isla mujeres

i am sweating and miserable in the heat and humidity of mexico. well, i´m not miserable but having a grand ole time. we are on isla mujeres (island of women) and basically just laid on the beach and took siestas today. it´s been quite the journey so far. my last two nights in portland i didn´t get much sleep because i was so excited. usually i can sleep on planes when tired but i just could not this time because i would get so wound up. we left portland at 6am and didn´t get to our final destination of cancun until after midnight. by then we were pretty wrecked. long layovers and flights but nothing bad or interesting happened. ´customs´ was a joke, they didn´t even look at my bag, and immigration was a breeze as well. lots of lines and people but smooth sailing all the way. couldn´t have asked for anything better really, besides airport beds. that would´ve been nice!

in cancun we visited a supermarket, which was pretty neat, we got some mexican granola bars and i got some fried rice type thing you pay by the kilo. it came out to US$.60 or something like that. things in mexico aren´t all cheap though, i am finding. it´s not expensive, but just like at home. i went to the bank and exchanged some traveler´s checks into pesos. they have really pretty money, i am jealous. basically, US$1=MEX$10. it´s an easy conversion. i took two separate siestas today in the dormitorio. we´re staying at a really popular hostel and have an 8-bed dorm. haven´t met many people yet cause i´ve been sleeping so much. we also hit the beach called playa norte. i guess the north shore. :) the water was so warm it was kind of gross, but it was still better than frying in the sun or bathing in the air. arna said it feels like ´walking through a cloud´ and i´d say that´s pretty accurate. the humidity here is unreal. it´s a thousand times worse than hawaii and even worse than singapore. it is almost 10 and i´m sweating without even moving, with a fan at my side. i am not a heat person. still, it´s nice to be on vacation with no worries. i´m drinking more water than ever, all bottled of course. you just don´t know here. at lunch i got a ´agua melon´ with my pollo which was cantaloupe water. it was soooooooooooooo good, with little pieces of melon in it! yum!

i´m trying to learn spanish as i go. i´m keeping a journal and writing in it in totally broken pidgin spanish with no conjugated verbs. it´s getting easier, i´m learning many new words and i don´t have to look everything up. i ordered some food in spanish and little things like asking for a room at the hostel. i am just very happy and excited to be here because it´s a totally new experience. when i try to find a word in my head in spanish, i actually run through japanese and german first. haha as we were walking through a market i heard a guy say ´japanese?´ and then say ´takai´. i wanted to tell him that it meant ´expensive´ and he should not say that but it was too funny so i couldn´t. while we were at the beach i went to get a cerveza and the bartender said no, it´s happy hour, you get 2 for 1. okey dokey, dos cervezas then. i felt like a corona commercial. the water was so shallow, i walked out probably 50 meters and it didn´t even reach my butt. i just kept going in and out because it would get too warm.

this was probably a pretty scattered post, my brain is kind of scrambled with all the lack of sleep and travel. i am pretty sure i will sleep well tonight, if i can stand the humidity anyway. tomorrow is another day at the beach and i´ll live it up. so far i´ve had really good food and i´m looking forward to much more. buenos noches!