2011.12.31 – Cancun: From Canada with Love
“I’m Sexy and I Know It” pounded faintly in the distance, and with
every step the ‘Authentic Mexican’ restaurants where the waiters serve margaritas
balanced in a stack on their heads were becoming fewer. A twenty-something
couple, both smoking cigars, walked slowly and a little unsteadily ahead of me away
from the hubbub, slowing my brisk pace. It was reaching the late-early time of
night, the paltry New Year’s fireworks having fizzled over the beach two or
three hours earlier.
As I made to pass them, the girl turned to me abruptly and asked:
“Where are you from?” It was an unexpected query, coming in the middle of the
night in a North American accent from a blond pony-tailed lass in jeans and a
t-shirt with a half-puffed Cohiba in her hand. “Depends who’s asking,” I
replied. “I am,” she muttered, followed triumphantly by, “I knew it! She’s
American!” They were both Canadian, having moved to Montreal from Alberta and
“VI” respectively to train with the Canadian National Wrestling Team.
“Do you think men with salt-and-pepper hair are sexy? She does,
and I don’t have it,” the young man burbled. “There are ways of remedying
that,” I responded drily. But she persisted, “Do you? Do you? I think they’re
so hot.” Relenting, I replied, “Well, my last boyfriend had salt-and-pepper
hair; so I guess I do.” “Where are you from, really” she asked again. “I’m
American and Dutch and grew up in Switzerland.” “Wow, really? Do you speak
German? They speak German, right?” “Well, in Holland they speak Dutch...” Coming
to the rescue, her friend interjected: “Or Swedish; Swedish, right?”
Shifting the conversation to safer ground, the young athlete
turned to his colleague and told me she was the top-ranked female wrestler in
the nation in her category, and had come close to beating the top Russian
contender. “Getting to be number one in the Russian nationals is harder than
winning any international competition!” he exclaimed. He was the talkative one,
pumping her up, and himself too a little. “My roommate went to the Beijing
Olympics. I almost went, but I didn’t make the cut, just.”
Moving right along, he told me eagerly, “The reason I’m walking
funny is I broke my ankle.” “Yeah, I noticed you were limping a little; what
happened?” I sympathized. “Coach says I just have to keep walking on it, it’s
the only way for it to get stronger. ‘Don’t baby an injury,’ he says. It’s not
a load-bearing joint, he says.” “Seems like it takes a lot of weight to me,” I couldn’t
help remarking. “He’s Russian and he’s sixty-five,” came the answer. “This
fourteen-year-old girl showed up to practice one day with a cast on her arm,
and he took the scissors and cut it right off. ‘Don’t baby your injuries! You
have to be strong!’ That’s Coach for you.” “Sixty-five” I mused, “I guess he
trained when it was still the Soviet Union, I’ll bet he’s pretty hard-core.”
“He sure is! I take six weeks’ vacation during the year, two of two weeks and
then some days here and there. This trip here is two weeks. Coach says, ‘Two
weeks! How can you take two weeks off at a time! That’s how much I take in a
whole year!’ It’s true, I came back once and I was so out-of-shape. I was
wrestling this other guy and wasn’t doing so good, and Coach came over to me
and got me in a choke-hold and just sat there choking me. My opponent was good,
no doubt about it, but I’m more afraid of Coach than of any opponent.” After a
short pause the girl chimed in: “You should have seen him: he took this roll of
regular tape and just wrapped it around his ankle!” “Like, duct tape?” I asked.
He picked up the story: “No, no, just regular scotch-tape, the thin see-through
kind. He said, ‘This is how you tape your ankle, I show you’ and just wound it
round and round, like this” – and he made a big circular motion in the air with
his arm. “I went to a physio who looked at it and said it was all wrong; in
fact it made it worse!”
“I’ve been to Australia and Great Britain,” the young man sallied
on. “For wrestling competitions. Have you been there?” “Yes, I lived in London
for ten years.” “Ten years! You must have moved there when you were six or
something!” the girl exclaimed. “So do you travel much?“ he asked. “Yeah, I’d
say I travel quite a lot,” I replied. She jumped in: “What’s a lot? Like, how
many countries have you been to? Have you been to ten countries?” “I’d say I’ve
been to, maybe, eighty countries.” She looked like she didn’t know whether to
take that seriously – and rightly: I’ve since counted and it’s only forty-six –
but she didn’t miss a beat. “What’s your favorite country? I’ll bet it’s
Switzerland; is it Switzerland?” “Switzerland certainly is a beautiful country;
the thing is, each place you visit you experience through the lens of who you
are at the time,” I answered, not particularly helpfully. “I loved Great
Britain!” he interjected. “And there’s a third place I’ve been, I can’t
remember right now. Oh yes – Ireland, I’ve been to Ireland! Have you been
there?” “Yes, I was in Galloway…”
“Where are you staying?” she asked. “At a hostel just up the
road,” I answered. “Really? Is that safe?” She looked worried. “Sure, hostels
are plenty safe!” her friend said reassuringly. “There are plenty of young
foreign travelers,” I remarked, as though that were a criterion for safety,
before turning the question back to them: “And you, where are you staying?” “At
the Oasis Hotel. We walked two and a half hours to get here!” I suggested they
might want to catch a bus or a taxi back, and said I’d show them where the bus
stopped near my hostel. “Though I’m not sure buses will be running this late;
on New Year’s too.” They had nine US dollars between them, and asked me, “How
much will a taxi back to our hotel cost?”
Their cohibas were smoked down almost to the wrappers by now
and we had reached the flag poles which marked the spot where people waited for
the bus. “If we don’t see a bus in five minutes, I’d flag a taxi if I were
you,” I remarked. “Hey, there’s the Revolution Dancer!” the girl said, having
caught sight of a skinny guy in a panama hat and red t-shirt, stumbling down
the side-walk. They’d seen him dancing in the fashion of the floor-game Revolution
Squares at the club they’d just left. “How did HE get here so fast?”
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