengers as they poured insane amounts of alcohol down their throats, before noon mind you, and then put them in the water. I wondered how many of these morons drowned each year. We found the quietest spot on the boat and figured we'd at least sit and enjoy being out in the ocean. We had some tequila pushed on us, I mean really pushed on us. No thank you did not translate to the two mexican men dressed as Aztecs, which felt a-lot like white men doing black face. They kept hitting this board and then pushing shots of tequila at us. Finally we agreed to one shot each to get them to leave us alone. I was happy to be off that boat. We wandered around a bit more and found the peninsula as garish by day as it was by night. We briefly considered bungie jumpind but decided that this would be more fun to do from a bridge somewhere than from a crane in Disneyhell Mexico, never mind that the safety requirements were considerably lower here. Remember the drunken snorkeling?

So we had another quiet night downtown and in the morning I caught a cab to the airport, making sure to agree to a price before getting in the vehicle. I rode home next to a couple who were a bit too old to be college kids, but who were of the type to love all that the peninsula had to offer. The guy was stoked that I wasn't going to eat my ham sandwich.

"Dude. Can I have that, I mean if you can't eat it anyway?"

I gave him my ham sandwich, pretended my chocolate cookie was vegan and had some potato chips and Coca-Cola. I expected James, my little brother, to meet me at the airport and I hoped he'd have Bryna with him. Instead Bryna was there waiting for me by herself, with hugs and kisses and my god was I glad to be home.

Click here for Part 1:Mexico, broken nail catastrophes and more

Click Here for Part 2: Belize, featuring drugs, kayaks and Belizian Bloods (as in Bloods and Crips)

Click Here for Part 3: Guatemala, featuring Mayan gods in various sexual positions for your souvenier purchasing pleasure.