I used to be such a travel pro, packing a bag the size of my head that was filled with magically matching and essential clothes, arriving all well rested at the airport at just the right time (OK, the latter is sort of a lie–I’ve missed many, many flights in my life, but I’ve generally known it ahead of time, so haven’t rushed to the airport in a lather), having a little bit of a plan and some cultural preparation before I hit the ground.

Now traveling is my job, and I’m fucking it up left and right. (I wonder if this is related my larger backsliding in behavior and social responsibility once I hit 30?) I never even looked at my Spanish verb-conjugation chart. I didn’t finish my other work before I left. I didn’t pack. I woke up yesterday morning, after five hours of sleep, all cotton-mouthed and squinchy in the head, for no good reason but not wanting to go home and miss the party. I never used to drink before I flew.

I’d left myself an hour to pack, which was dumb. Among the things I realize I’ve forgotten: a flashlight, a pareo for covering myself up in a/c buses, acidophilus (I’m convinced this is what keeps me from getting sick–here’s hoping I’m wrong), and clothes. I mean, I packed some things–mostly a big handful of thong underwear, and some nylon tank tops, but…what was I thinking? I’ve got one skirt and one dress. The end.

Also, I forgot to email a bunch of messages back to myself, so I don’t have the names of all the nice people who were going to let me stay at their hotels. That’s a fairly substantial blunder. Now I just have to show up at the places I did set definite dates with, and smile sweetly and hope no one asks who it was who approved my stay.

But all those details are sliding away now that I’m actually in motion. I spent last night in Cancun, which has improved greatly in my esteem–kind of the same way you don’t see a person the same physically once you know them, I can’t remember what made Cancun so heinous to me when I first saw it. Occasionally I get little glimpses, as the bus rounds the corner toward some faux-Mayan concrete tower, but mostly it’s just fondness. People are nice. The counterculture is strong. The beer is cheap, and people dance in the park.

This morning I hauled ass around looking for a wireless Internet connection (another thing I fucked up: hadn’t downloaded a bunch of files onto my travel laptop), which led me to the Gran Melia Cancun, the biggest faux-Mayan tower of them all, which is so crazy Andreas Gursky inside its lobby atrium that I forgot was getting shafted with $12 per half-hour Web access. It’s a surcharge for glass-pyramid glamour, I guess.

Now I’m in Holbox, the site of last year’s near-breakdown in the face of shin-deep water in the streets and swarming mosquitoes, which clung to my shirt like a fine carpet and bit me right through the fabric. My host then (and this year too–a nice guy from Mexico City named Andres) was prety cavalier: “Mosquito season is when we get the island to ourselves–it’s nice.” I wasn’t surprised to notice on a map that one part of the island is called Punta Mosquito. But this time, I got here before the rainy season really set in–there are some bugs, but not too many. I walked way up the beach as the sun was setting (a plus, here at the northern tip of the peninsula–on the east coast, you don’t get sunset over the ocean), and the air was thick with little bats, flitting around and eating their weight in insects, just like they ought to be. When I got back to the plaza, small-town island life was in full swing: some kid was standing around playing with two giant grasshoppers, each as big as his hand. He was making them box: “Mano a mano!” he was growling at them. And I betcha that’s about all the fun to be had.

Unless I go hang out with the Europeans. Getting on the ferry to come over here, I was amazed by the sheer number of giant Euro types getting on–all stocky, with strong features and square, mean-looking glasses. That was when I realized that the reason lots of people here think I’m French or Italian has more to do with my face and my glasses than it does with my general air of cosmopolitan insouciance. Damn.

I have to wake up tomorrow at 6 am to go visit the whale sharks–this is one of a few places in the world they hang out in the summer (the other that I know of is in the Red Sea, near Aqqaba in Jordan). Why I said I’d go, I have no idea: long rides on small boats make me queasy, and I am so afraid of the ocean, much less all the giant foreign creatures like _sharks_ in it, that I doubt I’ll be able to get myself to jump off the boat and swim with them like you’re supposed to. They’re allegedly really nice sharks, all huge and gentle.

If I die, can you all at least say at my funeral that I tried to expand my personal boundaries, and surpass limits, or some crap like that? Don’t mention the getting on the plane hung-over part…