The week that was May-hee-ko

Day 1 - A Loooooooooong Day a.k.a. The Fall

I'll start off first thing Friday morning, as I'm getting up to go to work around 8am....when simultaneously in a kitchen in Englehart, Mike arrives at Jon's house.Jon is frying bacon. Mike cracks a beer. They get on the train, and head down to Toronto. Several more beers will be cracked during their voyage to the big city, this is for certain.

Around 4pm, I check the weather. Everyone nearby at work immediately hates me....rightfully so....

I pick up Jon and Mike at Union Station a little after 7pm, and we retreat to Casa del Gomme for more beer, and possibly pizza.

Around 10:30, we call Greg and tell him we're packing a bag for him, whether he likes it or not.....he says that we should hold off coming to the Curling Club for a bit, as it's still pretty busy.

About midnight, we head off to the Curling Club on what we think is a last-minute attempt to convince Greg to come with us. We arrive, and tell him we have a bag for him in the car (a complete and total lie....I barely finished packing for myself!), to which he replies: "I don't know what you'd have put in it, cuz I've got a bag packed in my trunk right now." Turns out he checked the weather in Cancun mid-afternoon, as I had, and gave life a big "Fuck it!"... this is good news.

Around 3, we leave the Curling Club, and with a brief stop-over at home, head to the airport. After checking in, we're heading down to our gate on the moving sidewalk thingies, and I've turned around to converse with my fellow travellers...at which point Jon says: "Wow these things go on forever!" Moments later, I feel something nudge my heel. As I turn around to see what it is, my handrail disappears from below my hand, and I proceed to (very slowly, as it turns out) fall and sprawl all over the floor, sending my watch and backpack flying while my was ego crushed under the waves of laughter from the guys, as well as the muffled giggles from other travellers... Okay, fine....I just about died laughing, too....it was hilarious. :)

At 6:25am (or thereabouts....I was pretty out of it at that point) we take off.

MOST UNCOMFORTABLE FLIGHT EVER!!!!!!!

I took Air Transat to the UK once 12 years ago, and it sucked. Apparently that memory had faded enough that alarm bells didn't go off this time. Oops.

We land, and slowly figure out as we're taking our bus to the hotel that we are not in fact staying in Cancun....turns out Playa del Carmen is about 45 minutes South of Cancun, in the Mayan Riviera. Fortunately, we were able to squeeze in a couple of beers on the bus ride, so all was right in the world. :)

We get there, and attempt to check in. Our rooms aren't ready yet as it's only about 11, but check-in time isn't until 3pm. So what do we do? Well, first we find a bank so that we have money of value in this silly country, but then we get our drinking shoes on.

By about 4, we notice that our rooms should be ready.......so Greg and I get our room no problem......... but Jon and Mike have an issue. Turns out their room is just one King-sized bed, while Greg and I have two beds. As you might imagine, this posed a problem. Okay, it was only a problem to Jon and Mike.....Greg and I killed ourselves laughing, actually...

Well, in the end we got upgraded to a 4-person suite. Turns out we're on the top floor of the building directly adjacent to the pool and the tanning area....and our balcony faces both of these. We are officially in the Pervert Suite. Good times!!

Mike then makes the following observation: Four guys in Mexico, two bathrooms.....and no plungers. This can't end well.

So, once moved in...back to what we do best: Drinking. By after dinner, I'll be honest....we were starting to lag a bit. By about 10 or 11 we were sitting on the swings at the lobby bar, Jon was openly talking about going to bed, and Mike and I were starting to think it wasn't an awful idea. Greg, however, decided that Tequila was in order. Now, we all discussed earlier how we hated Tequila. Like, a lot. So, of course the next logical step was to order shots....

Alas, this was our undoing. After the first couple of shots, Jon visibly perked up...and started ordering rounds himself! It was like watching coffee take effect on someone... Then after a few, we started talking to our bartender, a Mexican dude name Timoteo, or Timo for short (we took bets that by Thursday we'd be calling him "Tomato"). Then after a few more, Eric, a guy that Greg met earlier in the afternoon at a diving place (while the rest of us grabbed a quick beer) who was also staying at our resort, showed up and started doing Tequila "Boom-Boom"s with his buddy, which is just Tequila with Sprite and some flavoured red colouring, mixed by smacking is on a menu with a napkin over top. Anyway....we had a couple of those, but went back to the regular Tequila...which was starting to go down a little toooooo smooth. At this point we're ordering more to spite Greg, who is getting a bit sick of Tequila. He threatens to punch Timo is he pours him another, but says "Don't worry, you can hit me back!" Needless to say, Greg got (several) more shots, but no punches were thrown... Timo's a good shit.

After something like 8 or 12 shots, we're all bouncing off the walls, and decide to head out on the town. We end up at the Blue Parrot, where Greg has decided that the Tequila was my fault, and he is going to hurt me (via booze) for it. He orders the first round for the two of us, and it's 6 Sols. This is around where things get cloudy....and we all kinda broke up, but recongregated around the Shooter Girl. We mostly wandered around for the next couple hours in a drunken haze, and lost Mike. He couldn't find anyone anymore, so he went back to the hotel (granted, this was at like 4am). I had found Greg when we both came out of the can (how we didn't see each other in there is the miracle of Men's Room Etiquette in a nutshell), and proceeded to have one of those "solving the world's problems" kinda conversations. Jon came by and heard this, so he got the hell outta there. I think once we decided that Electric Circus Iain was not in the cards and that Greg was just a bag of toys, we went back to the hotel and crashed, but not without hitting up the 24-hour drink and snack bar for a plate of sandwiches, though.

Lord only knows when Jon got back... but it was likely within spitting distance of the 48-hour mark since Mike showed up at his house in Englehart.