Just for the record, I’m in Mexico again. Neatly avoiding all post-election fallout. Dodging trauma by driving fast and not looking at headlines. Though in the Miami airport, I did have to watch the skycam coverage of Kerry’s SUV tooling to Faneuil Hall for the concession speech, in that excruciating CNN way of milking every second of not-quite-breaking news.

So. Mexico. Not much new since August–just a lot more topiary and underlit palm trees in the medians of Tulum, in probably the fastest construction project I’ve ever seen. The town went from dusty sprawl (last September) to totally torn up (in May) to orderly four lanes (two express in the center, two local along the sides) with pull-in diagonal parking, handsome brick paving and the aforementioned shrubs in the shape of ducks (now, November). But you still go one block off the main drag, and it’s dirt roads with three-legged dogs nosing around pits of ankle-deep muddy water.

I’m staying at El Crucero, this hotel I developed a little crush on last year when I spent an afternoon hanging out at the bar waiting for someone to get the keys out of my locked car (_I_ didn’t lock ’em in–the 24-year-old Brit did). Now, through bizarre coincidence, I have an in with the innkeeper (he came to a Sunday night dinner, as a guest of someone Tamara knows, a regular at Prune–another place I had a crush on), but he’s not here. He’s back in the States, still mourning the elections, because he busted ass to no avail.

(Soapbox interlude: That grossly high percentage of people who voted for Bush based on “moral issues” like abortion–what?! What’s moral about sending Americans over to Iraq to die for what was basically a shady business strategy and grudge match that Bush lied his ass off about? Never mind the now-dead Iraqis who did nothing wrong except live in the same country as Saddam Hussein. I care a lot more about all these people than I do about a little cluster of cells in my uterus, and I don’t even know them.)

_Anyway_, I’m not doing any wacky traveloguing because nothing wacky has happened yet. Just the usual stuff, like crusty, mellowed-out dudes in Docksiders saying “Hola” to me at the Euro cafe. Even thought we’re all obviously American. It’s this coded way of saying, “Welcome to town. We’ve been here a while, hon. So long we just can’t help ourselves from sayin’ hello like the locals…which we practically are by now, y’know.” Reminds me of how enthusiastically all the Americans I know in Amsterdam kiss each other three times. Like, we may never be able to pronounce Scheveningen or pick our noses in public (OK, maybe), but we know this three-kisses bit. (Hey, I do it too. I love kissing people when I have to.)

But maybe it’s this skeptical attitude toward a nice little “Hola” that makes me so bad at bothering to learn languages properly. (Yeah, and never practicing. I know.)

Oh, so, food–like you’re dying to hear. Two meals in a row of shrimp tacos. La Floresta, site of mine and Peter’s thrilling rendezvous in August, didn’t really hit it this time–long on batter, short on mayo. But the nouvelle ones at the American cafe in Puerto Morelos were great…though the chipotle action was distracting. Just finished an enh Italian meal, here in the land of shady Sicilians–I actually found myself thinking it was expensive, which I never think, coming from NYC. The owner’s got to pay for the remodeling somehow, I guess — good thing yoga doers (the other major Tulum demographic) skew rich these days.

So, that’s all I got, as Tamara would say. Tomorrow is some nature-y bits, and some ruin-y bits, and then a long drive to the charming city of Valladolid. I’ll be stopping in Carrillo Puerto to get more of those panuchos from the ladies at the bus station, all in the name of research of course. That’s me–working, always working.