The Inhuman Experience

My family’s incessant conversation faded to the background as the shore grew smaller and the sun began to set. I chewed my steak and recognized the sound of the waiters bringing my sister and my cousins their second lobster. Of course they would be so inclined to eat not only one, but two (and, by the end of the night, my sister and cousin each had four) of the most expensive foods in the sea. I tune back in – “Thank God we got away from that beach! Those peddlers were so annoying!” She didn’t get it. Those peddlers were people, too.

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“Why am I melting?” The sunblock I generously applied in the room was falling off my body in globs.

“You’re not the only one, honey. Lauren, what did you say the temperature was?” My mom’s giant sunhat was probably the right decision on a day like this.

“Well, it’s only 94 right now Aunt Brandy, but do you want to guess the real feel?”

“I say 99.” Conservative guess from mother dearest.

“I can say it’s definitely not that, otherwise my skin would not be falling off.” A little dramatic, but it was ridiculously hot. “I say 110.”

“Not that hot Allie, but it says 107.”

“Yeah, I'd believe that.” My dad cut in as he hauled all the bags we couldn’t carry.

“I’m getting fucking crotch-rot. I’m about to go back to the ship.” I wrapped my towel that was covering my head in between my thighs to stop the chafing.

“We’re almost there, we just have to get on a boat to go across the bay and then we have to walk to the beach.” Gee, thanks Aunt Lisa, that sounds great! Not.

Finally, after walking for about 15 minutes, we reach a crumbling and faded shack on the edge of this bay. Not to be the privileged white girl, but this does not seem safe at all. Is that a chicken in the gravel parking lot? No one in there speaks English, so, trying to arrange a ride on a water taxi is a little difficult. Thankfully, my sister, Katie, steps in with her 6 years of Spanish classes finally paying off. After a conversation which no one understood but Katie and the woman, and an exchange of $20, the woman hands Katie a bunch of slips of paper – our tickets – and instructs us to head around the back of the shack and to get on any taxi we’d like. Katie leads us and speaks to a ‘captain’ of one of these taxis. I’d like to see his license. I got into the boat and put on a life vest, and soon we are off to this alleged beach Aunt Lisa heard about in one of the cruise Facebook groups.

Surprisingly, we made it to the dock with no major problems – we only had one close call with another water taxi. Stepping off the dock, we are on another gravel road, with men in little golfcart-looking vehicles waiting to give us rides to wherever we may want to go. A look up and down the streets provides me with all the evidence I need to be skeptical of this whole endeavor. Every house is dilapidated, with broken bikes and tattered clothes drying on clothes lines. Each house is its own shade of victim, having been pummeled repeatedly in every hurricane to hit the area.

My aunt walks straight between two houses, following the rest of the tourists from our magical boat ride to the beach. Between the buildings to the left is a man using an electric saw cutting something that is sending sparks everywhere, and, to the right, is a giant dog on a leash barking it’s head off at us. Alright, it’s most definitely time for me to bail. I don’t even care about swimming in the Pacific that much. My brother bumped into my back because I stopped moving while weighing my options.

“Walk, Allie, I need to get in the water before I spontaneously light on fire.”

“Fine. You don’t have to be a jerk about it.” I march through a deposit of rocks to the sand and take my shoes off. I wade into the Pacific up to just my ankles, and to my surprise...

“Hey! It’s so warm!”

My dad sticks his feet in after and we follow the pack down the beach. “It’s because this part of the Pacific has a warm stream of water coming from the South, where our Atlantic has a cold stream.” Thanks for the lesson, dad. He never stops teaching, even on vacation.

We come to our stop at a beachside restaurant with outdoor seating and beach lounges and umbrellas all along the shore. I threw my stuff down and began to reapply sunblock, since most of it melted off, as my parents talked with a server about how much the chairs are to rent for the day (turns out, as long as you order food and drinks, the chairs are yours to use).

I settle into my chair, enjoying the shade, when a figure blocks the only sliver of sun that was on my face. I open my eyes to see a tall Mexican man holding a flat wooden board above his head. I sit up, and he lowers the board to reveal every type of donut you can imagine. My brother ran over with my dad in tow to check out the display. It never ceases to amaze me that the 14-year-old is able to detect where food is at all times.They ended up buying two sugar donuts, one for me and one for my brother. It cost all of $3. Three dollars is a steal for two homemade donuts! This is so good, I could eat, like, 20 more.

The sugar got stuck to the sunblock I had just put on my body, but I couldn’t go into the ocean to rinse it off, or else the sunblock would come off along with it. I refuse to get sunburnt. I’ve been doing so good this whole trip to not turn into a tomato. I decided to lay back down and deal with the sticky until my sunblock settled in. I watched my brother and cousins run into the water and proclaim how it was “just like bathwater!” I don’t know how that makes the ocean sound appealing.

I hear jingling bells from my left and look to find the source. A young guy pushing a cart with bags of chips and cold drinks comes up to me, asking what I want.

“No, gracias.”

He moved away pretty quickly. He’s probably like the guy that sells ice cream at our beach at home.

A few minutes of peace, and then... Shouts from the right. A man with a giant display of jewelry comes up to me.

“I think this would look great on you, chica!” Even though I was in a bikini, I never felt more exposed than in that moment.

“No, gracias.”

“Not even this beautiful necklace? I can give you a very good price!” I look to where he points on the display.

“No, I’m fine, thank you.” I shouldn’t have looked at the board.

“Oh! I see you like bracelets, huh? Well, I can show you more handmade ones right here!” He sat his large display down and opened his backpack to reveal many smaller displays, all filled with jewelry.

“No, sir, I really don’t want any jewelry today.” I look back towards the water at my family having fun, unaware of the situation.

“Oh, come on chica! It would all look so great on you!” This is worse than being cat-called. I can actually feel his eyes on my body.

“Sir, do you need something?” My dad came to the rescue. “I don’t think my daughter wants any jewelry today, she has plenty at home.”

Of course it took a man’s word to finally scare the seller off. He walked down the beach looking for his next victim.

I had to get up and walk to the ocean after the interaction. My dad could tell how uncomfortable I was, so he decided to stay with the bags so I could get away. Everything about the ocean seems fantastical, like the sparkles on the waves aren’t reflections of the sun, but pixie dust sprinkled on top. I turn back to the beach, where reality occurs, and see my dad buying raw oysters from two women pushing a giant cart. Only he would eat raw oysters that this woman just scooped out of the ocean. The younger of the two women was wearing long jeans that were soaked up to the middle of her thigh – you could tell because the light jeans were a much darker color up to there.

The rest of our supposedly relaxing day was spent shooing away peddlers on the beach – the worst ones being the young kids trying to sell pictures with the snakes and iguanas wrapped around their arms and necks.

We left the beach after being tormented for hours by these pests of people.

Getting back on the ship, we agreed to shower then meet up for dinner. I let my brother shower before me because I didn’t want him tracking sand all around the room. While waiting for my turn, I laid out my dress that I would be wearing for elegant night at dinner. A thought bounced around my mind as I stared at my prom dress that I was now reusing. This thought floated around and clouded my mind for two minutes, until I finally remembered that, since we were docked, we had service and I could quench my thirsting mind. I pulled up Google on my phone and looked for the average income in Mexico – about 5,000 pesos a month. That’s not too bad. Then I realized I had to convert to U.S. dollars.

Only $250 a month.

My dress cost $150 – more than half their salary. And, if you throw in the heels I’m about to wear, that brings it up to $210. My stomach started to churn as I got a feeling like seasickness, but without the movement. My parents spent almost an entire month's salary for the average Mexican family on me for one night, and they never expected me to wear this dress or those shoes again.

My brother vacated the bathroom and said it was my turn. A wave of gratitude took over me. I had a new appreciation for this tiny bathroom and even smaller shower. I didn't take for granted the hot water as it rinsed the soap out of my hair. Even the blow drier looked different to me. My family goes on these cruises – these great, expensive cruises – and I complain about how the bed isn’t comfortable, or how it’s too hot out. I am the problem. We are just as bad as the people that I see on the news when they say that a hurricane destroyed their vacation home in Puerto Rico.

The people on the beach – these are their lives. This is how they make a living. And I scoffed at them for their boldness. I grew up in a place where if I needed $20 to go to the movies, I just asked my parents, and they would pull it out of their wallets and say, “go have fun,” not have to walk up and down the beach for an entire day just to scrounge up enough money for a movie.

I sit at the dinner table and think about how I could have bought a small bracelet, or another donut or two. Maybe, if I had known, I would have even paid for a picture with the very large iguana that a teenage boy was carrying down the beach. The waiters came to take our orders, and my family started to recap their favorite parts of the day.

The sourdough roll the waiter placed on my plate looked unappetizing.

The peddlers are people, too.