Did I ever tell you about the trip I took to Central America with a cute hippie boy back in the 1970s? He was so amazingly wonderful that I actually lost all sense of safety, sense of decency, sense of balance, sense of direction. Lost all common sense. Found myself in a jungle. With very little money. Holding a backpack with one change of clothes. Wandering around a foreign country without a care. Putting my college Spanish to use.
Palenque was sort of a make-shift gathering place for North American hippies wandering around Mexico. Misery loves company, something like that. We'd have a campfire and share what little food we were carrying. We'd exchange stories ("Be sure you go to Catemaco and look up Enrique and tell him Paul says 'hi'.") We'd exchange paperback books. People were just so nice to us. It was so dangerous. And yet we never had a real problem. We'd camp out at the nearby waterfall. Or in someone's backyard. Or off the side of a road. Local people often thought we were nuts and tried to help. They'd feed us for very little money. At the time I'm sure I thought "oh, things are really cheap in Mexico". But now that I'm older I wonder if they just wanted us to not starve to death so they told us the meal was "three pesos. You do have three pesos, don't you, gringa? If not, one will do."
We went to the ruins, of course. We had them to ourselves for days. I liked them fine. Interesting. But I didn't really appreciate them. Couldn't be bothered with ancient mysteries. I was too busy exploring modern mysteries.
I saw that guy again recently. He's aged. I don't think I have, but he did give me kind of a "you look really different" look. So maybe I have, but just a bit. I said, "You know what? We ought to go to Palenque again, but maybe eat in real restaurants and stay in a real hotel and actually study the ruins this time." He thought it was a great idea! So when he gets home from golf today I'm going to see if he'll actually book tickets.
