“What are you up to today?” Torben asks while he stirfry’s some veggies.
“I’m getting a tattoo.”
“Oh, where?”
I show him the area and he examines it with intention.
“Good. Now I will remember it like this. Because I will never see your body like this again after today.”
“Huh…you know… I guess that’s true.”
“I think about this when I am leaving the places that I’ve traveled. That I will never see these places again. When I leave, that’s it.”
“You know… that’s never really occurred to me.” And I can’t believe it hasn’t. With all the places I’ve been, there has always been this thought lingering in the back of my mind, that if I liked a place enough, I would find my way back to it. Always day dreaming and scheming ways I could build a life somewhere. This is how I’ve come to live with my heart scattered across the globe. In different towns. With different people. But of course, for the vast majority, I’ll never see those spots again. Those people.
Treasure the moment you’re in. The town you’re seeing. The skin without marks.
Because “Lord knows, when she goes, she’s gone.”
We bustle into the tattoo shop off the main street. Papillon Family Studios. The time has come to make good on the drunken promises of last week. Promises fueled by new friendships, excited chatter, jokes, laughter, and let’s be honest, lots of home-made tequila, which the owners of Aaleyah’s just keep feeding us.
The dread-locked french girl at the counter of the shop looks up and smirks, “You must be the ‘awevo’ group,” she says.
“Oh, yeah?” I laugh, “How can you possibly tell?”
“You look like the awevo group.”
“Awevo!” A few of us confirm, laughing.
“Crazy, isn’t it?” Ian says, “to think that if you had come down to the beach that first day we really hung out and taken a left instead of a right… if you had never seen us and decided to say hi… you’d be having a completely different experience right now. You wouldn’t be sitting in a tattoo shop with four guys you’ve just met. The smallest decisions in our day-to-day lives change so much.”
It’s true. The smallest decisions.
What route you’re going to walk.
If you’re gonna stop for that smoothie.
If you’re gonna turn left or right.
We are simply twine woven into some overarching tapestry, creating a pattern we can’t see, but know is there.
We stand on the corner of the road, dark streets stretching in every direction.
“Jay!” Maya calls out. Dogs bark in the distance.
“Ugh, I don’t get it. He said it was here… I don’t know how to find him without service.”
“Okay, I say we give it five more minutes and leave.”
“Sounds reasonable.”
Three men watch us from their second floor balcony, sniggering.
I don’t love this situation. I scan for wifi again on my phone, but no luck. Just the locked network for the nearby hotel. Jay has met a local DJ the night before, and was invited to his house to practice on his equipment and maybe play a gig with him. We’re tagging along to their practice. Except it’s not tagging along, because Jay left an hour before us and this guy’s house doesn’t have an address, just a vague area we might be able to find him. Or not. Who knows.
There are some party type noises nearby and we drift uncertainly in the direction of them, but it doesn’t feel right. I return to the corner. Check my useless phone.
Dammit, Jay.
We hear a vehicle approach and look up as a motorcycle crests the hill.
“Okay, girls! Who’s coming first?” The stranger on the moto calls as he turns the bike around.
This seems like the guy. Screw it.
“Maya, do you wanna go first?”
She climbs on.
“What’s your name, by the way?”
“Diego!”
“Well thanks for being our taxi service, Diego. And bringing us to your house.”
They drive away and I stand alone on the dark corner, thinking about the ridiculousness of travel and trust.
Sure, you seem like the right stranger. I’ll get on your motorbike and hope you don’t kill me. Vamos.
There is much socializing here. Beach fires. Pool parties. Big dinners. It's lovely to have met so many people, but with each large group interaction, I feel my meter dropping.
Our week in a nice airbnb has come to an end, it’s time to get crusty.
We pack our bags, clean the room, and hike our stuff to Nini and Sam’s, who have graciously said yes to us dropping our bags with them for a night.
“So why do you guys need to leave bags here, again?” Nini asks us.
“We’re sleeping on the beach tonight, and we don’t want to have all our valuables.”
“You’re sleeping on the beach?! Why? Because you don’t have anywhere to stay or because you want to?”
“A little of both.”
She looks wide-eyed and slightly distressed, glancing at her roommates. “If you guys need a place for just a night, you can stay here. I don’t want you out on the beach just because you don’t have anywhere to be.”
“That’s very sweet of you, we’ll keep it in mind.”
Maya finds me collapsed on the bed upstairs in Nini and Sam’s Airbnb, exhausted.
“I came up here to pack, but I laid down and decided dying was the better move…”
She crawls in beside me. We lay side by side, the fan above us on a lazy rotation, and talk about the ways life has hardened us lately. Or changed us. Or hurt us. I suppose it depends on how I’m feeling when you ask. For me, at least.
We talk about dreams, lessons, plans… I admit I feel lost lately. I thought I was working towards something in the states, and when that evaporated I lost my direction. And though I had plans to come to Mexico before everything crumbled, it still feels like it happened and then I disappeared. Ran away so I didn’t have to think about it too much. I know it’s not true, but feelings are powerful.
We talk about how it’s hard, as wandering, traveler souls, to decide when or if or where you should settle down.
Roots are a scary concept.
Roots are something I desire.
The future has been on my mind a lot lately. It’s not something I enjoy thinking about. But I find my heart constantly reminding me to examine and focus on what success and being successful means to me, not the world. Because those are vastly different targets to aim for, and I think traditional success would drown me in sorrow, so forward I go, scraping by, going and doing and living however I want.
My pockets empty, my heart full.
Days after this conversation, Maya lays on our bed in another city, and out of the blue, she says to me, “I wonder if my life will ever have the simplicity of not thinking about the future again.” And that touches something in me. And I fear those days are behind me. But you can’t live a life of love operating from fear. And I want a life of love.
To say the bus bumps and jostles us down the road as we depart Sayulita would be a laughable understatement. Maya and I giggle in the back row as we catch air with each speed bump or pothole. What an appropriate way to leave. We’re flying the hell out of here!
It doesn’t really feel real yet.
Two weeks in Sayulita feels like the blink of an eye.
Feels like a lifetime.
Sayulita was a whirlwind. A fun one, but something that certainly drains your energy over time.
“Everyone around here always seems to be tired,” Jimmy observes one day at lunch. “It’s like, you see the new people come in on day one, full of energy and ready to party, and after a week, they are drained like everyone else.”
“Yeah,” Maya responds, “that’s why it’s time to get the hell out of here.”
I find doing too much of nothing to be a danger to my mental and physical health. I like having goals and focus. At least some times.
What a long night we have ahead of us. And a long one behind. Though our plan to sleep on the beach fell through, we all, separately, had restless nights, scattered across Sayulita, reconvening in the morning with bleary eyes and dreams of rest that’s far off still.
First, an hour and a half bus ride to the airport at 7:30pm. An hour and a half flight from Puerto Vallarta to Mexico City at 11pm. A five hour layover, where the same announcement pelts us repeatedly in English and Spanish every two minutes as we curl ourselves under and around the armrests meant to keep us from sleep and pray for the malfunction of the speaker system. Seriously, that woman’s voice will haunt our nightmares for months to come. 5:30am boarding call to Puerto Escondido.
Our original plan was to continue immediately to Zipolite before looking for accommodation for the night, but at 4:30 in the morning, with Jay sleeping across some chairs, Maya and I decide that booking something we can collapse and die in in Puerto Escondido is the better move. Because as it turns out, we’re not “as young as we used to be”. Or maybe just not as stubborn.
We land at 7am and take a collectivo to the San Juan hotel. Drop our bags. Much too early for check in. We find a cute cafe across the street from the hotel - Cafe La Fe. The waiter is very friendly, a middle-aged man from Minnesota. I think he’s the owner, but he laughs and says he’s the dishwasher. His daughter owns the cafe. We sit for hours. We drink lots and lots of coffee. We live here now. At noon the room is ready. We collapse into beds. We sleep til 5pm. Venture for dinner. Collapse again. Puerto Escondido seems like it may be a cool place to explore, but my brain needs to sleep. No thinking. No, thanks.
Tomorrow…
Tomorrow we will continue the journey.
❤️
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