Cinco De Mayo (Quintana Roo)
I don't usually celebrate this, but lately with Trae getting older I do have to say I am grateful for this culture. When I was ten, my dad packed my brother and I into our 1994 Ford Mustang, and we left our home in Milton FL, headed to Belize. Our first stop was Laredo Texas, Kings Ranch. My dad had a brand-new polaroid camera, and he took pictures of literally everything. <I understand this more now, as a parent> We stayed there for about a week, while waiting on our passports. It was fun, mostly bc of the food and the pool! I loved that pool, until my brother started humming the JAWS tune, and it was over for me. We crossed the border at Brownsville/Matamoros. It was simple as pie to get in Mexico, not so much coming out. The first night we stayed at La Quinta Inn, and i ordered spaghetti. Dude, it was green. More like pesto, but as a ten-year-old i was NOT with it. Second night, i tried again... spaghetti. It was PINK. I swear to GAWD. Insane. PINK SPAGHETTI?! I gave up on it after that. We drove all the way down to a little place called Chetumal. We stayed at a hotel by the San Francisca (the towns grocer) ... My dad fell in love with the town, and people. Within the next week we drove into Belize. Looking at a globe, it looks identical to lower MX, but it is far from it. It is a tourist country. All the hotels are more like cabanas by the water, and it was dirty. There's litter everywhere, the water was dirty.. it was just not where any of us wanted to be. So we made the drive back up to Chetumal. Within Chetumal we found an even smaller town, Calderitas. This was our new home. We lived on Oaxaca. I literally ate Quenepa off a tree in my front yard. We could walk down steps into the Caribbean. It was probably the most fantastic time of my little life... I just didn't know that because I was ten. We stayed in Calderitas until I was almost 13. We were driving to Mexico City, and got into a car accident, where my dad was crushed under his steering column. It took hours for help to come, but there were some tourists who passed us while we sat on the side of the road.. they picked my dad up and drove us over two hours to a hospital. My dad had broken his pelvis in two places. He was bed ridden for almost 4 months. During the 4 month recovery, a woman named MIMI took care of us. She was practically an in home nurse. June 2, 1998 we were taxied to Cancun, where we were flown into Tampa on a US Embassy flight. The attendant at the Cancun airport gave me a white rose, and as i exited the plane in the United States it was taken from me.. <I WAS SO SAD ABOUT THAT> Una Rosa Blanca they called me. A white rose. My dad finished his recovery in Florida, and after we flew back to MX.. It was far from the same. Our home had been sold, and Mimis tienda was closed. Though she still lived there, she was also different.. it seemed.. our home was never going to be there again, and so we came back to Florida. And the rest is history.
I've never written much about that experience here, and there are many many more stories to tell (like being bit by a huge spider, riding a horse down my street bare back.. the Saturday night town dances.. the food, the people, the culture. Probably my favorite part of childhood.) I plan on writing about it all so my kids can look back and see my memories.
Until then, here are some photos i got on Google Earth of our adventure. Ill add more soon.
- Blanca
