Wedding on the Yucatan

A Mexican wedding! Another Mexican wedding, I mean!

Corrie's sister, Mary, and her new hubby Eddie, pulled off their Mexican wedding caper. It all occurred at the Generations Maya Resort, outside of Cancun, on the eastern shore of the Yucatan peninsula. And by "all," I mean "we never left the confines of the resort hotel."

It had pools off the rooms, and we have little kids and specific health concerns, so the difficulties in exploring the area weren't as upsetting as they otherwise may have been. 

I mean, check out the place:

And here are the kids in that space between "shock" and "demanding":

The "water water everywhere" was quickly appreciated once the realization of the true weather conditions became apparent.

And that took about a tenth of a second upon walking outside of the airport at the Cancun Airport and feeling the reality of what the steward announced as we landed: "It's currently 93 degrees and has just stopped raining."

Yikes.

The heat and humidity were an oppressive fog, invisible except for the condensation left on every surface, the streaky dampness causing my kids to slip and fall. It never relented.

The transition from room to the out-of-doors was like going from meat locker to sauna. It's been too long since I've been in the chewy air.

Cancun is named for the Mayan phrase "ka'an kun", which is loosely translated as writhing pile of snakes, which is about as bad-ass as anything I've heard in a while. Jules Siegel, the former roommate to our man Pynchon moved his family out to Cancun back in the early '80s, long before it was a popular Spring Break resort mecca.

Of course, we never really saw any of Cancun. The resort was far enough south of the metropolitan area that when we did our COVID testing to be able to return to the States, we had to put "Playa del Carmen" as the location. This is the next town down by Mexican standards. And we never saw any of it, either.

The path in the shade of the resort buildings, on the backside, opposite the pool and beach and Caribbean, had a chain-link fence separating what I imagined was the original habitat and the resort: mangrove swamp. That is standing water, in case you can't tell. As I remember, mosquitoes weren't terrible.

Below is a view from the roof terrace party floor, where the reception for Mary and Eddie's wedding was to take place, a view looking south, with the Caribbean to the left and the OG swamp forest to the right:

I did eventually go swimming in the sea, but when I went down there to take some pictures I made it quick:

The beach was made of fine powdery pulverized coral, and behaved differently enough from sand to be...eh, noticeable...? 

The clouds in this place were always quite dynamic"

The great big pool in the first picture was never deeper than fifty inches, and the majority of it was less than forty inches deep. The most shallow parts, apart from the ten inch spots where the lounge chairs were, had windows that looked down at the passers-by who would have been walking through a passageway. I arranged, with a little effort, to get a picture of Cass---he underwater and me under the glass:

Corrie finally got to be a bridesmaid, and I was able to get a picture before Camille figured she needed to be held, ceremony or no.

A light drizzle had started falling when we absconded to the sand for pictures, and if you look close amidst the poor lighting and non-zoom-in I achieved, you can see Corrie planted in the sand holding Camille in her poofy flower-girls dress:

Cass, as ring-bearer, looked sharp as well, just like his older cousin Colton:

Corrie was able to get a good selfie of us all, along with Eddie's daughter Harper, another cousin that Cass adores:

I'm sporting the turquoise guayabera shirt I wore to our Mexican wedding back in 2008. I thought it made sense and had a nice symmetry.

The wedding ceremony was fast, and the drizzle kept us off of that roof deck party zone, and we had a more intimate time down at one of the sand-adjacent restaurants. The party/celebration of it all was very nice, and our love goes out to the newlyweds.

The last full day for most of us was Monday, as the wedding itself was n Sunday. This was the time we did more swimming, both in the pool and in the Caribbean. My time in the water almost exclusively looked like this:

Or this:

Camille had a great time in the water, even as she got ever more demanding about it. Maybe especially as she got more demanding. "DADDY! WATER!DAAAA-DEEEEEEE!" was how she'd approach the closed sliding glass door to our patio and pool.

Cass figured out the joys of being underwater, and going underwater with goggles on, which are invariably awesome.

As the porter was driving us back towards the main lobby of the main building complex as we prepared to fly home to Southern California, he asked if we wanted to see Maria, the crocodile that appears and begs for food.

Um...hell YES we want to see a croc! Or caiman or whatever. He pulled off at the Spot and his excitement was palpable. She was there just for us, and I got a picture:

Looking at the picture now is funny because it's not exactly obvious what we're trying to see. I didn't zoom in or take thirty pictures. I tapped the little button on my phone just the one time. If I didn't know that just above center nearly framed in the diamond from the fencing is a crocodile, I may never know what the deal with this photo is.

So...Cass's third international trip, Camille's first but third and fourth flights, and our first four-top airplane caper is in the books. Thursday to Tuesday, to the Caribbean and back, already shelved in the dream-like section of the memory banks.

But I will always remember this conversation Cass and I had:

During the reception I asked Cass if he had enjoyed being a ring bearer. "Yeah...I guess," he said with a grumpy edge. I mentioned he looked like he was having a good time. "Yeah, but I wanted to wear a suit, dad."

"A suit? You're looking fly boy; you got a vest, a jacket and even a bowtie! You're rocking that suit."

"No, dad, a bear suit, with the mask and the teeth, " and here he held up his hands, "and claws to carry the rings in with...a bear..." 

He'd wanted to be a ring-BEAR. I grabbed him and hugged him and kissed his mohawked head and told him that may have been the best thing I ever heard, that ideas don't really get better than that, than a ring-BEAR, and that hopefully next time we can make something like that happen.