The Mean Man On The Internet Says I Can’t Be Me (a tropical identity crisis)

na·tive adjective 1. being the place or environment in which a person was born or a thing came into being: one’s native land.

lo-cals. a. 1. a local person or resident: primarily of interest to locals.

out·sid·er noun 1. a person not belonging to a particular group, set, party, etc.

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Definitions. How do we define ourselves? Old? Young? Beautiful. Totally whacked out of our mind? What is a definition? It is something in a book, right? Or is it more than that? Does the definition vary from location to location? From one time to another time? Does one definition mean more than a different definition of the same thing? Can the same thing have many definitions? How do we define our home? How do we define ourselves in the place we call home? How do we define ourselves to others in the world around us?

I was on-line the other day, in a multi-person discussion about things like Sams and Hooters and Mega. As per usual someone who lives a million miles from here (and has everything on gods earth at their finger tips) was pontificating on the over-all badness of basically anything new and helpful on the island. His argument was brilliant in it’s simplicity; Someone this guy had never met and would never meet, might possibly have to deal with the fact that a much better store might open, in some distant future. A fascinating arguement indeed. I mean it’s not about the needs or the wants of the people, it is about staying loyal to people who have over-charged us for obsolete products for years. And who would know more about that subject, than a guy who lives 2000 miles away and spends about 5 days a year here on vacation? Nobody, right?

I was babbling my usual, that all Cozumelenos need stuff just like North Americans. That we have kids who need clothes and want toys. That we need computers and cell phones. And that we want HD TV’s, IPads and all the other little fun things that everyone else in the world wants, like young babes in orange tank tops serving us buffalo wings. This persons response; “Just another gringo”, he says. “Outsider”, he says. “You’ll never be one of them, no matter how long you live there”, he says. And it stings. Wow! The heartbreak of being insulted by a person you have never heard of, can be over-whelming.

My first instinct was to just blow up, get back on-line and tell the guy exactly what I thought and embarrass myself in front of 499 other people, that I have never met. It was a good plan. It was a plan that had worked in the past. My second thought was to point out calmly that; ‘Hey, I have lived here many years, I own a house, my wife is Mexican, I am a permanent resident, blah, blah, blah.’ My third thought was more sedate. Maybe the guy was right. Maybe I wasn’t part of the community. A profoundly, disturbing thought, as it put me in a limbo as to what community I AM part of… if indeed any. It was only 10 in the morning and I was really confused. Even more than normal.

I haven’t lived in the States for 18 years. I know I am not part of it at all. Well, now I have been told that I will never be part of where I am at. Man, oh man. I was stuck. I had to get out. I went down to Punta Langosta to check out Hooters. I saw people I knew, all around me. They were all smiling about something. They seemed to be staring at me. They were….they were…….they were my friends. What was I thinking about? I got out of there as quick as I could walk. I headed North on Melgar, I walked around the plaza, constantly having to hug, kiss and shake hands with people, who although they seemed so close, so recently……now, seemed so distant. Could we truly be connected? I wasn’t so sure any longer. That dude said I was just another outsider. Was he right? I needed a drink. I needed it really bad. I went to Las Palmeras. Really bad move…… I run into more people that I know. I am getting shaky. I make it to the bar. Shit! I don’t drink.

I get back on the street. I am in a panic. I need something that will help me. Something that always calms me down. I need to play with my dog. He is like a little, fuzzy, Valium. I start walking North to my villa. A guy is standing in front of Fat Tuesdays. He is looking at me. He steps out of the shade and approaches me. His name is Carlos and he is very friendly and speaks English. I know this because it says so on a little patch on his shirt.

Carlos asks me, “Are you lost?”

“Am I lost?”, I respond. “Brother, are we all not lost? We think we are one thing and we are something else. We think we are part of something and some goof, that we don’t even know, says something to us and our lives are flipped upside down.”

Carlos studied my face for a moment and then says, “I can see that, what you are saying is very profound dude, but I was thinking, like…….were you looking for something? You know man, like a tattoo or a moped or a cigar?”

“What!!!???”

Want a tattoo? Want a moped? A cigar? Some whiskey in your water? Some sugar in your tea? Thoughts are racing around my head. My mind goes back to the conundrum. What about the people around me? Are they part of the Cozumel community? What about all the really cool Mexican friends I had made? Were we not some kind of community, just between ourselves? What is the true definition of community? I mean this is getting very confusing.

You mean the German dude that has been here since the 50’s or the Italian dude that has been here since the 60’s….they are what?……not part of the Cozumel community? How can this be? I mean in my heart, I kind of believe that we are all tourists no matter who or where we are. Kind of like every day we get up and make our own movies while on location. But what? Are we like Kwai Chang Caine in Kung Fu? Without a true place to call home or community? Doomed to wander foreign lands? Speaking in foreign tongues? Occasionally kicking some rednecks ass? All because we fell in love with a beautiful island and the incredibly cool people that were born there? Living as if at we are at home and yet, strangely not at home. Hmmmm. All this thinking about who I am or rather, what part of the world could I say that I WAS a part of……I was starting to feel like I was back in high school, on an especially bad acid trip.

What about the people who just recently moved here? How do they define at themselves? We are all proud to live here and are more than happy to let people know that we do. I mean we did it right? We made our dream come true! We touched the beaches, with tales of brave Ulysses! We mark our time here, like a child announces their age. We walk around Mega talking about how we have been here for for 3 years, 4 months and 6 days, the guy behind us in line yells, “Hey, I got that beat!” Why do we feel the need to do that? Why do people who don’t live here say they do? Why, why, why? What about people everywhere else? I was in my hometown a couple of months ago and was at a party. It got circulated that I lived in Cozumel, which made me very popular at the party. Late in the evening, some drunk got in my face about me living on an island and how cool I must think I am, for doing so and the next thing I know…………this guy tells me to go to back to where I f-ing came from! “WHAT??!!!!!!”

My mind refocuses on what I am doing. I walk North faster and faster. I look over at Playa del Carmen. I wonder if those poor bastards know they are outside of what they think is their community. I am thinking of all of the people, all over the world, who do not know that they are not part of the communties in which they live. I have got to get home. WAIT!!! If I am not part of the community, how the heck can I ever get home? Thank god I could see the villa. Then I see a white, BMW, SUV approaching me with it’s lights flashing. “What now?!” I am thinking.

The BMW pulls to the side and the blacked out window slowly goes down. It is my next door neighbor. He looks up at the large houses around us and waves his hand around and with a huge smile says, “Are we lucky to be part of this beautiful community or what?” I give him a vague smile and mumble something about getting home. I walk to the corner and wave at the security forces, who guard the mayors house. I start to insert my key into the lock of my gate. I can hear my dogs barking inside, telling me they want to play in the pool. I open the gate, step into my garden and look at my watch. It is 4;20 pm. Everything is fine, once again. I’m home. Or at least I think I am. I guess I’ll have to ask that dude on the internet.

Kid, You Gotta Stop Watching So Many Movies.

You may find yourself living in a shotgun shack
You may find yourself in another part of the world
You may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile
You may find yourself in a beautiful house with a beautiful wife
You may ask yourself, well, how did I get here? ***

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When I was a kid, just like now, I loved watching movies. One of my very earliest memories from my childhood, is where I am taking a bath, getting ready to go, with my parents, to see a movie. One of the local theatres was showing a week long screening of Disney’s incredible version of Jules Vernes, “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea”. That morning, in the local paper, there was a review of the movie and a cartoonish image of James Mason as Captain Nemo, fighting the giant squid, on the deck of the nuclear powered (not to mention, home-made), submarine, the Nautilus. Because I was in a tub of water, it seemed only proper to play with the little, cut out cartoon and even though my dad warned me…..the paper fell apart in my fingers after just a couple of minutes.

The movie blew me away. I was around 5 years old and I wanted so badly to be one of those guys, in those hard helmets, walking on the bottom of the sea. Specifically, I wanted to be Nemo. Ned Land to me was a guy who failed to grasp the situation and betrayed an entire society, by aiding in the destruction of the home base of the Nautilus, Oceanus. Even at that young age I understood Nemo’s mission. But it wasn’t Nemo’s mission that fascinated me, it was from where he conducted his raids: the ocean depths. Although, I cannot remember how aware of scuba I was, I had seen other movies, documentary type movies, about deep sea divers. So I knew this was a reality and I knew that this was something that I was meant to do.

Growing up, I went to see every movie that had anything to do with the ocean. I didn’t care if it was a war movie or a movie about some monster rising from the sea terrorizing San Francisco. Then I saw the movie the really made me want to be a diver……”Thunderball”. The fourth installment of the James Bond franchise. I was blown away. Man if I could be a diver, go to the Bahamas and save the world from nuclear terrorism, kill all the bad guys and end up in bed with “Domino Vitali” ……well, that was just about it, I had to be a diver.

Then you grow up. You realize you are a long way from any beach, know nothing about boats and the worst……you figure out that Domino Vitali is 22 years older than you. You also have to get a job and raise the family, which I tried to do, to the best of my ability. But then, seemingly right in the middle of my young life, something truly wonderful happened to me. A friend of mine ended up with a trip for two, with limited options per destination. One of the destinations was the Bahamas. After talking with the wife, I paid a whopping $300 for for hotel and r/t airfare, for two, Nassau, on the island of New Providence, in the small island nation of the Bahamas.

When we got down there, we like most other young couple, had never travelled much and certainly never to such an exotic destination. My travel history had been a summer in L.A. and a couple of months in Mexico DF. Everything else was domestic and short. The Bahamas are a truly beautiful chain of islands. The reefs are shallow and there is no where near the drama compared to the reefs of Cozumel, but the pelagic life is incredible. Frankly, the pelagic animals there rule. It is the only place where I saw sharks all the time on almost every dive. It is the only place, out of all my dive experiences, where I ever had a problem with a shark.

My first day there, I went to the snorkle booth at the hotel. I asked the guy about snorkeling and it was basically $10 for the mask, snorkle and fins, and I could keep them all day. I was at a hotel on Cable beach and if you have ever been there, you know that Cable beach is world class. Just off-shore was a small caye and I decided to snorkle to it and see if I could see any fish. The water was clear and the visibilty, right off-shore was about 65 feet. I saw little angels and snappers. I found a tiny little patch of corals and it was full of tiny fish, but frankly, I am an type A guy and it was kind of boring. Then my life changing event happened……an Eagle Ray and her baby came ito my field of view. Not only that, but they swam right at me and turned only to avoid running into me. I was delighted. I followed them and they did not seem to mind if I was there or not. After about 10-12 minutes they turned to the deeper blue water, effortlessly moved away from me and disappered into the open water.

I floated in the water for a long time and wondered how many other animals were out there, just beyond my field of vision. That was it. I walked back to the snorkle shack and asked the guy about diving. Need to be certified he says. I left the snorkle gear. I had only had it for about an hour, but it was long enough. I returned home a profoundly changed person. My wife too, had some kind of blue water/island epiphany. We knew that someway or another we would be living by water that looked like this in the not too distant future. My own personal little 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea adventure was about to begin.

We walked off that beach and flew home and became divers. Even though I could not immediately move to Florida, I started buying boats, closed bow/go fast cigarette boats. I wanted to learn everything I could about boating and navigation. We started taking more and more trips, mostly to the Florida Keys, where my parents owned some property and to the Bahamas. Then one Christmas my wife asked me if I would be interested in going to a funny sounding place called Cozumel, for a change. I agreed and in February of 1983 we arrived for the first time, to what would be our future home; Cozumel Island.

The difference was really dramatic. At the time the Bahamas were much more sophisticated and modern than Mexico, in general, and much, much more than Cozumel, specifically (quick example; first international call from Cozumel took 3 days to get done/a guy found me on the beach and told me that my party was on the line). But the thing we came for, the diving, that totally blew me away. Coral structures, like those at the Palancar Gardins, that seemed to be as big as resorts, were too much. It was just too awesome. Then we started hanging in town. The people were all so sweet and friendly. Much sweeter and friendly then the Bahamas and a lot less seedier than Key West, where we had also been hanging.

The first year we dove with Discover Cozumel Diving. Then we dove with Aqua Safari. Then we dove with Blue Bubble. One night, at the killer disco Maya 2000, I was fortunate enough to met Humberto Cruz, who was the original owner of Blue Bubble. We hit it off pretty well, so the next day I went to Blue Bubbles dive shop and made a deal with Humberto where we would have a boat to ourselves for the rest of the week. After that, whenever we came, we would always dive privately. Personally if I had to pick staying at a 4 star hotel and dive on a group boat or stay at a low end hotel and dive privately……….well it was an easy decision. I guess that I am very lucky, because outside of maybe 3-4 dive trips, I have never dived in a group situation, unless I was the divemaster leading the group. That thing about what the lead dog sees…..that goes double for scuba. IMHO most groups manage to scare away more fish than they see. Nothing worse than a bull Eagle Ray coming by and having some novice or photographer scare it away.

Back then the nightlife totally rocked. Number one…..Carlos and Charlies still rocks. People who say it does not are only trying to impress people with their boredom. But back in the day……Que wow! It totally rocked. It was one the rocking-est bars I had ever been in and I was a independent, international, diamond broker, so I was pretty much a 5th degree black belt of fiestas. There were the two discos; the Neptuno and the Scaramouche, of which watergate plumber E. Howard Hunt wrote about in his 1985 book, “Cozumel”. The Scaramouche had a lighing/sound system and dancefloor that would rival disco’s in Manahattan.

We started getting to know Mexican locals and being invited to social functions. After many years, we felt that we pretty much knew everybody (the island was much smaller). We started hanging with local DM’s, Captains, bar and restaurant owners. Weddings, parties, quenceaneras, and funerals. One night while hanging with some friends, at their restaurant, one of the owners kidded me about getting off of some cash and buying a vacation home, on the island. We started looking around. It was confusing, but the pricing was really low, at least compared to where we were living in Southern Florida. We looked at all kinds of houses. Finally some other friends pointed me in the direction of Frank Del Corno, who had completed the condo Puesta del Sol was beginning construction of the condo’s known as Las Palmas.

We were shown the area, that they were trying to pitch. It was at the corner of 15 Avenue and 14 Calle. There was nothing there. There was a hotel about a two blocks away and some limited housing a block or so to the East. We had Frank’s partner fly to Florida to talk about house designs and in the fall of 1995 we signed a contract to build a medium sized home. I returned to the island to review the property, but when I got home we started thinking along different lines. We had never really been too happy living in Florida. We loved the beauty of the state, but where we were living (in a gated community, within a gated community, within another gated community), the residents were almost all snowbirds. So there was hardly ever anyone around until near Christmas. This may sound good, but it is not. Living away from any community (to me) could be a very good thing. Living in a division where most houses stood empty for over half a year….not good. We thought: “Let’s just build a little palace in Cozumel and live there full time. We are diamond brokers, we can work from anywhere. If we do not like it, we can always move back. So we had Frank’s partner return to Florida and we cancelled the old contract and made a new one, for a much larger villa.

One month later I traded my wife’s 400 series Mercedes for a brand new Toyota Land Cruiser. Two months later we took our Land Cruiser and our 27′ tricked out Boston Whaler to Miami, where they were palletized, poly-wrapped and shipped to the island. My wife would stay behind to finish the list of our shipping goods for the Mexican consulate in Miami and she would join me 10 days later. On Januray 26, 1996, two days before the Dallas Cowboys would defeat the Pittsburgh Steelers in Super Bowl XXX and with my Jack Russell puppy Cody, I arrived in Cozumel.

Once we got the boat in the water we had to appear in front of the Captain of the Port, to see what rights we held or did not hold pertaining to taking our boat into Mexican waters. Every American I met on the island told me that I would be denied entry into the park without a Mexican piloting the boat. The second week of February I recieved the port Captains decision; We could take the boat into the park, without a divemaster AND without a another captain. We were told that this was the first time this permission had ever been given to non-Mexicans. The heads of about 7 dive shop operators exploded that day. There is no way I could get anyone to believe how hateful and angry certain people were about it. The Captain of the Port held a meeting with these people and told them that they would have to kick rocks. We were residents and his ruling was that we had the same rights as anyone else who held that position.

In the following years, Teresa and I made hundreds of dives on our own. We spent days on end in the Columbia Lagoon. We fished until we never wanted to eat Mahi Mahi again. We ate so much lobster, we grew tails. Teresa through Trini Viliger, met Lourdes Gonzalez, who asked Teresa to become part of the Cruz Roja. Lourdes was the very heart and soul of Cozumel in those days. She was one of the most beautiful and dynamic women I have ever met. A person with that ability to make you feel that out of every person in room, you were the most important. Teresa went on to join the Cruz Roja and became one of the first, if not the first North Americans on the local board. In the year 2000, she recieved a letter of merit from the president of the CR from the central office of the Cruz Roja in Mexico City. In the late 90’s I was told that I would have to take a reef course to maintain my status with the boat. I took the course and then forgot all about it. About 6 months later I was stopped by the park patrol. They asked for ID. What ID, I asked. They called the Parks office and were informed that indeed I had taken the course and that I should come and pick up my documents. You can imagine how happy I was when I recieved a document stating that I could now work in the park as a DM, instructor and the best part….I was listed as Captain.

We are still here, in the same villa, doing the same stuff, happier than ever. I doubt we will ever leave. This is my home now. I have no other. I have had little problems here and frankly outside of dealing with what I would call “entitled americans”, I have hardly have ever had a cross word here. So…look for us. We are out there every day. Walking the dogs through town, diving, hanging on the beach……….our lives are puro Cozumel.

Tranquility to all here in Cozumel. And to my detractors, to quote from the movie, ‘Papillon’; “I’m still here, you bastards!”

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“Once In A Lifetime”
Byrne/Frantz/Weymouth/Harrison/Eno
1981

Hooters, The Columbia Lagoon and Me.

Earlier today I wrote a small post on my Facebook page; Cozumel Diving, concerning what appears to be a lot of complaints about the appearance of Hooters, at the Punta Langosta mall. I read most of these complaints on different travel blogs that have Cozumel discussion pages. For me, to hear people who come here 5-14 days a year, whine about something, that will probably never affect them, kind of blows my little Caribbean mind.

When I moved to the island, I  like many would watch the sunset from the top of the hill where Coconuts now stands. There were always couples up there. As beautiful as the view from that area seems now, when it was still just wilderness, it was even more spectacular. There is a shallow cave, below the peak, on the ocean side. Many people used to love to go up there and build fires, sharing beer and perhaps other mild intoxicants, sharing conversations of the love of nature and making bonds that last today. Now Coconuts is a private property. Nobody is allowed in the cave. Nobody can go and hang without having to buy something. Not too many people were happy about this, when it occurred, but there was little complaining about it, as we the people that live here, understand that  change is inevitable and frankly, living in a tourist area, you constantly lose things you love to progress.

We used to go to the lighthouse at the South point, El Faro, Celarain. There was a small family living there and we would give them a little cash and they would make us fish and give us cokes and lets us climb around the lighthouse and go snorkeling all day long. No charge. No park.  No authority. Just a bunch of Cozumelenos hanging out together. Today there is a guard shack there. The area is filled with tour groups and locals have to pay to get in, just like anyone  else (although  we  can get discounts). Nobody locally went crazy or ranted and raved on-line about losing the ability to go to the lighthouse, although once again, we lost something else to tourism.

When I moved here, my wife and I would take our boat to an area known as the Columbia Lagoon. The entrance to the lagoon is the beach area to the East of shallow waters known as El Cielo. The Columbia Lagoon is one of the most beautiful areas, I have ever been able to hang out.

To entere you have to anchor in shallow water, and then enter the lagoon through a small tidal creek. The creeks water can be fast or slow, east or west, depending on the tide. The creek can also be filled with crocodiles and cayman. Walking into it is something straight out of Apocalypse Now. Totally jungle. Once inside, it is mind blowing. Hundreds of Flamingos. Dozens of Roseatte Spoonbills, Crocs and cayman laying in the sun, absorbing  its rays. In the mangroves are tens of thousands of snappers and other small fry. A nursery to the reefs creatures. An incredibly fabulous area and the place that I loved the very most, on the island.

One day while walking on the beach, on the outside of the lagoon a soldier with a machine gun approached me and asked me what I was doing there. I was more than happy to tell him about all of our funfilled adventures in the lagoon, when he shook his head and wagged his finger at me. “No more” he said. No more would we ever be allowed on the beach or in the lagoon. I asked why the hell not  and was told that the lagoon was now for tourists and if I wanted to see it……………….I  could buy a ticket like everyone else.

You, the reader may be wondering why I am telling you all this. It is quite simple. The people who actually live here, the ones that were born here, the ones that gave up everything in their lives to live here FULL TIME, we have given up so many things in the name of tourism and you know what? We hardly every gripe about it. We know things change. And we know that no matter how much we want the things we have lost, they are never coming back.

So after all this, when I read some guy has a problem with Hooters or some woman has a problem with Sams………all I can say is this……..you really need to shut up, and be more respectful of the people living here. This island has turned itself upside down over tourism and if we can bear it, then some person that spends a whopping 2 weeks a year here can bear it too.