Onwards

Mexico now. I’m in awe of modern transportation. One day it’s the Pirin Mountains of Bulgaria, the next, I’m on the beaches of Playa del Carmen, a town an hour south of Cancun.

A gentle, thrumming sense of loneliness took hold when I first arrived here. I put it down to my immune system adjusting to the time and weather changes, but I’ve felt it before. Arriving in a new place. The long taxi ride from the airport. Lying on the bed in the dark and wondering. I experienced this sensation most profoundly in China. It was more heightened there; the cities are so vast and alien that they engulf you. With the internet restricted, there is no bridge back home.

Here, sleep comes. And morning. And the town is bright, and the beach and sea welcome you in.

I’m travelling all over this year. It’s my brother’s turn in our small London flat; I had it last year, so now I’m on the road again.

An incredibly strange coincidence occurred with my arrival in Mexico. My cousin, Max, had been invited to a culinary retreat in Tulum, a town slightly further down the coast from Playa del Carmen. Our trips overlapped by a day, and we spent it lying on the beach before he took his flight.

Playa del Carmen

Now it’s writing, making Instagram videos, swimming, going to the gym, running the literature group classes and wandering the town for the next month. Then I’m off to New York; first to stay with friends, then to venture further around the eastern states.

I’ve spent the first day here walking between different gyms, spas and hotels, looking for hydrotherapy circuit options; places with a sauna and cold plunge. Sadly, you have to sign up for a three-month membership at the only place I found with both. In Bulgaria, the cold showers were enough, but here the coldest shower setting is still warm. I ended up settling for a gym with a sauna, but no cold.

To break up the second day, which is today, I wander to the beach in the early afternoon. Diesel fumes, cooking processed meat steam, and frying oil waft down every street. Then, at the edge of town, enormous all-inclusive hotels run along the seafront, with rows of loungers stretching far into the distance. It is different to Thailand, which had a more natural, less commercial feel, at least where I was staying in the south of Phuket.

The sand is whiter here, however; the water a clearer blue. Sargassum, a type of seaweed, floats in the shallows. After flicking aside a cigarette butt and a burnt piece of charcoal, I lay down my towel, remove my flip-flops and stretch out. The sun hangs directly above. After a while, I get up and walk into the ocean.

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