The Healing Rays of the Sun

Earlier this winter I suffered through a most unpleasant bout with the flu. It took me completely by surprise – I thought I was just getting another cold, but it turned out to be much worse. It had been seven years since I’d been that sick – long enough for me to forget just how serious the flu could be.

I missed a week of work. Still feeling weak and occasionally dizzy, I made it through another ten days. But then, thanks to some fortuitous advance planning, I left for a weeklong vacation in the Mexican Caribbean. I was well enough to board the plane, but not without many precautions to avoid a relapse.

Some ten months prior, my parents had planned a vacation for themselves, my sister, my husband and I, and two other couples on Isla Mujeres, a tiny island off the coast of Cancun. Our agenda for the week was simply to relax – lounging under palm trees, reading, swimming, napping, sunning ourselves, and eating lots of great food -- your typical tropical vacation.

My folks have been vacationing on Isla Mujeres nearly every winter since 1988. It feels like a second home to them. At this point, many of the hotel staff and restaurant workers know them by name.

This was my fourth visit to the island, and I was content to do as little as possible. At home, we didn’t get much sun this past spring and summer (Remember the endless rain?). I’m not usually one for tanning, but this time I wanted to soak up as much light and warmth as I could. I felt as if the sun was healing me, chasing the flu out of every cell. That combined with daily swims in the warm, Windex-blue, extra salty ocean water was the perfect prescription.

Less content with the idea of basking in the sun all week, my husband rented a moped so he could explore the 4.5 mile long island, take pictures, and shoot video. Usually at the end of the day, he would take me for a ride so we could cool off and I could see something other than beach sand and palm trees. However one morning we set out right after breakfast.

Driving from one end of the island to the other you see quite a variety of landscapes. The relatively busy downtown area, which includes a military base and commercial fishing piers, yields to more rural residential areas, long stretches of coastline with waves crashing over reefs, and swampy sections where the jungle still rules. The roads were paved only in the last 10 years or so, and they’re in pretty good condition. But there are sizable speed bumps everywhere.

Much of the island is residential; concrete and corrugated metal shacks are the norm, but there are also some unique upscale homes and resorts. In the more populated areas, just about every corner hosts a “mini-super” bodega. They all seem to stock soft drinks, beer, snack food and bottled water, but each also has a few other, more random items -- like toilet paper, or roasted chicken, or band-aids.

At the southernmost tip of the island is El Garrafon National Park, which has two distinctly different sections. One is comprised of a series of terraces – complete with umbrellas, beach chairs, restrooms and a snack bar -- overlooking (and with access to) some reefs reserved exclusively for snorkeling. The other, Punta Sur, is a small village of shops and a café, a cliffside sculpture garden, and a series of walking trails that boast some of the best views on the island. Most of these developments have been made in the last five years or so.

On my first trip to Isla Mujeres, in 1998, El Garrafon wasn’t yet a National Park. Instead, it was a private snorkeling club, and a pleasant place to spend a day when visiting Isla Mujeres. When we returned a year later, it was closed for renovations. Punta Sur was not part of the park back then – in fact it was pretty unremarkable, a dirt path leading out along a cliff to some crumbling Mayan ruins.

Two years ago, on my third trip to Isla Mujeres, we decided not to visit El Garrafon at all. But we did take one moonlit ride on the moped, and were surprised to see construction underway at Punta Sur. But we didn’t pause to look it over. So this year, when we pulled up on the moped midmorning, we were astonished at how much the south point of the island had changed. We decided to explore.

After paying a nominal admission fee, we followed a concrete path across the top of the cliff through the sculpture garden, which contains 23 mostly metal artworks in varying colors and themes. There were several trails to choose from, but they all seemed to lead, in one way or another, to the edge of the cliff or some terraced walkways beneath it. As we made our way toward the ocean, we saw a number of iguanas, some tiny, some more than a foot in length.

At the edge of the cliff were the ruins of an ancient temple honoring the Mayan goddess, Ixchel. Associated with the moon, water, health, sexuality, childbirth and death, Ixchel is considered the greatest Mayan goddess. Apparently this was one of the few remaining shrines to Ixchel on the island; originally, there were many more. It is said that in the sixteenth century, when Francisco Hernandez de Cordoba sailed from Cuba in search of new lands, he came upon an island filled with statues of bare-breasted women, and named it Isla Mujeres, or “Island of Women.”

The ruins intrigued me. On previous visits, there was no information available to explain the temple or the goddess for whom it was built. But this time I was able to learn all about Ixchel. It seemed fitting that wellness was considered among the things she influenced, seeing as I had traveled there in part to restore my health.

We ended up spending the entire morning at Punta Sur, following the paths along the bottom of the cliff, and watching waves crash over the black reefs. When we met up with our fellow travelers on the beach at lunchtime, we had lots of stories to tell about our discovery at the southern end of the island. They too were intrigued. So the next day all nine of us piled into a couple rented golf carts and spent a few more hours at Punta Sur.

I didn’t make any direct entreaties to the goddess Ixchel – I didn’t ask for health or healing in any way – but I’m not surprised that by the end of our week on Isla Mujeres, I was feeling completely well again. Was it all that time I spent relaxing? Was it the warm ocean water? Was it the healing rays of the sun? Certainly all of those elements can facilitate healing. Maybe Ixchel had something to do with it. I suppose it doesn’t really matter. But it was a delight to return home rested and restored . . . and grateful.

By Kezia Bacon-Bernstein, Correspondent
February 2004

Kezia Bacon-Bernstein's articles appear courtesy of the North and South Rivers Watershed Association, a local non-profit organization devoted to the preservation, restoration, maintenance and conservation of the North and South Rivers and their watershed. For membership information and a copy of their latest newsletter, contact NSRWA at (781) 659-8168.

A Family Vacation in Mexico

A rainy day on Isla Mujeres, Mexico.

It was a vacation we’d looked forward to all year. Seven days on a small, peaceful island in the Mexican Caribbean, seven days with nothing to do but eat, sleep, swim, read, and explore. From the day we returned from a similar getaway last year, my parents, sister and I had been planning our next visit to Isla Mujeres. And finally, stepping off the boat from Puerto Juarez, only an hour after leaving the Cancun airport, we had arrived.

Isla Mujeres (the island of women) was named for the goddess statues discovered there hundreds of years ago by European explorers. For the past ten years it has been my parents’ preferred vacation spot. Only seven miles from the mainland, "Isla" is a completely different world from the bustling tourist center of Cancun. It is quiet, uncrowded and inexpensive, and the only evidence of the corporate marketplace is a TCBY Treats shop tucked in among the locally owned, locally run shops and restaurants. You won’t find a McDonald’s on Isla Mujeres, nor a Hilton Hotel. Just about everything on the island is original and authentic.

In the ten years they have been visiting Isla Mujeres, my parents have watched the island grow from a tiny fishing village with only a single public telephone to a tourist friendly paradise where there’s a phone on every corner. Each year the local businesses cater more and more to American travelers: while a decade ago you’d be hard pressed to find a t-shirt bearing the name of the island, these days you can get any number of them, complete with everything from Hard Rock Cafe to Tommy Hilfiger logos. Ten years ago, you needed a Spanish dictionary in order to read a menu, but now they’re all available in English. This past year most of the restaurants and bars even acquired color televisions, complete with ESPN and MTV. Like every other "best kept secret" before it, Isla Mujeres has been discovered, and it won’t be long before it loses some of its charm.

Isla Mujeres is not the ideal vacation place for the person who likes to keep busy. There are a few alternatives to sitting under a palm tree all day -- snorkeling excursions, fishing trips, kayak rentals and moped shops -- but the typical daily activity, at least for everyone I know who’s ever visited there, is to walk to the beach in the morning, stay there until lunch (which can be consumed at any number of oceanfront cafes), remain on the beach until sunset, and then walk into town in the early evening for dinner and browsing in the shops.

My family traditionally stays in one of the small assortment of hotels located right on the Playa Norte, the cleanest, most beautiful stretch of sand on the island. Thus we have the luxuries of being just a stone’s throw from the beach, of sleeping and waking to the sound of waves lapping the shore, of enjoying the cool ocean breezes in the heat of the day. "It doesn’t get much better than this," we’ve each said any number of times, lounging in our beach chairs, enjoying a cold drink, and soaking up some sun. "Can you believe it’s January?"

This year’s trip, like many others before it, got off to a great start: the hotel rooms met our favor, the weather was perfect, and we had managed to steer clear of all but the most insignificant family squabbles. We were relieved to be on vacation, happy to be together, and ready to spend an entire week doing as little as possible.

Bacon Family vacations customarily get off to a great start, but somewhere beyond half way, whether it’s a weekend trip to western Massachusetts or an 18-day tour of the California coast, something usually goes awry, and the remainder of the trip is spent -- at least to some extent -- tolerating each other’s moods and idiosyncrasies. I’ll probably never live down the pouting and sulking I did the day we spent at Alcatraz, nor will my sister be permitted to forget the night she slept on a motel closet floor because she could no longer bear to be in the same room with me. As a family our bond is strong, but -- all fiercely independent souls -- we aren’t always able to compromise and cooperate.

This last trip to Isla Mujeres was starting to shape into our typical end-of-vacation horror show. With someone special at home, I was anxious to get back; despite years of yoga training, I was unable to relax. My sister, not always the most confident traveler, was concerned about the boats, taxis, planes and buses we’d need to catch in order to make it back safely. My folks were basically content, but they were lamenting the latest modernizations on the island and wondering if this might be their last visit. We were all a bit preoccupied.

Walking back from town one night I realized that even though we’d sat as a group on the beach every day and had enjoyed nearly all of our meals together, we hadn’t been doing our usual family bonding. Long conversations had been few and far between, and had consisted mainly of debates over where we’d go for dinner or at what time we’d head over to the cafe for lunch. At least we’d managed to avoid arguments over whose turn it was to pay for the beach chairs or who was entitled to the last scoop of salsa. While I looked forward to getting home, I knew the vacation would not feel complete to me unless I spent some quality time with my parents and sister.

It’s funny how we get what we wish for. The next morning we awoke to strong winds. It was sunny though, and out of habit, with books and hats and sunscreen in hand, we made our way to our beach chairs by 10 AM. After an hour it felt like we’d been sandblasted. The wind did not appear to be letting up. After lunch my parents moved their chairs into a more protected palm grove, while my sister and I set off on mopeds to explore the southern end of the island. The wind grew stronger, and by nightfall the sky had filled with clouds.

The next day was miserable. The relatively warm weather did nothing to compensate for the dark skies, rain storms, and howling winds. What’s worse, we had nothing to do. The beaches were closed, we’d already explored the island, we were sick of shopping, and the lamps in the hotel were so dim that reading for any extended length of time brought more suffering than enjoyment. Eating and sleeping would take up a certain amount of time. As for the intervening hours, we’d have to make the most of them.

Luckily my mother was prepared for this. Pulling two decks of cards and several travel-size board games from her suitcase, she told us about a room near the hotel bar she’d discovered, one which offered comfortable chairs and better lighting. We packed our books and snacks and headed over. No one else was there, and for the duration of the day, with the exception of an occasional waiter passing through, we had the room to ourselves.

We spent the entire afternoon together, playing games, talking to each other, listening -- something we probably would not have done had the weather been good. We looked back at the year that had passed, shared our memories, and told of our dreams for the years to come. The day passed quickly, the next morning as well, and before long my sister and I were boarding the boat that would bring us to the plane that would bring us home (my parents would stay another week).

I’m back now, and nearly every day someone asks me about my vacation. Last year upon returning I raved about the wonders of a midwinter escape -- the restorative qualities of sun and heat and having nothing to do. But this year I’m more inclined to talk about the rainy days -- it’s those more than anything else that stand out to me. I may not have gotten in enough swimming, I may not have gotten the rest I needed nor the sun I desired, but I did get to spend some quality time with my family. And that, more than anything else, is the reason we go on these trips together in the first place.

by Kezia Bacon, Correspondent
January 1999

Kezia Bacon’s articles appear courtesy of the North and South Rivers Watershed Association.