It took six of us to move Harry, we struggled under his bulk. He was a big man and the rough cut pine box corners bit into our hands on the shoulder of the road going into Puerto Morelos. We got him up high enough to slide the box from the bed of one pickup into the bed of another. Nobody wanted to be the one who dropped him.

There was a plane to catch, American Airlines Cargo in Cancún, and that was it. Get his ass on the plane. No time to be solemn about it.

My friend Harry was from Dallas. A stocky-built lawyer with a gold diver’s Rolex on his wrist, a gold chain around his neck, a gold wedding band. He was a cave diver and he came down a few times a year with his buddies to dive the cave systems along the coast. We finished every visit the same way. Dinner at Papaya Republic in Puerto Aventuras and Harry with a snifter of flaming Sambuca and three coffee beans sitting in the bottom at the head of the table.

He came down that last trip with Jack. Jack was Dallas too, older, up in his late sixties, a marathon runner, lean as a rail. Next to big burly Harry the two of them looked like a setup for a joke. An odd couple who had been diving together for years.

Harry and Jack were both experienced enough they did not need guides. They were diving Chac Mool Cenote on their own, a cave system Gary and I had discovered and mapped years before. Their dive, on this particular Saturday, went well and they were on their way out of the cave as planned.

Jack leading, Harry flashed his light at Jack indicating a problem, but not a panic. Harry got on the line to follow it out. That line, kite string, is a safety measure so you can find your way out in the dark. He had a heart attack in the cave. Jack led him out, yet Harry died on the surface.

Word got to me with the news about my friend Harry. Jack had already called Harry’s wife Linda in Dallas, now on her way to Mexico. I called her to say I would pick her and her daughter up in Cancún.

It was Labor Day weekend, 2002, which means nothing in Mexico except the US consulate is closed. Repeated calls to the consulate went to voice mail, as we tried to figure out how to get Harry home.

Once on the ground, Linda wanted to see Harry.

This was before refrigeration was something you could count on, and Gary and I were worried about what she’d find. To say it was a funeral parlor would be a gross overstatement. The place they’d taken him was a cinder block building with a roll-up garage door in Playa del Carmen. Three new caskets stacked on the right. A desk. We walked around back to a room, and there was Harry. A bit bloated. A bit blue. He was closer to room temperature than cold. Better than we anticipated. They asked if we’d brought clothes to dress him. We said no, he could just be put into a body bag. Harry would be dressed by a mortician in the US for a double funeral.

Harry’s father, Harry Senior, had died the very next day after Harry (jr.) died, without ever knowing his son was gone. The two Harrys, father and son, were going to have one funeral in Dallas. Harry would get dressed there alongside his father.

Before we left the woman at the desk banged Linda’s Mastercard for $6000 USD on the spot for mortuary services, like a casket, paperwork and taking care of the body.

Now it was off to the Ministerio Público, which by some odd miracle was open on a Sunday afternoon. It was with a sigh of relief Linda signed a stack of paperwork, and received a bag with Harry’s Rolex, gold chain and his wedding band. His jewelry was not stolen.

That night though drained, we went to dinner at Papaya Republic. We told Harry stories. We ordered a Sambuca in his honor, coffee beans and all. It wasn’t solemn. It was awkward. The US holiday weekend had us in a holding pattern trying to coordinate documents and arrangements. Linda scheduled her return flight, and Harry was to be checked into cargo. With the paperwork from Playa the airline waived the need for his passport.

Tuesday morning I picked up Linda and Harry’s stepdaughter at their hotel. The plan was to meet the funeral people with Harry at their place in Playa. Then follow the pickup truck north, parked in the street with a pine box in the bed with Harry’s name written in marker on the box, the feet marked, and the head marked, so you’d know which way he was lying I guess.

Playa was a much smaller city than it is today, and where there are hotels and resorts, there was nothing but jungle on either side. And it was where the entrance to Mayakoba stands today, where the truck with Harry’s body broke down on the highway.

Parking behind the crippled truck, flashers flashing I got out, and walked to find out what was happening as the driver and his passenger buried their head under the hood.

“Oye, ¿qué pasa?” I asked with the questioning head nod gesture.

¿Necesita agua? Pretending to be a Green Angel, the Ángeles Verdes roadside crew.

Mexico was loaded with logistical problems, and this was one more. The hood was up. They had no phone, so one of them got on the radio chatting back and forth to someone.

Linda and her daughter stayed in my car. Linda is Mexican, and Mexico was never going to catch her off guard. A truck dying on the highway with a body in the back did not rattle her. She laughed and said it was Harry, playing a joke on us. And the clock was running, because cargo doesn’t wait.

We were to limp up to Puerto Morelos where a second truck would be waiting for us. The two pickup trucks were like bookends, with their tailgates backed up to one another. But now the question was how to get Harry from one truck to the other. That is where the six of us stood shoulder to shoulder on each side of Harry. Harry’s widow, his step daughter, me and three guys slid our hands under the rough pine edges of the box to hoist Harry into the other truck.

Once at the airport, Linda checked Harry into cargo with only minutes to spare to check-in herself. I hugged her and apologized that we would not be at the funeral, and she asked me to go get his passport once the consulate opened. Then she flew home with him.

You would think this is the end of the story. Oh no, wait there’s more.

A couple days later I called Linda and told her I had Harry’s passport. I mentioned she must have been relieved once they landed in Dallas.

I asked if the hearse showed up at the airport, yes she confirmed. She said they’d waited a long time, like hours, at the baggage carousel. Some people never got their bags at all. Harry had leaked all over the cargo hold. He wasn’t embalmed right, and he’d leaked. The plane sat on the tarmac for days while “hazmat” (hazardous materials experts) cleaned it out.

And when the funeral home in Dallas opened the pine box with Harry in it, they found what a border and a body bag and hot weather will do. Somebody in Playa put a big ole Texan’s body into a used, small, Mayan-sized coffin. The funeral director had to come at the casket with a crowbar to get Harry out.

There was a funeral. Harry’s father in an open casket. Harry in a closed one.

You cannot make this up. I’ve told it a hundred times and I love it more each time. For Harry and for Linda both.

He died in a cave, on the line, on his way out. Doing what he loved, and I get to say that because it’s true.

The last time I saw him, there were three coffee beans in the bottom of a glass.

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Passing customs I see Macon through the glass. He’s the guide for the climb from North Carolina. How nice for him to meet me at the airport at this hour of the night. A car and driver are waiting. The driver grabs my bags, tossing them in the back. We are scrambling out of the parking lot. Why are we rushing? The resort I am staying at is 10 to 15 minutes from the Airport. We pull into a hotel just on the other side of the tarmac. Following Macon, I am standing in a dimly lit, open air hotel bar overlooking the runway. A bottle of red is breathing. Macon walks toward me with two wine glasses in hand. The last flight of the night takes off, and like flipping a switch, the runways lights go out. I sip my wine in the dark at the edge of East Africa and think. Black and white, like a Bogart film. You read about nights like this. I am in it.

Springlands Hotel is a nice basecamp considering where I am. Nur, a guide, leads me to my room. No energy to unpack. A good night of sleep is what I need.

Today the others arrive. A day to rest, floating in the pool. One thing I don’t have floating is ice in my gin and tonic. I say hello to my team mates. I overhear someone in a hushed voice, the guy sitting across the garden had to be brought down the mountain in a makeshift wheelbarrow.

I am the only woman on the team. My ego is telling me I have something to prove. Hell, I am a cave explorer, a diving hall of famer. Full of bravado. I lead the charge hoofing up the dusty trail. The men and sherpas behind. On to Rongai Cave sitting at 2,600m or 8,530 feet above sea level. Not a bad first day.

There is a little less pep in my step today. Before lunch a few of the guys pass me on the trail. Then two more. The guy with a bit of a gut passes me. I picked him out on day one as the weak one. He doesn’t even look at me. Five miles to trek, following behind. The camp sits at 3,450 meters or 11,319 feet.

Arriving at camp, big yawns, my head aches.

I blow up a plastic flamingo I packed, mounting it on the top of my tent. My head swims. A little humor for the trail. The joke may be on me.

Macon is making popcorn, tonight’s appetizer to go along with the boxed merlot.

The sleep does me some good, but this dull headache is still gnawing at me. Wow these guys, the sherpas schlep our gear like it is nothing. Watching them head up the trail.

I am at the back of the pack today. Seven and a half hours. Florian is my designated porter to carry my WATER. Embarrassing. A porter to carry my day pack. Florian takes my pack, grinning, always grinning. The trail keeps going up. “Pole pole” in Swahili, slowly slowly. The altitude is catching up with me.

Looking around it looks like a desert. Desert plants. Big boulders. I take a mental note, a perfect place to hide and pee. Just planning ahead. Being at the back of the line, with Florian, gives me time to think. I park on a rock to rest. I am not the “mas macha” I was a couple days ago. The woman who disappears into darkness and returns. Being a big underwater explorer means nothing here.

The afternoon is long. The trail in front of me and behind me. No one in sight. I keep putting one foot in front of the other. I am not rushing now. The competition is with myself, not any one of these gray-haired guys. Florian keeps step. No banter. In Mexico, where I live, “chupi” is the nickname for a baby’s pacifier. I yell out “chupi”, Florian is quick to pass me the drink tube to suck. My babysitter. It’s 4pm, marching into camp. Tents up. The guys are in the mess tent. Dropping my jacket in the tent I join them. One of the porters is making cream of celery soup. Ugh. With minimal ingredients, no kitchen to speak of, it’s really good. Or maybe I am really hungry.

Two more sleeps until the summit. Full belly, a Ibuprofen, Diamox for altitude sickness and burrowing into my sleeping bag.

My knuckles are raw and bleeding from repacking, stuffing my gear bag each morning. Thank god this is a six-day climb. I am the last to arrive at the final camp before our summit attempt later that night.

Porters have carried two two-liter bottles of Coca-Cola for the guys who oversee the Kibo Hut. It’s liquid gold to these guys. Kibo is kinda like a base camp for the summit at 4,720 m (15,485 ft). Several teams are set up including us. The sun is bright and the winds are picking up. The plan is to head for the summit at 11 PM. Barring any clouds it will be a full moon. Before we break from dinner, Macon tells us to wear clean socks. What an odd thing to say. I am five days without a shower. Clean socks? Hunkered into my mummy bag, downing my sleep cocktail of Ibuprofen and Diamox the wind starts to howl. It’s hard to sleep with the wind ripping against the side of the tent. They say with the windchill it will be -20F on the climb. Yet I am snug in my cocoon.

I wake at 10:15 pm. I don’t feel rested. I dress. Outside, the windchill is below zero. I look at my socks and pick my favorites. They are not clean. Like some sports fanatic who thinks socks bring luck. I lace up my boots, hit the latrine tent, and don my headlamp. Another hit of diamox.

Balaclava up over my nose. The sky is clear. The moon, full. I’m at the end of the pack.

No snow yet. Scree under my feet. Slow going. Step and breathe.

Step.
Stop, leaning on my climbing poles.
Gasp.

I feel like a fish out of water. With each step, I stop to pull in a breath.

My feet are freezing. Moisture-wicking socks hold moisture. My favorite dirty socks, forming ice crystals. Why didn’t I listen?

My head is pounding. I grab only a glance to see where I am. The stars. Far below, the lights of Moshi.

Step.
Lean.
My long gasps are so loud I swear the whole mountain can hear me.

The team is stopping, waiting for me. I sit on a snow-covered rock and Macon asks if I want to turn back. Through my tears, “No!”

I don’t quit. Anything. I am not quitting a mountain.

A new porter joined us at Kibo. She is on all fours in the snow, vomiting.

I keep going. I don’t know how far the summit is. The goal is the sunrise.

One foot.
Gasp.
The other foot.
Another gasp.

FULL STOP.

The cave diver in me surfaces. In exploration, one body is better than two. If my body gives out up here, I risk not only myself but all of us at altitude.

I think of the wheelbarrow. Being hauled down like the guy at the resort. Going home, telling everyone who thinks of me as “mas macha” that I couldn’t do it.

I can see the crest in the moonlight. Six hundred forty-two feet below the summit. 19,341’. I want it.

My head drops.

I’m calling it.

Eddie, accompanies me down, elbows lock. One slow step at a time. I am on autopilot. I slip in the loose gravel, Eddie catches me. Over and over. No thoughts, except step, inhale, down.

I plop myself in my tent, exhausted. My feet in dirty boots hanging just outside. Eddie unlaces them. I wrestle out of my jacket and snow pants. Suddenly, a hand passes a coffee cup of Coca-Cola through my tent door. The elixir.

Sleep.

It’s still dark. I have to pee. Wind gusting. I hate the thought of going out to the latrine. Feeling around for my headlamp, I find the elixir coffee cup instead. No pride, nor energy. Squatting, I pee in the cup. And a bit on my sleeping bag. I unzip the tent door, my bare hand shoots out into the biting cold to dump it. I refill the coffee cup again and again. Feeling better, I can only imagine the view from outside the tent. It’s kinda funny.

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If you missed my previous adventures check out:

It was 2010. I was a long way from Mexico. My friend Kelly had lived in Akumal, my pueblo on the Mexican Caribbean coast. Animal welfare was her thing. She organized spay-and-neuter clinics. The kind of woman who was not afraid to get dirt under her fingernails. Down-to-earth, hardworking, gritty. She invited me to join her on a Humane Society International project to Tanzania, “dog and donkey clinics” in the bush. Without a second thought I said “yes, but no buses.” Kelly explained we would have handlers and a driver to escort us.

The trip began in Arusha, Tanzania, just south of the Kenya border and home to Mt. Kilimanjaro. I climbed it two years later. A tale for another time. Yohana from Tanzania Animal Protection Organization met us. Donkeys are the John Deere tractor of many people in Tanzania. Yet, farmers are notorious for putting oxen yokes on their donkeys, which causes injuries. Kelly’s job was to talk to the farmers about their burros, vaccinate dogs and sometimes a clinic turned into field triage.

Our driver Ernesto drove us west from Arusha. A well-educated, handsome guy. Doing side hustle guiding and driving while looking for a job. We were not on safari and did not need a guide. That was not to say we didn’t want to have some fun along the way. We took the road less traveled in our Land Rover. Out to Ngorongoro Crater for a glimpse of the Big Five. I read the crater was the place to see black rhinos. We saw huge tusked elephant bulls, lions like the cliche, lounging in trees, and herds of wildebeest and zebra. Lots of zebras. No black rhinos.

We were quite the traveling road show. Village to village. Questionable hotels and dorm rooms. Fried street food in the small cities, kebabs or coo-coo and chips, fried chicken and French fries. We avoided water and juices. Cokes or bottled beer. Less chance of a parasite that way.

I remember one day the only thing we had to eat was stale crackers and warm beer.

A few of the towns had a local bar. We went in the evening for a beer and a game of pool.

Across the road from a rice processing plant, women sifted discarded husks in a field for half grains of rice. Bagging the rice to take home. The women had a great laugh as they tried to teach the two muzungo (white people) Kelly and I to sift rice. We never got the hang of it. The husbands sat under a shade tree. Kelly went over and talked donkey yokes. From the field across from the rice mill, we were ushered into a beat up old car and on to the next town.

At the clinics I helped with rabies injections for the dogs. In an open-air metal barn the town queued up for vaccines. Grubby, skinny hounds were led by boys and men on lengths of rope.

One stop became a donkey M*A*S*H episode.

A donkey’s back achilles tendon had been slashed with a machete by a pissed off neighbor. From what we were told, the donkey had gotten loose and tramped into the guy’s garden. The animal was in desperate condition lying in the dirt. A makeshift needle, heavy thread, a five-gallon bucket of water. Kelly prepped to suture. He was not sedated, just patient. Big brown eyes. All of town gathered around to watch. Kelly with the help of some of the guys sewed and closed the gash. The donkey would be lame, but alive. Then with rope, fabric and gauze Kelly made a makeshift sling to hold the hind leg up. He was going to make it.

Two weeks later we learned a hyena killed him.

Juma was our point person in Kahama. As we drove in an old beater through the outskirts of town, I saw a woman plowing the yard. A stick with a scoop tied to the end as a hoe. A mud brick house behind her. Juma said a lot of households were run by women now. The men had died in wars or from HIV/AIDS. Here she was, plowing by hand.

From Kahama, we were to continue west headed to Kigoma. Our driver said he would not go any further. Full stop. Hijackings on the highway. He bowed out.

We took the bus.

On the bus with the partially shattered windshield, we pushed through a crowd at sunrise to get on. Yohana came to see us aboard. Inside, Kelly and I grabbed two seats together. I took the window. Kelly took the aisle. We did not plan to get out until Kigoma. Heavy backpacks on our laps. We dehydrated ourselves so we would not have to make a potty stop and risk our seats. Plus a hole in the floor over skid-plates as a restroom was far from appealing. Prince Valium helped us sleep along the rough highway. Time drifted by.

Delirious, we arrived in Kigoma, the furthest western part of the country. And we had hotel reservations! Off the bus, we wandered looking for our hotel. Suddenly I saw a zebra, and I thought I was hallucinating from dehydration and sedatives. “Hey Kelly, I see a zebra.” Kelly saw three zebras, only for us to realize we were standing in a small herd was roaming near our hotel. The hotel was small and resort-style but a far cry from posh. The window air conditioner was loud and we were grateful for it. Two beds. A private bathroom. We did not have to share.

The next morning, we were taking a boat up Lake Tanganyika to Gombe. Gombe is where Jane Goodall’s camp was with her chimps just south of the Burundi border. A big wooden boat with an open berth. No cabins, no seats, no head. It reminded me of a “chicken bus” in Mexico or Guatemala. There must have been an easy 70 or so people on board. Chickens, big plastic containers of gasoline, cases of Coca-Cola, flour, other supplies. Chock full.

For me this was a ride to the next stop on my adventure. To the other passengers, it was a grocery run.

You had to find a place to sit. You either stood the entire time, or you found a little spot on the gunwale. We parked our butts for three hours on the rail as we made our way up the lake. As we took this heavily burdened boat up the lake, a guy had to bail water at the same time because there was a leak. Someone was always bailing water out of the bottom of the boat. I wondered how many people on board could swim.

I sat next to two young Tanzanian boys and took a picture with them holding up the Tanzania flag.

The day was hot. A woman near me stood with her toddler in her arms. She looked tired. She did not speak English. I gestured. She handed her child to me. He slept against my chest until her village. Then I handed him back.

The boat stopped at little villages along the lake. We were the last stop. There were fewer and fewer passengers with each stop until we were the last people aboard.

At Gombe we were staying in the cinder block dorm building. Our dorm room had a toilet with no seat, or door. You could do your business and shower at the same time. A communal room with tables and chairs for socializing.

Baboons everywhere. The windows had bars on them to keep them out. From the inside it felt like jail. At night baboons rattled the bars and tried to get into the building. When baboons roar, they sound like big cats, like lions.

During the day, we hiked the mountainside with a guide. We found a troop of chimps and sat with them. I swear one of them was less than two meters from me, about five or six feet. You could take pictures. Just keep a low profile. There one time I sat in tall grass on the mountainside and looked across at the Congo. Wow, there’s the Congo, there’s Burundi, there’s a chimp.

Jane’s camp was different. A roof over open air. Walls of chicken wire. Her desk. Her bed. Her books. No walls between her and the jungle. From wherever she sat she could see out. More rustic than our dorm.

Three or four days later, we did the whole boat trip in reverse, back down the lake to Kigoma. From Kigoma we flew to Dar es Salaam, our gateway back to the States and Mexico. That night in Dar es Salaam, we had a nice hotel room. Two women who had not had a shower in a few days. Questionable food, warm beer, and here we were in a nice hotel. Each of us had what we considered to be nice clothes. If they were clean, they were considered nice.

That night, dressed up in our clean clothes, we went to the hotel restaurant. The hotel was a nondescript chain. The restaurant felt fancy after time in the bush. The menu. The drinks. The service. They brought us a gin and tonic with ice in it. We did not talk much. What do you say after a trip like that. We were grateful. The shower. The ice. The clean clothes. The whole trip.

We took our separate planes home from Dar es Salaam.

It was not goodbye. Never is, with us.

There are good Mexico days and bad Mexico days. I was having a bad Mexico day. Perhaps it was the scorpion on the inside of the shower curtain while I showered. Maybe it was the make-shift flame thrower of a Bic lighter and can of hairspray needed to kill the cockroaches. Maybe it’s because I left home almost three months ago to a place where I did not know the language or culture. Maybe because the day ended in “why”. Why was I here?

Bad Mexico days make you question every decision you made up to this point.

That day also happened to be February 14. Valentine’s Day. Hallmark had not found its way to the Caribbean coast. Chocolates? No chocolatier. Hell, Hershey’s Kisses had not even been in stores yet. But that afternoon Gary got down on one knee and asked me to marry him. Secretly I believed it was because I was crying and he had not thought of a gift.

He had chosen Valentine’s so he’d remember the date.

Of course I said yes. Yes, because we renovated the house in Baltimore together. Yes, we relocated to a foreign country together. Yes, he was my exploration partner and we knew we had each other’s back.

There was no ring for the moment. His mom’s ring sat in a safety deposit box in Baltimore.

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We picked Halloween as the wedding date. I always said because getting married is fucking scary. Gary picked it because it was his grandfather’s birthday. And it was also just before Mexico’s Día de los Muertos, Day of the Dead. So why the hell not.

We wanted to be married in a cave. Of course it is hard to get a justice of the peace or clergyman into an underwater cave. We picked the cenote that would look beautiful in the photos.

Invitations were sent to the printer.

Then our friend Buddy offered to build us a platform over the water at Dos Ojos. We’d been exploring that cave system. A huge cenote, drip-stone covered in moss and mold, clear blue water, mot-mots calling, a true hidden-world feeling. On the invites, all 15 of them, I crossed out the original location and penned in Dos Ojos.

The process of getting married in Mexico is through a justice of the peace. We went to the Registro Civil (Civil Registry Office) in Playa. It was a lengthy document, in Spanish. Typed out on a real typewriter with real carbon paper and kept in the municipal records in a bitácora. Now this document is probably the biggest fuck up I made in Mexico. And it all has to do with my name. I did my name wrong on the form. Maiden name, mother’s last name, and Walten. I have many aliases in Mexico. That is part of the reason I still go by Walten today. Undoing it in two countries isn’t worth it.

The other box we checked wrong was who owns what. If we own things in “common” or separate. We could not read Spanish. We just took our best guess, and checked the box. At that time we owned nothing but the dive gear we arrived with, so did not over think the decision. Blood tests done.

Destination weddings were not a thing, so we did not invite people from abroad. We could not justify asking people to fly in for a wedding in the jungle. The only exception was my parents. Who also served as a mule, to smuggle in bottles of champagne from the States. I bought a small bouquet from the only florist in Cancun for $40. A guy hawking silver at the top of the hotel zone in Cancun sold us wedding bands, $12. Still in a drawer somewhere. And a cake from the only bakery in Playa, $30. That was 50% of our wedding budget.

By October, we had moved to Akumal, a beachside village with eleven full-time residents. The people who worked at the hotel in town lived in Mayan villages in the Yucatán, Katunil and Sotuta, and went home to their families by bus or colectivo, once a month.

The morning of the wedding I drank a Bartles and James wine cooler for breakfast, overlooking Half Moon Bay from our condo at Las Iguanas. Calming my jitters. And there waiting was the mother of the bride in a tropical print outfit, with pretty sandals. I marched her right around and told her to put on her jungle shoes. The jungle is no place for pretty sandals.

Cenote Dos Ojos lies about halfway between the village of Akumal and Tulum. About two kilometers into the jungle. Today you can drive right up to it. Back then there was a very rough road not made for cars. Our friend Buddy, part inventor, part zen disciple, built jungle road warrior trucks. Frankensteins of the automotive world. We loaded the wedding party up into the back end of two trucks and headed out to the cenote, where Buddy had built the platform over the water. We were the first people to be married there. And maybe still the only.

Of course the JOP was late. No one warned him he had to hike two clicks into the jungle. We had to tip him extra for the hike.

There were about 10 people there along with my parents. Most everyone was a cave diver. Someone brought a plus-one. Gloria. Originally from Havana, she offered to sing a Spanish love song. A cappella, her voice rose up into the dark where the lights didn’t reach. My dad toasted Gary, called him a gentle man, then toasted us. Even the toughest cave divers had a tear in their eye.

Once back by the highway, a woman in a huipil was waiting with her young son. He walked up to me with a handful of wildflowers he had picked, and handed them over. I gave him a kiss on the cheek as thanks.

The reception was at La Lunita in Akumal. The restaurant was not open yet for the season, but Annette the owner extended an invitation to host us and our ragtag wedding party. A tiny skeleton bride and groom sat on top of the cake as we did the celebratory mordida, “the bite” where we try to shove each other’s face into the cake.

Gary and I were married more than twenty years. I can’t tell you the year we divorced. Divorced in the US, still married in Mexico. We weren’t going to pay two sets of lawyers in two countries, and there was a better reason than that. If anything happened to either one of us in Mexico, the only people they let into the ICU are spouses.

My ring. It was beautiful, and I had it for years. Kept it in our safe so I would not lose it diving. I still wish I had it. A safe is only safe if it doesn’t get stolen. One of the many times we were robbed, they took the safe, and the ring inside it.

What remains from our wedding aside from the story are images stuck together in an old wedding album, sitting in a Texas storage locker. Of course my dad, proud of his oldest daughter, would always show friends and family his favorite photo from that day. Me squatting in the jungle with my skirt hiked up, peeing. His daughter is in her element.

Missed the reception?

You can still buy me a drink.

What's the strangest wedding you've been to? Tell me in the comments.

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There are more stories on the way. Pull up a chair.

I was 27 years old. I felt all of 7.

Foreign face, foreign culture, foreign language, and I am the foreigner.

My first job, in Mexico, at the first all inclusive resort in Playa del Carmen. Seemingly the first American to be part of the resort staff.

Two months before I had an office in Baltimore. A window, a secretary, business lunches, and business suits. A dive shop owner and cave explorer, Mike Madden called long distance one day and asked me if my boyfriend Gary and I wanted to come work for him in Mexico.

“What does it pay?” Mike told me to fax my resume.

Four pages. Four pages that took me 20 minutes to send since the long distance connection to his fax machine kept dropping. Let’s see there was marketing for Kraft General Foods. New frozen pizza test marketing for Pillsbury, beer promotions with NASCAR, event marketing for Lipton Ice Tea. Coca-Cola, Pepsi, 7 up and blah blah blah. Yes I was proud of my resume.

A fax came back. “Nice resume.” “$400”. “Dollars”.

“A month.”

I was to run a dive concession at the new Diamond Resort. Sharing a space where two girls who handed out beach towels to guests, as I hustled people to try to Discover Scuba classes in the pool. Ironically it was only a handful of years earlier I was the tourist taking a discover scuba class at a resort myself.

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Yet it was these two cute girls, young women, who handed out towels, Nellie and Gina, who watched me eat alone for a week. One day I saw them across the dining room sitting at a round table. They smiled and waved me over. I was embarrassed at being recognized as the lonely girl. Part of me almost passed at the invitation, because sitting with them meant being face to face with the fact that I was a foreigner who did not speak their language. But I knew how uncomfortable it was to eat alone.

So I walked over to join them.

A corn tortilla on its own is dry. A little sweet, a little nutty, warm cornmeal smell, not a meal until it is holding something. Up to that point I had been tearing them in half and eating them like bread. Pushing food on my fork. I had little experience eating tortillas aside from roadside taco stands. Gina watched me and laughed. Then she showed me. Slap the tortilla flat across your left hand. Bring the right hand up, slide it across the left. One motion. Roll.

That was how you ate.

We built a vocabulary broken in two languages.

Those first weeks working at the resort I commuted up from Tulum. Living in a palapa on the beach with no electricity or hot water at a place called Gatos. The studio Gary and I planned on renting would not be available until after the Christmas holiday season. A plight around the world of needing a place to live versus tourists who need a place to stay for the holidays. Evenings we listened to the shortwave radio spinning the dial for any signal that sounded like the outside world. And in the middle of the night we listened the the rats rummaging through the care package my parents had given us when we left Baltimore.

The road to the resort was dirt. Playacar was jungle. Where the Xaman-Ha aviary is now, was a garbage dump. A far cry from the booming international destination it is today.

There were good Mexico days. What people do not tell you when you become an expat is that there are bad Mexico days. Day to day life is frustrating. Convenience had not yet made it this far south. The gas station was out of gas. Immigration was a ferry ride to Cozumel. Groceries were a trip to Cancun with a cooler in the back of the truck and a half dozen stops to fill it.

The frustration compounds. Tears follow.

One night I remember getting drunk on Dos Equis, donning my red power business suit and matching shoes. Yes, I brought a couple suits from the States. I thought they might be useful. I went across the street to Mike’s home to use his phone. One of only a few phones in Puerto Aventuras and drunk dialed my mom. Collect. Drunk crying that Coca-cola used to pay to hear what I had to say, and here in Mexico no one cared. She listened, I blubbered. She told me, “you can come home anytime”. To return home was to admit failure. I was not going to fail. She knew I would not come home. She ended the call as she always does, “God bless you and keep you safe.”

A few days later I went down to the marina in Puerto Aventuras and walked into the Cedam Dive Center office where Mike’s secretary Beti worked. Beti was about my size. She dressed for the office. She had a friendly smile and not much English. The two suits I brought from the states, from the life I left behind, draped over my arm, the matching red and white patent leather shoes in hand. I told her in Spanglish that I did not need them here. If she did not want the clothes she could give them to someone who would.

She took them.

The only suit I needed in Mexico was a wet suit.

I have no idea if the shoes fit her.

I never asked.

I think she thought I was a crazy gringo.

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In 2012 I was on a clowning trip with my best friend, Patch Adams, and a group of other volunteer clowns in Guatemala City. “Guate” was one of the most dangerous cities in the world. Our purpose was to go to orphanages and hospitals, mental institutions and, well, clown around. Make people smile, make the kids laugh, make a connection. Just what Patch Adams does. The real one, not Robin Williams in the movie. Lots of stories came from that trip. But the one that makes me cry almost every time I tell it is the old folks home.

A retirement community is way overstating what it was. A series of one-story, cinderblock buildings. Each old person had a room which looked more holding-cell like, than a home. A basic bed, small table, a chair. A few staff people flitting around the compound.

I had been living in Mexico for quite some time and knew poverty. But there was something about walking the grounds of this stark place that made the air feel heavier. Desperate. Lonelier. In Latin America, family takes care of the elderly. There was no family here.

We were there for a special lunch in a community room. Music playing, somebody’s birthday, clowning around with these old people as they ate their sandwiches on white bread. (White bread? No tortillas?)

In the corner was an old woman with fresh lipstick on. She had a small frail body like little old ladies do. Long hair pulled back from her face. You could tell in her earlier days she was a beauty. Like the vintage Buicks and Chevrolets still rolling through Havana. Dings, a touch of rust, and still something regal about them. She was dancing to the beat with a sock monkey. Just a toy. Dancing in the corner like no one was watching.

Except I was.

A woman who had probably lived better days. Days dancing with friends and family, at weddings, at parties, at birthdays. A whole life. Here she was, dancing with a sock monkey.

I choked up.

At the same time, maybe I had a raw nerve deep down. I didn’t have kids. Maybe when I’m old I will become the old lady dancing in the corner.

Maybe that is what triggers the tears

Maybe a glimpse of possible reality.

When I got there it was jungle. Sand roads, and one gas station in Playa. One in Tulum. A garbage dump where the Playacar aviary is now. The state of Quintana Roo was younger than my little sister. Everybody was a transplant. People from Mexico City who saw an El Dorado. Mayans who didn’t speak much Spanish saw work, foreigners seeking a better life saw a paradise. People running toward something, people running away from something. All of us figuring it out with whatever was at hand.

I stayed 27 years.

What I saw in that time, people going today will never see. Not because I was special. Because I was early. Because I was stubborn. Because going home meant failure and I was not going to fail.

These are those stories.

Not just Mexico. A life spent in places most people see on a map and wonder about. Smoking shisha in Istanbul. Jane Goodall’s chimps in Tanzania. Schooners in Greenland. A clown suit in Guatemala City. The first internet reservation service on that coast, built before most people knew what the internet was.

I never thought any of it was remarkable. It was just what I did.

My brothers in arms, Jim Coke and Dan Lins, told some of their stories over happy hour. They’re gone now. And their stories were buried with them.

I’m not going to let that happen to my stories.

You don’t have to go to the highest mountain or the deepest cave to have an amazing life. But if you’ve ever stood at the edge of something and wondered whether to jump, these stories are for you.

I’m a woman who after all these years is still trying to figure it out.

Welcome.

Buy Me A Margarita

In the spring of 1985, I was a senior at Clarion University in Pennsylvania. A band geek. Marching band, jazz band, concert band. I played the baritone sax. The biggest in the saxophone family. It was almost bigger than I was. The university announced a trip for the symphony to Mexico. The director said they didn’t need a bari player. But if I could learn bass clarinet, I was in.

I learned.

The harder part was the money. My parents were going through a rough spot. I may have embellished the home situation when I pleaded with the director for a scholarship. I got it.

The only other big city I had ever experienced was a band trip to NYC in high school.

Landing in Mexico City, I had a nervous excitement I had never felt before. Spanish was not really spoken in the US at the time. At least not in Pennsylvania. Everything was foreign. VW Beetles, trucks, horns, men pushing diablos stacked with cases of Cokes. The city felt enormous and small at the same time.

We were told no shorts. Prostitutes wore shorts.

One evening a group of us girls went to a bar around the corner from the hotel. Guys took turns singing songs in Spanish and we would sing them back in English. Happy Birthday, back and forth, two languages. That night a car literally jumped the curb in front of the tuba player in her scooter-skirt.

I spent one afternoon sitting on the steps of the Presidente Hotel flirting with the doormen. When they got closer, I’d scoot up a couple steps toward the doors. They’d back away. I’d scoot back down. Nobody said a word. Teasing on the staircase.

Our first concert was at the Palacio de Bellas Artes. There was no internet. No photos I had scrolled through beforehand. So I had zero expectations. Inside, the ceiling made the space feel cavernous. I was sitting in the middle of the orchestra, watching people filter in through the doors at the back of the concert hall.

I had been playing bass clarinet for six months. I was faking it and I knew it.

But when the music started, the acoustics took over. The sound blended and filled the room. The music hung in mid air. Whatever I was honking got swallowed by the hall. Only me and the person sitting next to me knew.

We played three concerts.

One day we toured the ruins of Teotihuacan. Arid, dusty, the sun scorching. No people hawking t-shirts, keychains, or ceramic mini-pyramids. On the way back we stopped at some roadside stalls. I bought some obsidian bookends and a handmade tablecloth. My mom still uses it. At this pitstop I had my first taste of pulque, a fermented drink that dates back to pre-Hispanic Mesoamerica.

The next morning off to Acapulco.

Acapulco was small then. People sunning themselves. Little kids swimming in their underwear, clutching their mother’s leg. Barkers with their wares going blanket to blanket on the sand.

Saturday night we played at Sinfonia del Mar. An open-air amphitheater near the famous La Quebrada Cliffs. Our backs to the sea, playing into the carved stone seating that amplified our sound. Waves crashed behind us and seemed to blend with the music. Across the water you could see the Tarzan House, once owned by Johnny Weissmuller and John Wayne. After the concert, our hosts provided mezcal in bamboo shot glasses. They told us to just shoot it back. It was vile tasting. We all shot it back anyway.

Our last day was Easter Sunday. A bunch of us attended mass. Not in one of the churches like Mexico City, the ones that looked like architectural art. This was a cinderblock building. Unfinished. Rebar protruding from the top of the support beams. One block back from the hotel, one block back from the beach, and it could have been a different country.

Five months later, an earthquake leveled parts of Mexico City. The opera house survived.

When I stepped off the plane and on to the tarmac, the humidity wrapped around me like a warm, wet blanket. I love that feeling. A baby blue and white Volkswagen bus (a combi), was waiting to take us south along the Cancun-Tulum corridor to Akumal. The combi’s sliding side door was missing and a side of a baby crib acted as a door. One set of the bench seats was removed so dive gear bags could be stacked. I sat on top, I was in charge of the beer. A cooler filled with cervezas bien fria. All of us knocked back beers, including the driver. And I watched the side of the road through the baby crib slats.

The highway 307 (or the carretera) to Tulum was equivalent to a rural road in the US. Far from the likes of the four lanes of today. Driving was certainly the most dangerous part of any trip. No shoulder, and if you catch the edge, it meant a tumble over the edge and into the jungle. And possible death.

The same shitty road into Aventuras Akumal still exists today as you get off the highway.

Our group stayed at a condo on the beach. Gary and I were offered the “crowsnest” a roof-top, palapa covered room. A romantic place for the cute couple. It was there where we were robbed the first night. I wish I could say it was the only time I have been robbed. It was not. The next day, a passport turned up in the shower. Another passport and wallet were gone. The second passport was later found in the jungle.

We took our dive group in that combi with the baby crib door, to the dive sites. Quite literally we would park alongside the road, careful not to topple into the jungle, and trek into the jungle with our gear.

We always asked the land owner for permission to dive. The owners often lived in a palapa with little or no electricity. A coke, or a small package of cookies, or a couple of pesos served as a thank you.

Today many of the cenotes have concrete or wooden stairways leading from the jungle floor to the water. We had barely a path to follow, sometimes jumping from heights to get into the water. Gran Cenote which tour buses frequent, had one single parking space, and a stick ladder to climb out. Each step was strategically placed on the wobbly rungs. One cenote Maya Blue now referred to as Cristalino was an effort for me to climb out of. Slippery rocks, grabbing saplings. My right leg slipped in between two rocks, up to my knee. I fell backwards. Landing on my doubles, on my back. “Is my light ok?”

Cave lights back then were custom-made plexiglass canisters with a battery inside. Crafted in someone’s garage in Florida. Heavy, expensive, and they don’t bounce well. The light survived. My knee, not as lucky.

I hobbled. It was the middle of our trip. I wanted to keep diving. That night I retold the story to our hosts. Someone produced a handful of pain meds. I continued to dive painfree and a wee bit woozy.

The big dive of any trip was to Nohoch Nah Chich, Mayan for the big bird house owned by Don Pedro. Mike Madden has been the primary explorer of the cave system. A couple-kilometer hike into the jungle. Don Pedro’s boys lashed our gear and tanks on to horses as we followed them through the scrubby jungle.

The boys used a rope through a crotch of a tree, as a makeshift pulley. Lowering our gear down to a stick platform at the water’s edge The staging area to set up for the dive. The water was so clear you could see the white calcite dunes and glimpses of the stalactites from the surface.

Returning to Baltimore I went to Johns Hopkins Sports Medicine Center for my knee. Of course the doctor wanted to know how the injury happened. As they were running tests, the attending doctor kept bringing in other staff saying “tell them how you got hurt, tell them,” and they looked at me like I was crazy.

No life altering injury, but my knee aches became a barometer while diving if I was close to getting “bent” (decompression sickness), and if it is going to rain.

And Mike Madden, whose dive shop filled my tanks, less than two years later he became my boss.

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I worked my way up in the PADI dive certifications and became a dive master for Sea Colony Aquasports. Aside from the general public we also did scuba training for the midshipmen at the Annapolis Naval Academy. Ah, the middies in their summer whites…. Oops I digress. Certification dives were done in a Pennsylvania quarry shadowed by the Three Mile Island Nuclear power plant silos. Love check out dives with the middies, yes ma’am, no ma’am.

It was there I met a dive instructor, Gary. I flirted with him over pizza and beer.

Gary and I talked on my commute home from work, almost every night. I had a cell phone, the big box one that sat between the two front seats. In that first month my cellular bill was well over $1200. I would talk about ads I had read about becoming a commercial diver, a merchant marine, or joining the Coast Guard. He shared stories about underwater cave exploration in Belize. Teaching cave diving in Florida. Cave diving. Huh? Never heard of it.

Finally, Gary asked me out on a date. The issue was that I had recently got engaged to a guy in Atlanta. A short-lived engagement, with an ugly ending, for another day.

One night sitting in a booth over dinner, I told Gary diving was number one and he was number two and as long as he understood that, we would get along great.

Weekends spent diving, rock climbing or working on house renovations he had started on his childhood home, where I then lived.

I had found a pair of rusty steel 72 cubic foot tanks in a barn in Virginia. The tanks were visually inspected at the dive shop. Gary offered to teach me how to dive doubles.

Off to the Three Mile Island quarry.

The steel tanks would turn me over on my back like a turtle. Over and over. Fighting each time to right myself.

It was not fun. I was frustrated. Crying in my dive mask. Gary said, “forget it, just get out of the water.” I took his words as dismissive and that pissed me off. I showed him. I fought my way to stay right side up, swam around and stubbornly crawled on my hands and knees on the shore getting out of the water on my own. So there.

I then started learning how to cave dive. I started my training in my rusty 72’s down in Florida, camping at Spring Systems. I was trying to learn the gear and the rules of cave diving. Wrestling my 72’s into the fill station at the end of each dive.

Some guy sat there watching me, grinning, asking about my tanks and if they were new. I looked at him like he was crazy. Telling him to look at the scuffed up paint and rust, no they are not new. Later that evening I learned that guy at the fill station was Sheck Exley, probably the most accomplished cave diver who ever lived.

Sheck was teasing, ME!

I had not finished my certification. Gary and I started running cave diving trips to Mexico anyway in 1990. Mexico. The mecca of cave diving. We stayed in Aventuras Akumal.

An area I did not know was going to become my home.

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I am going to be honest with you. Many of you know I lived in Mexico, and I started a company called Loco Gringo. One of the first online reservation services for the Riviera Maya. I sold the company in 2019. And while I was blowing up my life, I decided to sell everything I own, and bought a travel trailer to live in. More details about all that later.

I went back to school for a master’s in travel and tourism for two reasons:

1. With nothing to do, I was afraid I would start having gin for breakfast.

2. I felt like I needed an advanced degree to validate myself and my 27+ years working in tourism and hospitality, while living on a dirt road.

I have a stack of certifications and accolades, all trying to prove something to someone.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I love learning and enjoy school.

It took a getaway to the south of France to see it. Since the day I handed the keys to the new owner of Loco Gringo, I have been presenting a sanitized, vanilla version of myself.

Then AI came along.

Being a bit of a geek, I jumped into the deep end of the pool. I built an AI app. Spent a fortune. Shut it down. Tried consulting. Cared more about their businesses than they did. Started writing frameworks on Substack. It was mechanical and unsatisfying.

I have changed my Substack. To share the stories of being an expat, an explorer, and a traveler. A guest and a host. Avoiding potholes in business. And about life held together with duct tape.

If you are a already a subscriber, there will be nuggets of knowledge. You may not recognize the tone though. It’s the real me. No workflows or frameworks. Gritty details of boots-on-the-ground, bruises, and scars from witnessing a civilization grow from the end of a dirt road.

And if you unsubscribe, I understand. There are lots of consultants and people teaching how to promote your property on TikTok. But that person won’t be me.

Buckle up, because sometimes you can’t make this shit up.

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