Honeymoon

So, honeymoon.  This is the second half of my honeymoon, followed by part II, which is (of course) the first part.  Clear?

The next day was Christmas eve.  Kate and I woke up and ate breakfast.  Rancho has an open kitchen for breakfast, where they provide eggs, bread for toast, fruit, etc, but you have to cook it all.  It was kind of fun.  Kate and I ate, then went out on the balcony to play Yahtzee.  That's right.  We were on our honeymoon, on the beach in Mexico, playing Yahtzee.  It was awesome.

We wandered the beach looking for cool shells to take back to the nieces and nephews (only to realize when we got home that they had all gone already...so we gave them all to the one set that lives in Texas), waded into the ocean, and in general had a great time.  Maybe Kate can give more details on this, but mostly we relaxed.

That evening, Christmas Eve, we knew that Carlos was having a big party at the restaurant starting at 5.  Lobster and all that.  We figured we didn't want something so big, but we could definitely go for some drinks and chatting with Carlos again, so we went by about 8 hoping to miss the dinner but catch the party.  When we got there, Raul, the cook, walked out of the kitchen.  And boy, was he drunk.  Very nice, but unmistakably drunk.  No one else was there.  Raul said that Carlos was in the city grabbing some supplies for the Christmas Eve dinner (that was supposed to have started already), so we figured he wouldn't be long.

So, we talked to Raul for a while.  Where to even start?  Kate went to the bathroom, leaving me alone with Raul, who offered me a Pina Colada.  I accepted, and he invited me into the kitchen to talk with him while he made the drinks.  It became pretty clear to me pretty fast that Raul had no idea how to make them.  He said "So...Pina Colada...that's got coconut and pineapple, right?  And ice?" I said yes, and he grabbed some pineapple juice, some coconut something, and some ice, and threw them in a blender.

We talked while he poured and mixed about his past (he repeated himself quite a bit, being extremely drunk and all).  After retiring from the movies, he learned to cook from Jorge de la Silva, who had traveled to Japan to learn to cook with the weather (note that this is not the same story that Carlos told us the night before).  Later the story changed yet again, and became even more incredible.

You see, a Japanese fighter pilot was shot down over Pearl Harbor, and swam back to Japan (I feel the need to put "seriously" after pretty much every sentence, so just insert it yourself- I promise this is exactly what he told me).  When he (the pilot) got there, none of the doctors could treat his condition, so he went to China, where he was taught by a monk (I think) to treat his body with food.  Proper eating apparently did more for shrapnel and bullet holes than medicine and stitches.  So, somehow Jorge de la Silva found this ex-pilot and studied under him, and eventually came back to Mexico where he taught Raul.

Raul continued to tell crazy, incoherent, and very entertaining stories.  Often these stories included his good friend, George of the Jungle.  Again, I kid you not.  We stayed there partly because the stories were so insane and entertaining that we couldn't leave, and partly because we couldn't leave this drunk, crazy person alone with a restaurant's stock of booze.  Eventually, a van pulled up, and we were kind of glad that Carlos was there so we could wish him a merry Christmas, pass off custody of Raul, and go home.

But what's this?  It wasn't Carlos at all!  It was some white dude.  He ran up to Raul, and they started rough-housing.  Eventually it became clear that this man was George of the Jungle.  He was some white hippy with a fanny-pack.  Then came a stranger revelation.  George of the Jungle.  Jorge de la Silva.  This was the same guy.  This was the guy who went to Japan (or China or Tibet, depending on which rendition of the story) to learn to cook with the weather.

So, we started talking to Jorge.  More like I started talking to Jorge while Raul continued to talk at Kate.  When she had trouble understanding, he tried speaking English to her.  But the problem was alcohol related, not language related, so it didn't help.  Jorge loved the fact that I'm a scientist, and started telling me about his playmate-ex-girlfriend who got cancer, causing him to go on a journey of spiritual enlightenment or something.  It was crazy.  After a while of trying to talk to him rationally, I just started talking crazy right back at him and he loved it.  He had clearly smoked some pot that day, and it was definitely influencing his thought process.

After a while, Raul started thinking about the hour of judgment, when Carlos would come back from the city (which we realized was Cancun, not the town) and find the bottle of Tequila mostly empty.  So, he decided to go to town to buy another bottle.  He got on his bike and started riding to town.  After half a bottle of tequila.  I was amazed that he made it out of the restaurant, but he did.  About 15 minutes later, he came back and said he had only made it 100 feet up the alley before deciding to come back.  After almost crashing into the table where we were sitting, he gave up on the bike.  He had a much better idea.  He hopped in the golf cart and drove to town.

This left Kate and me alone with Jorge.  Jorge of the Jungle.  I can't come close to portraying how crazy and entertaining it was to talk to this guy.  He talked a lot about energy and auras and all that crap we associate with crazy people.  We talked about science and cancer and what it means to be alive.  He told us that he lives in a hut in the jungle and gives tours of Mayan ruins and teaches people to respect nature.  And talk to animals.

Meeting Jorge was amazing, because some of the stories that Carlos and Raul told were starting to be corroborated.  He lived in the jungle and harvested the spices and peppers for the salsa.  He really did probably learn to cook from a shaman or a monk or whatever.  It was all falling in to place.

Raul came back from town safely with a new bottle of tequila, a bottle of red wine (for Jorge to drink while he smoked some more pot), and two loaves of bread.  The same bread that he "made" us the night before.  After all the crazy stories they told, that one was the lie: that they made their own bread.

The conversation got crazier as Jorge turned to a long, drawn out allegory about the first organism to achieve self awareness.  The allegory went on for a very long time, but never really went anywhere.  Eventually the organism evolved into a dragon and something happened.  It's hard to remember since it made no sense.

Then Carlos came home.  There was a look of terror on his face when he saw Jorge talking to customers.  The terror quickly turned to a resigned sadness, then quickly back to his old smiley self.  I think it's like walking in to find the girl you have a crush on looking through your baby pictures with your mom.  At first you're terrified, but then you say "meh, if she's still sitting there, that's got to mean something good."  Carlos realized that if we hadn't left yet, we probably wouldn't get chased off.  He went to the kitchen (and yelled at Raul for not starting the dinner yet), and came out eventually with two Mayan Secrets on the house for me and Kate.  I explained that we don't drink alcohol, and he responded that this didn't have alcohol- only liquor.  I again explained that we don't drink alcohol, and he said that it was made with fermented fruit juice.  I finally explained that we didn't drink alcohol for religious reasons and he let it go.  Such a nice guy not to take no for an answer.

Anyway, this is turning into the Carlos post.  I'll end the story with one more moment of crazy.  When we finally got to go, Jorge followed us down the stairs to the beach.  He grabbed our hands and said some weird hippie prayer to Gaia or something and married us (I think).

It looks like I'll have to break this into three posts.  See you in the next/previous one!