Visions of Cancun

There are many rules in life -- don't wear pleated pants; don't mix gin, wine and beer; don't date men from Upstate New York -- and one of my own rules in life I violated this week. It the was the no-Cancun rule. I've always had this policy not because I hate Mexico (on the contrary), it's because I have a problem with the American Midwest. And since Cancun is essentially 600,000 people from Dallas and Detroit crammed into a strip of sand about as wide as a knitting needle, I have had my objections.

Well imagine my surprise when I landed at Cancun's shopping mall of an airport, amidst a flurry of flights from Edmonton (2 of 'em!), Toronto (4 of 'em), Montreal (3 of 'em), Vancouver, and Calgary. Who knew this attracted such a diverse crowd (of Canadians). The water here is so blue!

Cancun has always struck me as a bizarre sort of place. Not many people know that 40 years ago this sprawl of hotel chains packed cheek-by-jowl didn't even exist. Some who vaguely know the history of the place think a computer picked the site for this newish megaresort town. (The tourism people tell me this version's of Cancun's birth is a legend. They say the choice was man-made and hand-picked, not computer-generated.) Regardless, Cancun is artificial and to a great degree feels that way, a developer's interpretation of paradise.

Posted by Sebastian / March 13, 2008 /
 

Where in the world am I...

• Same latitude as Honolulu.
• 600,000 people live here.
• This huge city, amazingly, did not exist four decades ago.

Posted by Sebastian / March 12, 2008 /

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