…just the first of some cheesy Mexico cliches I intend to trot out during my postings while down here.

Anyway, this doesn’t have anything to do with food, but I witnessed two weddings this week, and they couldn’t have been more opposite. One was my friend Justin’s, in DC, all very formal and normal…and then I was sitting on the beach in Isla Mujeres last night and this middle-aged couple sort of wander up and get hitched. Their respective teenage daughters seemed to be the witnesses, and the bride’s white granny panties were showing through her gauzy island-bought dress. She had a bad sunburn, and his lei was on crooked, but they both seemed perfectly content. But the whole ceremony, all three minutes of it, seemed so weird and perfunctory. Where were the people cheering them on? Why bother doing that? It just seems so flimsy unless you’ve got hordes of people cheering you on. Oy. Anyway, I ordered myself another michelada and felt relieved that it wasn’t me in either case.

I was also drowning my regret that I squandered my cellulite-free years not dressing like a hoochie mama. That wise-beyond-my-years bit really sucked, in retrospect.

Another regret: ordering randomly at the cute out-of-the-way lunch place and ending up with a sort of tropical chicken kiev. I mean, it was good–the cheese was nice and oozy, and the coconut sauce was good–but I smacked myself in the head when I wandered back outside and noticed the whole list of the other daily specials that were much more, well, Mexican. D’oh.

So, back at the beach bar adjacent to the quickie wedding, there was scads of overtanned white people, that quintessential lobster color, made all the worse by white beards. Also, a band led by a California underachiever, a dreadlocked white sax player of a certain age, all meek and blinky behind his glasses, opening with ‘How Many Roads…’ He’s backed up by some suave Mexican kid, who’s clearly on a more upward trajectory. Beach culture is the same everywhere…

Now I’m down in Playa del Carmen, where people wear their tans much better because they’re mostly Italian and Argentinian…and hot. Some studly Italian with leonine hair, linen pants and dapper leather shoes whipped out his full socket-wrench set to raise my bike seat today. The fantasy was a little ruined when it became clear he was cranking the nuts the wrong way, but I couldn’t think of a way to say ‘righty-tighty, lefty-loose-y’ in Spanish or Italian, and didn’t want to bust his mojo in any case. He sorted it out. I’ve got a date with him tomorrow…to return my bike.