When I was a child I read Joseph Conrad. Lord Jim and The Heart of Darkness and The Secret Sharer. I dreamt of palms and being able to sleep under a tree. But l lived in the middle of a boreal forest, full of black flies and mosquitoes, what the Russians call taiga. It's something Canadians can identify with. So the idea of a place where there is no winter has always intrigued me. Northern Ontario has relentless cold, some stretches of the winter up north can be more than minus 20 degrees centigrade for weeks on end. Even here in Toronto last year, I recall a day when it was minus 38 degrees with the windchill.
It was the spring of 2016, April, and I was hungry for the sun after a dreary Canadian winter. I'm not a Snow Bird, if any of you know what that is (I'm not retired nor rich enough yet), but we northerners need to escape what is essentially a half year of no sun and snow, or cold rain (but if it has to be cold rain I'd just as well it be snow). In the winter it gets dark here at 4.30 p.m.
I take a vitamin D supplement and drink milk. I've come across people who are insulted by milk drinkers. Granted it's not a common practice in the southern hemisphere, but with a lack of sun the need for vitamin D is urgent. None of my ancestors wanted rickets. And as well, instead of a sexy and delicious orange, northern people get their vitamin C from cabbage or other decidedly unsexy vegetables. All this to say that my Scandinavian roots make me completely unsuited to that which is so enticing to me, the idea of a tropical life.
So in that April with a trusted saviour, guide, mentor and friend (that's one person haha), we made our way from Mérida in the Yucatan to Tulum, from Punta Allen to Bacalar and then to Chetumal, near enough to the border with Belize that we could throw stones into it.
In Bacalar, after lounging in the sun for a day or two, we decided to take a sailboat trip through those shallow waters. The skipper of our boat was a sweet handsome little Argentinean fellow, who made his way to southern Mexico, he said, deciding to work for a season, but then never left. I don't blame him.
Like most tourist draws in Mexico, activities are a mixed affair and one is usually paired with others, the better to maximise the tourist dollars. Aside from the skipper we were about a half dozen people on a catamaran plying our way in brilliant sunshine. It was a boat full of models, little did I know. The ring leader, the uber personality, was Vladimir Odessa Pelikh, international model. He is a true lover of travel and takes assignments it seems, all over the world, but Ukraine is his homeland.
I was certainly the odd man out, not handy with Spanish in a group of young and easy speakers, who were intelligent with language in a way that made me jealous. Things seem to come easy to people who are gorgeous. Nevertheless, it was a beautiful ride in that small sailboat and we, thrown together, were an egalitarian group.
I was surprised to find a GoPro video that Pelikh compiled in two parts for YouTube of his time in Mexico. In part two you can see me jumping off a concrete abutment with him and others of our party. The concrete platform is the remnant of a small bar visited by boats. 'Sol' is clearly seen.
Right after I plunge into the water, he cuts to a diving scene. It was, truth be told, pretty amazing. The handsome Argentinean told us, as we skimmed a bay, to look over the side of the boat at the sand that was about a metre below us. Then, all of a sudden as we looked, the rippled sand was gone, replaced by a black abyss. We were sailing over a submerged cenote, an 80 metre deep circular shaft sunken into the limestone called La Bruja, 'The Witch'. You can see him swimming and examining submerged roots in the video, the catamaran a wavy blob floating above him.
By the coming of evening I desperately had to pee and finally, after some agony, took the cue from Vladimir's girlfriend and jumped into the water to relieve myself. She floated between the port and starboard hulls, holding onto the rear crossbar and after laughing self-consciously, pulled herself up. I took her place immediately after, not at all embarrassed, in fact quite relieved.
It was a slow lazy trip back to port, almost dark by the time we got back to the resort. We had spent a good four or five hours on the water. Vladimir saw us at a late breakfast the next morning, curious about our next move. Alas, it did not jive with his itinerary and that was the last we saw of him.
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