Making friends and makin home on the Mayan Riviera - Playa del Carmen, Mexico
Playa del Carmen, Mexico
Where I stayed
Hotel San Vicente
What I did
Mayan ruins at Tulum. Turtle Bay, Zenzie Beach Bar
Playa del Carmen was a small little fishing village 20 years ago, and at one stage was the fastest growing city in the world. It is still a smallish city (pupulation 150 000), but still expanding due to a massive tourist trade. Situated right in the middle of the fabulous Maya Riviera, more or less half way between Cancun and Tulum, it is not as glitzy and commercial at Cancun, and not as bohemian and laid back at Tulum. I was told, and it seems to be the case, that to live, I would probably prefer Tulum in the long run. It really has more nature, forested area, chilled locals and spiritual events happening. However, Playa just has more work opportunities and generally more happens here. I am currently going to 4 dance classes a week! Salsa and Bachatta. Playa does have a great vibe, and there is a large international expat community here. Unfortunately my Spanish in not being developed as fast as it should be due the the fact that almost everybody speaks English.
Well, I have been here for more than a month now, and it looks like I'll be settling here for the winter months - high season for the Mayan Riviera/Mexican Caribbean coast. So this means until round about March or April 2014. That's the plan anyway, the intention being to ground myself in a pleasant and hospitable location where it is possible to ply my trades - yoga, massage and wedding video production. For all three of these I seem to have landed in a hot spot. I was told that there is fierce competition for massage therapists, but this also means that there is plenty of work if you know what you are doing. Anyway, I went ahead and bought a massage table, and printed some cards and flyers, and have had a few clients come to my apartment for treatments. It is still very low season, the lull before the storm, I believe, and I have not gone into full promotion mode yet, but I did drop my cv and flyer off at a local physio/rehabilitation center. The owner of the center called me a few days later and told me he was looking through my stuff, and thought, mmm..., I need one of these treatments, and booked me for a deep tissue. While working on him he was so impressed he booked a treatment for his wife, and wants me to work on the rest of his staff and to work on a freelance basis at his center. They will start promoting me next week.
I also dropped into one of the local yoga centers, Palapa Suuk. It has a great vibe, quite rustic and relaxed, and they immediately told me I could start my own scheduled classes there, meaning I'd have to build my own student base. They do give me 80% of the class fees, though, which is a great deal. I have been teaching there for 2 weeks, and have only had one student! She is coming twice a week though, and has also booked me for massages. She tells me that she is bringing a friend to the class soon. She is a shiatsu therapist, often traveling the world doing chair massages at poker tournaments. She and her boyfriend, a top online poker player, live here after the US banned online poker (apparently tax issues).
I also had a promising response from a local photographic company. After showing him some of my work, the owner told me they would give me a try out on a wedding shoot, and if they liked what I did, I would probably be shooting one or two weddings a week. Very promising. They have not called me yet though, so I am also going to try to promote myself through websites and wedding planners.
I have met a number of colorful locals. A facebook friend of a friend, Cindy Blue, gave me some great leads soon after I arrived here, and pretty soon I was making contact with really nice people who were all very welcoming an encouraging, very willing to help with advice and suggestions on finding work and places to stay. She and her friend Francine made sure that I had a great 50th birthday 3 weeks after arriving in my new home. Francine took me on a day outing to Tulum and the Mayan ruins, Turtle Bay where you snorkel with large sea turtles (beautiful creatures), a great lunch at a restaurant there, and then two cenotes on the way back to Playa. Cenotes are unique to this coast. The entire area is located on lime stone, which over the millennia have eroded and developed into large underground lakes and rivers, coming to the surface in many places to create the most wonderful recreational water holes of sweet, cool water. The Mayans relied on them for their drinking water, and they were sacred spaces where the gods were worshipped. Today they are truly divine still, the most picturesque scenes imaginable.
Later in the evening Cindy hosted a little pre-going out drinks and snacks at her house for me, and one of the highlights was a wheat-free, gluten-free, sugar-free, diary-free chocolate and berry cake that was truly divinely delicious, made by Francine. I nearly got choked up with emotion. Here were my new friends, and some I had only just met, giving me a real birthday party, the best I'd had in years, with a cake! Two Mexican guys even sang the Mexican song they sing on birthdays. Afterwards we went out to a beach bar called Zenzie to dance. There we met with another awesome person, Misty, who's birthday it was too! My sister! She and I had one of the best dances of my life. Salsa in the sand. She was such an incredible dance partner, but then she is a professional dance facilitator, and owner of a world wide dance movement called The Groove.
Tomorrow is Sunday, and I am going to meet my other new bunch of friends for some volleyball. Last Sunday i was coming back from a long beach walk when I approached some people at one of the many volleyball nets along the beach. They were very welcoming and we played for hours, teaming up against another bunch later on. Two of them, a Canadian called Laurence ( or Lorenzo, and by the way, I might just become Enrique here, or Quique for short) and his Mexican partner Karina, might become wedding video clients of mine.
Today I've been in Mexico for 4 months. I have a one year temporary residence permit/work visa, and I do think that my plan to live in Mexico for one year before going into central and South America will pan out. Prospects here look good. There is a chance that I might put down roots here, or even as many of the Playa swallows do, come back here for the winter months. The summer is sweltering, and now still in October it is hot. Apparently it starts cooling down halfway through November. Come April I plan to be visiting the highlands of Chiapas, and the more energetic of the Mayan pyramids at Palenque. Planning also to visit Oaxaca and the pacific nude beach hippy paradise of Zipolite next year. The Guatemalan Mayan site Tikal is also beaconing me, and I hear stories of spiritual retreats and communities of healers in the central highlands of Guatemala. The road ahead seems very inviting. Best case scenario i make enough money over the next 5 or 6 months to buy a car to continue my travels in. Traveling with my massage table and some musical instruments would be great.