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Letting Down My Guard - By Jeremy Carter - Guest blogger traveling in Merida, Mexico.
One of the best parts about my stay in Mexico has been the people I've met, and in particular the Yucatecans. The people in Mexico are famously nice, but the folks here on the peninsula bump it up a notch (or ten). In fact, this has also provided one of the biggest challenges for me: letting down my guard. In the US, we've become so cynical that we're often unnecessarily leery of others, automatically questioning their motives if they try to help us out, especially if we don't know them. Here in Merida, the people really are just that nice.
As I've blogged about before, customer service in most shops here is second to none. Convenience store clerks are relentlessly friendly and recognize your face even after only one visit, and taxi drivers will want to know your life story before telling you theirs. This afternoon I took my third trip in a week to Progreso, a port town 25 minutes north of Merida. The owner of the store where I bought my snacks a few days ago recognized me when I walked in, even though she likely sees hundreds of people every day. The waiter at the restaurant where we ate told us how he lives in Merida and commutes to Progreso everyday, and he was always right there whenever we needed something.
My friend left the beach early afternoon to head back to Merida for a siesta, but I decided to stick around. A few minutes later, the sky opened and let loose a torrential downpour (or aguacero, as it's called in Spanish…a word that strikes me as odd considering a downpour is anything but "zero water"). What few international tourists there were at the beach left, and I ended up being (seemingly) the only gringo left. Since I'm 6'1 and untanned with hair halfway down my back, I stood out in the crowd. But instead of feeling uncomfortable, I was welcomed as part of the gang.
A man with his two young daughters chatted me up about where I'm from and what I was doing in Mexico, and his oldest daughter wanted me to take a photo of them with my camera so I could take a memory of them back to the US. Then a dude named Enrique dragged me over to his group of friends, where I learned how a guy in Mexico dances if he's out alone (right hand over the heart).
A couple of hours later, when I finally went back to the bus station to catch the bus back to Merida, two young students saw my shock at the length of the line and brought me up to the front with them, and when we got back to Merida one of them showed me around downtown for an hour, and I thanked him by treating him to a paleta (popsicle) and my favorite heladeria.
I could go on for hours about other examples the kindness and generosity I've experienced over the past three weeks. It's definitely one of the best memories I'll take back with me to North Carolina when I leave this weekend, and it'll count as one of the greatest lessons I've learned: to slow down a bit, and give people the benefit of the doubt.
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