Seeing as how I'm currently living in Mexico, residing in a beautiful neighborhood, and doing a job that truly doesn't feel like work, I decided I needed a vacation this weekend. So I hightailed it out of the city and headed to Acapulco for some fun in the sun.
It was an abbreviated trip, from Friday afternoon until Sunday morning, which is just enough time to see some friends, get some sun and get the hell out of there. Acapulco for me is kind of like Vegas for most people. I know I'm in trouble if I spend too much time there, so I ration myself.
It's a short bus ride, only 5 hours, which may not sound short but is nothing compared to the 13-20 hours I'll be clocking in my trip next week. Sidenote: I know 13-20 hours seems like a large spread of time for a single bus trip, but Mexican bus companies don't really like to promise that they're going to get you where you need to be at the time you need to be there, so they give you a guesstimate. So, I settled in for the dubbed version of The Proposal (Ryan Reynolds is delicious in both Spanish and English, in case you were wondering), and made my way to Acapulco.
Life in Acapulco is like a fantasy, and since my time there is always necessarily fleeting, I do my best to soak it all in. Of course, since my first trip at the age of 19, many things have changed. Now I enjoy jamming out to Waka Waka with my incredibly spunky Mexican niece just as much as I revel in the brilliant nightlife. There was a lot of both.
We spent the day Saturday at a beach birthday party and ended up jet skiing through Acapulco Bay, due to the exhortations of my niece. The splash of the waves and the exhilerated screams of la Princesa made those few minutes the highlight of the weekend. It also made me laugh at how life changes. I met my friend, Ana, seven years ago when we lived together in Argentina and spent hours talking about our future. The plan was to marry our boyfriends, get matching black labs, go shopping every day, and live the Argentine dream. Silly girls, we couldn't have been more wrong. Yet I look at her now, a caring, wonderful, and able mother, and I know that everything is as it should be. It always ends up that way. La Princesa, on the other hand, wasn't so easily contented when our time ran out and we had to drag her kicking and screaming away from the jet ski. The only way to get her into the car was to promise her a pink one of her very own. She wore herself out and dozed off murmering, moto rosa, moto rosa...
The beach party easily transitioned into a night out on the town, which went by in a blink of an eye that strangely felt like an eternity. I'm not sure if it's because I ended up with the only Mexicans I have ever met with a strong passion for Jager bombs or because I was sporting some serious heels, compliments of Ana who took one look at my backpack and forbade me to wear anything I might have stashed in there. Regardless, I thoroughly enjoyed the night, especially the security escort that magically appeared with his flashlight every time I made my way to the bathroom. VIP is definitely the way to go. Too bad my stinky backpack and run down Converse dictate a drastically different destiny for me here in Mexico.
Reality came crashing in along with the sunlight that greeted us when we left Baby'O, a legendary cave-like club, giving me an immediate and extremely vivid flashback of Grits and F&M's. I somehow managed to throw everything (I think, still haven't checked) into my backpack and get to the bus station on time, where I resumed my life as a backpacking, bus-taking, broke graduate student....and everything is once again just as it should be.
No comments:
Post a Comment