Nancy Drew and the Mystery of the Mexican Wheelchair

In Costa Maya, we split up into two groups, since Scarlett had already been on the tour of the Mayan ruins that The Weege and I wanted to do. And thus the day began.

The Weege and I got moving pretty early since we'd spent the entire cruise to date saying "hey, we have to sign up for the ruins tour" and then forgetting to do so, so we wanted to make sure that we would be able to catch one of the non-Royal Caribbean tours in some semblance of reasonable time. We went up to the Windjammer for some breakfast, where we were able to look out over the rainforest-y areas along the coast, and check out the Mystery Cruise Ship docked next to us (it was some kind of foreign ship we couldn't identify). We walked off the boat and down the seven billion miles of pier to get to the orgy of Mexican consumerism that awaited us at the end. Some of you may understand how I get about large crowds, especially when said crowds are comprised of the kinds of morons who stop dead in their tracks, effectively bottlenecking the entire entrance to, you know, MEXICO, because they can't figure out that the appropriate place to read a map or decide what to do is not the MIDDLE OF THE WALKWAY, so I got kind of scary and bullish and dragged The Weege through to the clean, demento-tourist free air, where we were promptly accosted by nine hundred Mexican men, all of whom were saying "hola ladies, come buy something nice for yourself? Something nice for your boyfriend?" All Mexican salesmen were like this, which was kind of cute and charming once you realized you could ignore these people and they weren't going to chase you down the street (for the most part). The Awesome Mexican Salesman Dude of the Week Award definitely went to this one guy who entreated us to buy something nice for our EX-boyfriends, which I thought was pretty excellent. God only knows what he was selling in there.

We went right up to a kiosk and a nice guy told us the tour ran $45 a person (which was about what it would cost to go through RC, so we were okay with that) and took about 3 hours. Presumably since the ship was docked instead of tendered in this port, we actually had a lot of time - the boat didn't leave until 6. So we handed over our money and he gave us tickets and instructions to come back and see him in 20 minutes, since he needed to rustle up a driver. That made me mildly nervous, but I evenutally decided that having someone steal our $90 was better than having them steal US and either kill or ransom us. Interestingly, this was one of the few things that The Weege did not get all weirdly paranoid about. We headed over to the shoppy-shop area, where there was more hola-ing and more stuff to buy, and I bought a pretty yellow dress with emboidered flowers. The stands were actually pretty cool - lots of pottery and these dresses just hanging from the rooves - although rife with assorted inappropriate crap that I couldn't imagine anyone who hadn't recently married a close relative buying. On the other hand, imagining rednecks going back home with a twisty Corona bottle with a pair of clay Mexicans having very flexible sex attached to it thinking it was the funniest goldurn thing they'd ever seen did give me considerable entertainment, and filled the times where I was avoiding making eye contact with the shopkeepers lest they try and sell me more crap.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Scarlett tried to decide what to wear on her pseudo-date with The DR, which mostly meant that she danced around the room whild singing to herself. When we did the pre-blogging recap, she felt it necessary to list in detail what she wore, so I will do the same: red and pink bikini with little beads on it, a jean skirt, and brown espadrilles, and she carried a tee shirt in her purse. I'm sure your lives are better for having this knowledge. She then headed up to the pool deck and hung out for a little bit, which was apparently not that great since there were mostly little hoppy children shrieking around, which helps no one. So she went to the Windjammer for lunch and was accosted by one of the Angry Royal Caribbean Female Staffers who told he she needed to have a shirt on to go in there, so she shirted up, then headed in, where she was then stared at creepily by an odd staffer and then by UnShy who wanted to know where The Weege and I were and also to inform Scarlett that everyone would be by the pool that day. Having run out of conversation, he then went away, to the relief (probably) of all involved. She then proceeded back to the room for more aimless dancing while waiting for The DR to call and set up a meeting point. Regrettably, The DR was not very bright, and decided that the best idea would be to arrange to meet at these trolleys which run up and down the pier, apparently not understanding that trolleys move. Naturally, the excecution was botched, wherein Scarlett had used her logical reasoning skills and gone way the hell down the pier to the only trolley that was STATIONARY was parked, while The DR waited at the trolley pickup point shortly off the boat, thus demonstrating that he did not, in fact, understand that whole part about trolleys being mobile. Luckily, logic prevailed when the lightbulbs went on at either end of the pier and they both started walking towards the trolleys they had respectively NOT chosen initially, and met in the middle, whereupon they headed for the shops and The DR used the excessively odd word/sentiment choice of telling Scarlett "I feel like big man when I'm with you" which made no sense but really was no more bizarre than the rest of the stuff he said over the course of the week.

After I bought my dress, we decided to head back to our friend at the kiosk since a.) it was about time, and b.) the woman I bought my dress from was extremely aggressive and wanted to sell The Weege "very sexy dress" like you would not believe. Very dedicated to boosting The Weege's foxiness quotient, this woman. Once she pulled down a pant suit with a very large crocheted acreage, we both kind of thought "right. not." and made our excuses, although we did have to SWEAR we would come back to see her and buy very sexy clossing for The Weege on our way back before the woman looked like she wouldn't chase us. We met up with the Kiosk Friend, who took us around to the back of the shops where the parking was, where we walked past several big tour busses and vans to arrive at.......a small red car. This was one of the things The Weege was nervous about, but I felt that if someone wanted to kidnap us they would be shadier about it and not have a kiosk. There was also another pair of ladies in the car with us, one of whom was from DC and worked for the State Department, and she was with her mother, who I think lived somewhere else, but was awesome, as you will see later. So we all packed in the car, and proceeded to set out for the Chacchoben Ruins, which have remarkably only been...known about, I guess, for something like 4 or 5 years. And if you check out that link, you'll understand why that's doubly amazing - they are ENORMOUS, so the idea that something on that scale could just be hanging out in the jungle without notice is pretty cool. We drove to the ruins at about 150 kilometers an hour, which would have been a lot more horrifying if everyone else wasn't driving the same speed, and the driver was this really sweet, great guy who gave us some info about the area and answered every single one of our dumb tourist questions. He was also very cheerful about pointing things out en route, i.e. "that place, it has crocodiles. We can stop on the way back."

We arrived and hopped out, and spent about an hour roaming around the ruins by ourselves, having eschewed the services of the guides, who were available at about $35. Per person. Yeah, no thanks, Ruins People. The ruins were, as we had guessed, really one of those things where the oldness and still-standing-ness of them is the main point, and walking around under the canopy of the trees, and touching the ancient stones that made them up really got the meaning across as best as any guide could. Shortly after hiking our way up a path to a pair of ruins atop a big hill (that may or may not have been and Official Path - we kind of looped around a back way), we ran into the DC woman and her awesome mom, who had just come up another way. The mom was probably in her eighties, and looked quite frail, but when we ran into her she was kind of like "damn, I'm hot. How about this humidity? Good way to break in my new knee." I'm just saying, it takes a special kind of lady to get a knee replacement and then not even flinch at the idea of hiking up ruins in Mexico. Good on ya, DC Lady's Mom. We headed back, apparently completely missing Neil Diamond and the Missourienne - they saw us but we were far afield of them and they didn't want to be weird by bellowing across the open space. I picked up some cool figures of Mayan warriors for Speed and Dad, and then we sat down to have a soda and water. The Weege was resisting consuming pretty much anything in Mexico because of the usual hyper-paranoid DON'T DRINK THE WATER hysteria, which apparently, at least in high school has been expanded to include not eating meat or bottled water, either. Yeah, I don't know. Our driver came over and joined us at the little cantina and chatted while we waited for the DC Lady and her mom to rejoin us, then got back into the car with it's sweet, sweet air conditioning, and headed back towards Costa Maya at the same speed as before.

Already back at the port, Scarlett and The DR were entertaining themselves by roaming around to the shops until they decided to go to the beach, which of course meant that more insanity ensued. The DR asked some folks about how to get there, and then they took the same general "possibility of kidnapping" route towards the back of the shops to catch a cab, at which point The DR immediately latched onto Scarlett like some kind of crazed octopus. After fending him off at least so there didn't wind up being baby-making in the cab, they arrived at the beach town and started walking endlessly through an area noticeably devoid of beach. They finally found it, and to Scarlett's disappointment this was not a Grand Cayman style gorgeous sparkling beach, but instead was grubby and populated by one-legged dogs. I didn't see it, I'm just reporting the facts. They stopped by a Corona Dispensing Establishment of some sort before walking to find a place where they could at least sit down, if not actually lay out or do any of the other things you would associate with tropical beaches, and once they had popped a squat, The DR offered up the highly entertaining line "why on the ship you look like you want to attack me and out here when we can do something you are so different," to which the answer is presumably obvious. As Scarlett put it: "to which I wanted to be like 'well duhh it's just a game,' but I just smiled and took a swig of my beer," and as I will add: "[DR], perhaps you should not hang your romantic future on drunken women on cruise ships, no matter how crazy they act." After a while of chatting and making out, they headed back towards the cabs, being hailed by the various people from the cruise who The DR knew, because he was pretty much in the Mafia. I am not sure I'm kidding about that. Most of his time on the ship, while not being attacked/accosted by Scarlett, was spent shaking hands with assorted mafioso types and old biddies, and he's generally known by everyone, but not in that "hey, dude who serves me booze" way, but more like that creepy "those people totally kill people for a living" way. The recognition promptly activated the Paranoia Sector of The DR's brain, and he began briefing Scarlett on her cover story, which was that she worked on the boat in the Kiddie Corner. This was the lamest story ever, and also not The DR's first foray into intense paranoia, as he had decided at an early date that Scarlett's Actual Boyfriend worked for Interpol and thus would be able to hunt down and kill The DR. You can insert your own snide comments about how perhaps if he thinks it will result in his death, The DR might want to STOP MESSING AROUND WITH SCARLETT. As the cab was pulling away, The DR realized he had lost his wallet, and instead of thinking the rational thing (that being "my wallet is lost, because I am AT A RANDOM BEACH IN MEXICO") he decides that they need to go back and find it. He wound up going into the little Corona Dispensery they had visited before and asking about the wallet, at which point someone COMES UP WITH IT, and The DR pays them and leaves. Because he is in the Mob.

In any case, they get back to port, and The DR heads back to the ship while Scarlett decides to do some shopping but instead runs into The Weege and I, where we have been hanging out at a little cabana bar since returning from the ruins.

And now we return to black text since the stories have rejoined, and also to add emphasis, because in a short while something awesome will happen. So, The Weege and I were hanging out, ruing the decision to not bring bathing suits because there was this really cool pool/bar thing in the center of all the shops where you could swim right up to the bar and then (presumably, although it looked like most people were sticking close to the bar) float around in wonderful Mexican bliss with your refreshing beverage and think about what a lucky bastard you were to be in Costa Maya with your daquiri. In any case, we were chilling and people watching while buying beers and margaritas from these two nice though low-key Mexican guys. The three of us hung out for a while, and then were joined by these other girls who we would see around the pool deck primarily, but who also seemed to turn in around the same time as us (i.e. usually pretty late), so we'd often have in-transit stairway conversations with them. So they pulled up to the bar and we all started chatting, which needless to say thrilled the bartenders who now had not three but SIX American girls hanging out with them. This is where the awesomeness begins, and for this reason I will quickly name our soon to be notorious friends Nancy, George and Bess (from Nancy Drew, DUH. And George is a girl).

I missed the actual source of the fun when I decided to just go hit up a couple stores since we were clearly not going to make a full tour of ALL the seventy million little shoppy-shops before we had to get back on the boat in a few hours. When I left, the scene was as follows: Scarlett was sober but was having a drink, The Weege and I had a buzz on but were a couple beers short of actually drunk, Nancy was also buzzed but maybe only ONE beer from drunk, Bess was sober-seeming but drinking pretty quickly, and George was quietly drunk but slowing down. Everyone was chatting and having fun. Fine. I left for maybe 20-30 minutes, and when I came back, all hell had broken loose, in the MOST awesome way possible. While I was gone, apparently the Nancy Drew Trio immediately busted out their secret booze IVs and had the bartenders give them tequila bottles to attach to them, because the drunkenness went up SUBSTANTIALLY. Let me say here that I bought myself a lovely tanzanite and coral ring that I enjoy very much and thus my shopping was successful. On to the crazy.

What happened was that shots were ordered in great volume, by our party and also a gentleman wearing a mint green shirt who for some reason thought that telling us to stop swearing because there were kids around would be the best way to ingratiate himself into our gathering. He then got all "ha ha, PSYCH" and then began with the shots. Then two guys from the ship arrived, having recognized us all (since we represented about 90% of our age group on the ship), and Bess proceeded to demonstrate the level of drunkenness she had achieved by randomly making out with one of these men, who was about 45, WHILE still drinking her beer. This eventually devolved into her sort of aiming the stream of beer towards her mouth but mostly missing and watering her shirt with it. Having used up one beer in this manner, she promptly picked up SCARLETT'S beer and began "drinking" that. Having finished my shopping, I'd headed for the pool bar, first to put my feet in and then thinking "oh the hell with it, it's Mexico, I'm on vacation and we're going back to the boat," so I hopped in in my clothes, foolishly assuming that there was only a smooth stroll back to the ship to follow.

My first indication that this was not to be was the crashing sound of Bess eating pavement in an attempt to come chat with me at the pool, which left her spread eagled on the ground, in a skirt. Meanwhile, at the bar, this odd Navy Man (his claim, we have no verification of his affiliation with the Navy) is talking to Scarlett all "I WILL HELP YOU TO THE BOAT," assuming that EVERYONE is as demented drunk as Bess. Scarlett described this conversation as being capped with her looking over towards the sound of Bess' poolside crash. Nancy and Scarlett swooped in at this point and wrestled Bess towards the bathroom, where she proved to be unable to do much, including peeing, throwing up, or talking, so Scarlett came bombing out to get me out of the pool for backup. Luckily, the port security folks had been alerted, and there was one person waiting outside, who eventually produced a wheelchair for which we will all be eternally grateful since there was no way in hell we ever would have gotten Bess back to the ship without it.

So I came over and helepd get Bess into said wheelchair, then Scarlett, Nancy and I rounded up George and The Weege and all our assorted purses and shopping bags and began the long and incredibly hilarious travel to the ship, which was marked by all the Mexican shop owners emerging from their shops to take pictures and video on their cell phones and all of us basically talking crazy with double checking that we had everything, etc. At the start of the pier, the port folks put Bess on the trolley along with a drunken George, which proved to be the Number Two Worst Idea of the day, the number one winner of course being allowing Bess to get that ripped. Many of you gentle readers may have been drunk out of your mind at one point and then needed to get on some form of transportation...do you remember what happened?

That's right, you puked all over the goddamn place, which is exactly what happened. The non-trolley gang was trailing the trolley a little, so all we saw was Bess and George getting off the trolley and promptly spackling the sidewalk with tequila-scented puke. One way or the other, we hauled Bess back to the ship, with her and George merrily recoloring the walls as we passed people going to dinner, and got them situated in the room. Scarlett actually even thought to call the ship nurse, who was a devil woman - we were basically asking her if Bess was going to vomit herself to death, and instead the woman wants to say helpful things like "well, no one was forcing the drinks down her throat," which of course just blew our minds because that was ENTIRELY not the issue, but eventually she left and we decided that Bess would probably not die.

So once we got everyone settled and were reasonably sure that George would be able to react to any further puking incidents that occurred in a useful manner and reassured her that we would come back, our gang plus Nancy headed for the Windjammer for a theraputic dinner. Naturally, the REDNECKS from the SuperBowl of all people walked past us and asked us how our friend was doing. We told them she was fine, and they proceeded to maintain their complete lack of social skills by basically grunting that the information had been received and wandering off. We headed back to check on George and Bess, and Nancy decided to peel off then and keep an eye on them. "Good times, good times" type pleasantries were exchanged, and we went on our way to the theatre, obviously to tell everyone we could find about the adventures.

The first person we ran into was The Peruvian, who we forced to listen to the whole story, and who laughs and generally takes the story in. There was obvious comprehension. This is important to note. So then we saw The Mexican and go tell HIM the story, at which point he freaks out and asks how old Bess is for some reason, and then weirdly goes "I made her a flower," which we had to ask him to explain because what? So he demonstrates by making a rose out of a cocktail napkin, which he then gives to The Weege. Methinks he had a bit of a crush on Bess. So anyway, we sit down, and he's all "you look tired, are you ok? Do you want a drink?" So we ordered some drinks and watched part of the show before getting bored, so we roamed around a little bit before running into...George and Nancy! We all chatted a little, then again broke off to go to the Schooner Bar, where there was the usual karaoke and games, and where we also ran into The DR, who Scarlett was quick to update on the events. So on our way out, we saw Neil Diamond and the Missourienne, who also had run into the Nancy Drew Girls, so after a short description of them to get Neil and the Missourienne on the same page, you guessed it, we told THEM the story, to which the ever-deadpan Neil responded "wow, thanks for the update," and then gave Scarlett a "wink-wink, nudge-nudge" look to indicate that they knew EXACTLY what was going on with her and The DR.

On our way out of the Schooner, we saw The Peruvian, who asked us where our friends were, which was insane because a.) it had been maybe an hour since we TOLD him and b.) clearly some remnant of the story had stuck in his brain since we didn't hang out with the ND Girls all the time and thus it was odd for him to ask about "our friends." So we go over the story again, and then promptly run into the cruise director, who ALSO got told the story and appropriately cracked up. This was all really hilarious once we were sure Bess wasn't going to die, although it was scary there for a bit.

On our way to the elevators, we see none other than ALL THREE Nancy Drew Girls chilling out in the atrium! Apparently Bess woke up after a few rock-hard hours of sleep as though nothing had happened, and Nancy and George were now recapping the day's events for her, so we stopped to chat and also to give them the list of people we had blabbed to. After a short time, we headed off, thus ending the brief but thrilling period of being actively involved in the Nancy Drew Girls' adventures, although we did see them frequently in the usual places in the following days. The Weege and I were fairly pooped, but Scarlett wanted to go up to the Viking for a bit, so she went up and had one drink while apparently being ogled by one half of the two shaved-head security guys who we referred to as The Russian Mob because that's exactly what they looked like. Eventually, UnShy comes by and Scarlett asks him what his plans for Cozumel are, to which he replies that he will be on the internet for two hours. Naturally, Scarlett asks WHY he will be on the internet in a sunny Mexican port and also why it's for exactly two hours, and he answers that he has people to talk to and "many many things to look up," the latter part of which he said in a tone that seemed to indicate "and the things that I will be looking up will be your home address, because I am weird and maybe a stalker."

Needless to say, Scarlett lost the desire to just lurk around the Viking, so she came back to the room, where she and The Weege decided they were hungry, so they attempted to hit up the Solarium snack bar, only to be foiled by the curse of the Solarium. On the return, I understand that for some reason they decided to be ballerinas, and did some fantastic footwork while jumping wildly down the stairs. Ballerina style. Whatever that means. Just reporting the facts.

That would be me, The Weege and Scarlett in the non-insane portion of the day, before the peace of beautiful Costa Maya was forever shattered! The pool bar is in the background. This pic is nice because you can't really see how sunburned I was from Cayman and The Weege was from her "Tanning With The Germans" day.