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Sodom-on-Sea

Day 3 - Cancún

I fervently hope that a runway is approaching us with the rapidity that we are approaching the tree-carpeted ground. Black waters have become turquoise and grey skies an endless blue. I've never seen so much jungle and I've been to the New Forest ferchristsakes. Summer had arrived in December. We had touched down in Cancún in the Yucatán Peninsula. A town infamous for being a magnet to alcohol deprived American teenagers in spring and all the exported debauchery that suggests. Our hostel was sited in a disused shopping mall, the escalators had halted long ago but the place did the trick and it was in short order that we were sipping our first ice-cold Corona. The trip proper had started now, 'journey' if you're of a more literary bent. I had been fighting a rather fatalistic state of mind for the past two days, a mind of dark and doomy imaginings. Now every edge was a precipice, every drain cover a trapdoor, the cracks were everywhere. It drives one to distraction, it will pass I hope. What I do know is that somewhere in the back of my head I am ticking off each day that passes without serious mishap, each one a success. We only spent one $15 all-you-can-drink night in Cancún lest its visceral temptations corrupt our mortal souls and ensure our places beside Beelzebub himself. I tend to feel, if not guilt, then a kind of dismay when i'm in these places. Not through a moral objection or anything so high-minded, certainly I revel in their honesty. Moreso a wondering why the Western world need seek foreign shores to indulge its more basic (and sometimes base) desires. Should we inflict our vomiting, screwing, screaming on our poorer neighbours who can't turn away such regular business as our privilege provides. What does that make them think of us? Is this what they aspire to? Next morning after a night near spent on grass we jumped (carefully alighted) the bus South to Playa del Calmer, sorry Carmen. It is a cheaper, quieter version of its brash Northern neighbour. Lonely Planet evidently hasn't stopped by in a while given that its first two recommended hostels were, respectively, a souvenir shop and a building site. We did find success on our third attempt however. The trip has gone with an ease sharply contrasting that we experienced in the subcontinent. Places are, by and large, where they are meant to be and the language sticks, muy bueno. I am glad to be here, India can wait. It seems though, as is our perennial habit, we have landed outside of tourist season. We found some fellow gringos in a swinger's bar but the streets were empty of human traffic by midnight. Perhaps excitement lies to the West...

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