So that dude who asked me if I partied… As the conversation got going, I thought, Nooo, he can’t possibly be so sleazy as to hit on me, I mean, that’s just too sad and predictable. But yeah, he did. Two days have passed, so I’ve forgotten the exact vein of the conversation, which started out with ‘You’re single?!’ followed by ‘You’ve got a nice body’ followed by ‘I’m pretty adventurous–are you?’ followed very quickly by ‘I’m pretty secretive–are you?’

That’s when I smiled sweetly and said I didn’t think this conversation was going anywhere, especially as HIS WIFE was in bed upstairs.

After I dodged a drunken kiss attempt (actually, I don’t think he was even all that drunk, which makes it even more pitiful), I retired to my room and locked all my doors. And then thought back to the sweat lodge, during which this guy had been making a lot of weird noises, and I’d been thinking Chief Priestess Nancy should’ve said something like ‘First rule of the sweat lodge is no handjobs.’ Because back then he was with HIS WIFE… I was and still am so skeeved out. What’s wrong with people? How can they possibly be so bored with life? And did I mention he showed me a picture of his three kids?

Anyway, back to food, which is really a much more appetizing topic: In Mexican supermarkets, for some reason mayonnaise occupies an entire half an aisle. It’s pretty astounding. I think some kind of brilliant cultural exchange has happened, in which salsa became the most popular condiment in the US sometime in the late ’80s, and Mexicans went mad for mayo.

One mayo vehicle: deep-fried-shrimp tacos. At La Floresta in Playa. They’re $1.20 a pop, and they give you more deep-fried shrimp, mayo and pico de gallo than can possible fit in a single tortilla. They’re so good it makes up for my bad trip planning that’s required me to drive through Playa del Carmen several times, conveniently during lunch hours.

More treats: avocado ice cream, at this super-groovy new eco-retreat near the ruins of Ek-Balam (Genesis Retreat. Hospitable Canadian woman, tall and red-haired, runs the place with the help of some local Mayans, who all come up to her elbows. And those were the adults. I was sort of playing hooky from my job–I mean, I had to visit up there, but didn’t have any scheduled meetings with pushy hotel sales people for a couple of days, and no hotel reservations, so I actually felt like I was really traveling for a change. And it was great to be away from the beach, and in a pleasant, normal, pretty town like Valladolid that didn’t care at all whether I was visiting.

Anyway, I stumbled into this woman’s place in this tiny village and wound up spending about six hours there, eating various ice creams and chocolate-chile cookies, soaking my feet in the pool and commiserating with the owner about the perils of freelance writing, while pigs roamed the streets outside and the employees had a mud-fight as they were picking the rocks out of the new garden section. (The owner told me that her sister was visiting and complained of a car alarm in the middle of the night–turned out it had actually been a stuck pig squealing its last–apparently they try to sneak up on it while it’s sleeping.)

I eventually drove the visiting beautician/massage therapist back to Valladolid, and she told me all about her divorce, and how every guy in Valladolid was either married or a priest, or ‘defecto’ in some other way. I nearly drove off the road trying to follow her stories in Spanish and look out for signs back to town.

So that gave the arrival at the ritzy spa with the lecherous middle-aged man a bit of a ‘back to the grind’ feeling…at least I got to stop and have those shrimp tacos on the way up, though.