Well, actually, first things first: I survived Cancun clubbing. I did not show my tits to anyone, nor drink any drinks with sexy names. I’m no fun at all.

Silly me–I thought people went to clubs to dance. No–in Cancun, they go to clubs to watch people lip-sync to Beyonce while covered in glittery body paint and sproinging from the ceiling on bungees. I’m actually conflating a few different acts, but whatever. Outside the clubs was equally cacophonous, with a strip of open-air bars all playing “YMCA”, but none at the same time…like “Row Row Row Your Boat,” but disco style, and very drunk.

It was in one of these bars that I saw a very strange performance. Alongside the extremely bored-looking go-go dancers was a tall, close to middle-aged woman with dyed auburn hair, fully clothed in black flare-leg pants and a loose black shirt with long sleeves. She was doing a full-on, super-aggressive stripper act, complete with ‘ooh-I’m-so-sexy’ facial expressions and running her hands through her hair…but not taking off her clothes. She danced and danced and danced, and then the song ended and she climbed down from the bar. And as she did, she reached back to get her purse.

This is the magic of Cancun, I guess. Nearly middle-aged women can get up on a bar and do a crazy sexy dance, and no one bats an eye.

I came back later, and she was back up there again, this time dancing with a young dude in camo pants, the male equivalent of the go-go girls. And he didn’t look too horrified that this strange lady was miming fellatio on him, so maybe she was a professional, legitimately employed by the bar–but that doesn’t explain her handbag. Unless she was a drag queen? Huh. Just one of Cancun’s little mysteries. (Along with WHY does anyone still sing along with “Who Let the Dogs Out?”)

So that was Friday night. Saturday I tramped all over downtown Cancun, then dropped off my car (always breathing a sigh of relief that I’m in the clear, insurance-wise and general-risk-wise) and took a bus down to Playa, to take the ferry to Cozumel. That whole travel interlude took longer than I thought, and I wound up on an after-dark ferry, on very choppy seas. By the time we arrived, I was feeling none too spry, but at least I wasn’t quietly moaning and curled up in a fetal ball like the woman in the seat in front of me.

Maybe this interlude of disorientation would explain why this morning, within less than an hour of acquiring my new, just-for-today-to-drive-around-the-island rental car, I managed to lock my keys inside. I had been positively OCD about my keys with my first car, carefully gripping them in my right hand each time I shut the door. I did this because on my first trip here, my keys got locked in my car (note the passive voice–it was not my fault; it was my passenger’s), and although I had a great time hanging around the bar at El Crucero in Tulum, I wasted a good three hours waiting for someone to come pop open the lock.

So there I was this morning, in front of Mezcalito’s beach bar on the east coast of Cozumel, basically my first stop in what’s supposed to be a whirlwind tour. I only got out of the car because it was so damn pretty, and I thought I should take a picture, and then I jumped out with my camera…and no keys.

I skipped the photos and walked right over to the bar to ask some of the waiters to call someone for me, or help somehow or other. I was already eying the bar menu, and wondering if I should start drinking margaritas at 10:30 in the morning.

Well, the one waiter just walks out to the road and starts waving and whistling at a truck down the way. Turns out it’s an Angeles Verdes (Green Angels) truck. Theoretically, I know about this roadside assistance service in Mexico. There’s an emergency number, like 911, for calling them directly. But I don’t think I’ve ever really seen them, and certainly not in action. But there they were, sitting about 250 feet from my locked-up car. I walk down, explain to the guy the situation; he laughs, drives up 250 feet to my car, jumps out with his set of keys made just for this purpose, and pops open my passenger’s side door, all in about five minutes.

Most. Anticlimactic. Rescue. Ever. Even the Green Angel guy–and the policeman who materialized from nowhere, and all the bar employees who came out to watch–seemed disappointed.

But praise the freakin’ lord. I got everything I needed to do done today, and I even went swimming later, very briefly. I didn’t, however, wind up with any pictures of the beach at Mezcalito’s.