Cancun

NYC, 2002

Why Cancun?

I'll just tell you what happened.

It had been raining for 42 hours, ever since I arrived. The sky was still dark gray and the palm trees whipped violently as the gusts of wind carried sheets of rain in waves on my hostel's rattling windows. I had gotten myself a private room with its own bathroom, TV and AC; it was my first night, so after consulting the upper tier suggestions of my Lonely Planet Guide, the Cancun section, I had settled on a very centrally located, clean, upscale-ish hostel called Margarita. I had barely left my room since I had checked in; it was too wet outside, and I had very little understanding of the city. Wandering aimlessly around in the rain seemed pointless. I just wanted to get to Tulum, but I had heard that there were only very basic sand-floored shacks under the ruins on the beach, and being in a room with a solid roof over my head seemed like a better choice this early on in the adventure.

The storm was supposed to have passed already, but it had slowed down over the Yucatan peninsula, and did not seem like it was going to let up any time soon. The wind whirled outside, evoking a hollow sense of loneliness that was hard to shake off.

CNN played in the background. I read the LP guide obsessively and went over notes I had collected for each section of my trip in my notebook. I would try to tune in every 30 minutes for the weather report and try to get a sense of when I should head off to Tulum. CNN was covering the attacks in NY and Washington that had happened only 4 days ago on September 11th. Tragic shots of the smoldering towers flickered on the screen. Mind-numbing, repetitive footage of the planes crashing into the buildings was juxtaposed with angry politicians shaking fists, and beating the war drums. The world was going insane! Pandemonium on TV: no one knew who had done it yet; the world was in upheaval; it felt like something truly historic had just happened. Some sort of mythical David and Goliath story re-enacted in the 21st century and beamed across the globe in real-time.

Akiko already has the rest of that week. The basement in Kifisia, the second tower live on Greek TV, the dinner where my parents wanted me in the army instead of on a plane.

The Tecate beer cans were empty on the bedside table and the room needed to be aired out from the stale cigarette smoke. I was getting restless, so I decided to go find an Internet café and send out a few emails to let people know I had arrived safely, as I had promised. If I were planning to spend a year in the tropics, a little rain would have to be something I got used to. I grabbed my poncho and stormed out into the street.

Holding the LP guide open to the map page in the wind was challenging, but I ungracefully managed to figure out where the closest Internet café was, though I arrived drenched. Luckily I had worn my swimsuit and flip-flops anticipating getting wet, so technically it was just my T-shirt that had somehow managed to get drenched under my poncho. In the Internet café the air-conditioning blared. Goose bumps emerged where the wetness evaporated off my skin. Slightly shivering, I logged into my Hotmail account, wiping my forearms and hands with paper towels provided by the friendly young owner of the i-café.

My inbox had only one email. It was from my sister. There was nothing in the body, only the subject read: ALL GOOD? DID U GET THERE SAFELY? I kind of choked up when I read it. I was not sure if it was because I might have been slightly tipsy from the beers, or because I was getting emotional about the beginning of my trip, but the thought that my younger sister was the only one to write and check in to see if I had arrived safely made the back of my throat swell with emotion. Sophia was only 14 months younger than me and when we were young, we got on each other's nerves like all siblings that close in age frequently do, but through our teenage years we had come to understand each other, uniting and directing our adolescent rage toward our, often overbearing, mother. In college, making her own friends, Sophia had come to realize that I was not as weird as she had thought throughout our childhood.

I had seemed more out of place in Greece when I was younger, as a contrast to my surroundings and the environment we lived in. It took a while for me to find my groove and footing in school among my peers and friends. The older we got, the more eager she was to give me the benefit of the doubt, and hear me out on some of my theories about our life and the psychological dynamics that existed in our family. She had excitedly but secretly seen me prepare for this trip, but she never asked me why. I, on the other hand, had never offered to explain why this traveling adventure was important to me, so this felt like a great opportunity to share some thoughts.

I began to type:

Dear Sophia,

Thanks for checking in. Yes, I arrived and I am fine, bags, limbs and fears... all here... ha-ha! It's raining hard, and it's kind of dreary, I am not going to lie, but I am looking into leaving as soon as the storm passes, hopefully shortly. I know when I left it was kind of hectic; I did not want to have to explain myself to mom and dad, they would not get it anyway. With all that happened on the 11th, I don't blame them for worrying, it's understandable, but you know at some point you have to jump out of the nest. You know our lives have been so tidy and neat, and we have had every hour scheduled either by mom or dad, teachers, professors. It's like in the western world we have sanitized life, like it's a commercial or pictures in a glossy magazine, a sitcom on TV. What happened to the rites of passage that ceremonialized the passing from one stage of life to the other? What happened to the adventure, the journey of self-discovery that made men out of boys and women out of girls? The concrete cubes we have lived in since we left the countryside a couple of centuries ago have bred an alienation from each other, from nature, from spirit, which is making us unhappy and destroying the planet. We are becoming robots, and the patterns of our lives are becoming mundane and repetitive. The Internet can change all of that; it's making the world smaller than it has ever been, and we can learn and share, with and from each other like never before. It's making us into a global village, and tribal rites of passage, like traveling, are now accessible to anyone who wants to take that leap of faith.

I won't lie, I am a little scared, maybe even terrified, I ask myself what am I doing, I could get hurt, I could get kidnapped, who knows! But another part of me is so excited, eager to learn and see the world. Deep down inside I believe that the Universe wants me to see and figure out who I want and need to be. It wants all of us to do that. It gives us hints and clues we are on the right track, encouraging and protecting anyone who takes the leap to go on their quest.

Just as in Ancient Greece back in the day they had oracles to consult before and during their journey, we now have the Internet! It’s a collective consciousness expanding every day with more data and interconnected minds. A hive-mind with our collective experience, a digital imprint of our history and experience that we can access from almost anywhere, at any time. You can ask this collective mind, just as you could the oracle. Think of it as a modern form of divination; you know what that is, right? In its crudest form it’s when you don’t know what to choose and you flip a coin and say if tails then I will do this, if heads I will do that. It’s been done for 1000s of years and the basics of the principle are the same even though there are much more complicated matrices to divine from. Soothsayers would read the entrails of animals, others read tea leaves or coffee grounds, but the I-Ching was developed based on a hexagram with 64 permutations; the premise is the same, but it’s more sophisticated.

When you use a search engine like Google, or Yahoo! or AltaVista, the information on the web, at that particular moment is unique. All the websites and the pipes that connect them to each other are configured in a specific way; it’s like the randomness of a coin being flipped, or the I-Ching. Each time you ask a question to the collective consciousness the answer you get back will be different. What if you treated it like an act of divination? What if each time you wanted to ask the universe for guidance to better fulfill your destiny, you ritualized your internet search as if it was a prayer or an act of divination? Could this collective mind, this oracle of the 21st century, want to help you on your journey? Could it, somewhere in that complex web of electrons, push or pull one of them and give an answer that will induce a deeper and more meaningful interpretation?

I feel like this is what we all should be doing right now; this is what the information revolution is about! It's about capturing your destiny and having faith that by posting stories on your blog, and emailing your friends and family around the world with pictures and eventually videos of your trips, you would get feedback from them in real time that could affect your journey. This was probably the first time in the history of humanity where anyone can share their journey with an audience and get input in real time.

I spent the past year researching online the things I wanted to see and learn about in this gap year. There are eco-communities sprinkled throughout Central America that are trying to live a utopian lifestyle. Some are falling apart but a couple sound like they are thriving. I want to go see with my own eyes if it's possible to create an alternative to the plastic life I was telling you about before. Perhaps the Internet will allow us to live in smaller communities closer to nature because we won't feel so isolated.

Then there are the Mayans and their prophecy about 2012; I want to learn more. Some say that it's when the apocalypse will be, others say the end of time. I don't know; ever since I watched Indiana Jones and heard about lost jungle kingdoms we knew little about, I was fascinated. Not to mention the Zapatista separatists in Chiapas, a group fighting for the rights of indigenous farmers who supposedly had taken over San Cristobal De Las Casas and who echoed the frustration and anger of all oppressed indigenous Americans.

I paused for a second; the blinking cursor on the screen visually punctuated the silence. What was I doing? I had never written anything like this to my sister, nor had I attempted to explain myself to her ever before. It was pouring out of me though; it felt cathartic, almost like a confession. It was the first time I had put it all out in one cohesive thought, and it was great to see it all together. I felt good, more confident; a sense of purpose had begun to emerge in this otherwise seemingly self-indulgent journey. I continued to type faster.

Last and not least I want to go down the Amazon, and meet the shamans of the rainforest. This is where magic still exists. I want to understand it, feel it, film it before progress swallows all of this up. Reading the Motorcycle Diaries about Che Guevara's journey through all of Latin America made me want to go on this wild Odyssey, and have an adventure, weigh myself on a global scale, using only my personality and my humanity to get me where I need to go. No one will know who I am or where I came from; I will be able to evaluate who I am, what I am made of.

It's risky, I know, dangerous, foolish, but I really do believe that if we surrender our free will and listen carefully and ask humbly, the universe conspires to help you find your path. It wants all of us to fulfill our destiny, and will guide us there if we are humble enough to ask. Isn't that what prayer is? Or the I-Ching?

Maybe all of this is wishful thinking and a prayer at the beginning of my trip, cause I am pretty worried, I won't lie. There is this feeling, though, deep inside of me, which makes me believe I am right to want to go on this adventure, and clues constantly appear, often when I am about to give up or lose faith, and these serendipitous breadcrumbs are sprinkled across the adventure reminding me that I am on the right path.

Anyway, the storm seems to be breaking up, I think I see the sun for the first time in 2 days; I guess it's a sign! I will write back to you tomorrow before I leave for Tulum, I got to run now and take advantage of the opening in the rain.

Lots of hugs N

I gave the young man at the counter 20 pesos for using the Internet; it seemed like a lot, but I had been there for 3 hours.

Handing him the money, I shyly said “Gracias”; sheepishly, one of the 4 words in Spanish I knew rolled out of my mouth.

I continued, “do you know where the closest lugar I can buy a bus ticket para Tulum? Porfavor.” A sense of pride came over me after managing to use all 4 of the words in one cohesive sentence.

“Down the street on the right is a place called Aventuras Mayas, you can get them there.” My inflated ego was turned down a few notches when he responded in English, knowing that he would have to repeat himself in English if he started off in Spanish.

“Gracias,” I said again and stepped into the street.

Dark gray clouds silhouetted the mid-afternoon baby blue sky. The sun was still surprisingly strong and everything was wet and I could feel the humidity rising in the heat. It was beginning to get sticky and I had not fully managed to dry off in the icebox of an Internet café. That worried me cause I wanted to leave early tomorrow and did not want to have soggy clothes in my backpack. That seemed like it would attract all kinds of smelly tropical fungi. I walked down the streets trying to hide the LP in my poncho that was wrapped up and wedged in my armpit. It was not so much about not looking like a tourist and sticking out like a sore thumb, as much as I wanted to feel local, blend in like a chameleon, absorb the energy of the place, observe people's swagger and dance, and get that sense of the location that can only be described with words of poetry. The LP book, while a traveler's bible, was definitely a sign that you were not local, and it was that one accessory that you were both very happy and slightly embarrassed to take out on a bus or a bar or café.

The wind had virtually disappeared and my smoke rings glided in front of me as I walked down the street. The sign on the door was hand-painted with big blue and green letters that made them pop out of the panel as if they were three-dimensional. The sign was stylish and its handcrafted nature made it stand out from the other typical run-of-the-mill travel agencies with their glossy, tacky, lit and blinking signs. These were the typical tourist traps selling packaged deals to Playa del Carmen with all-you-can-eat shrimp cocktail buffets.

The travel agency was a small stand-alone turquoise traditional Mexican house that reminded me of the architecture in some of Miami's Latin neighborhoods. There was a glistening, dripping banana tree outside next to the sign and I just got a good feeling. Peering through the window, using my palm to cup my brow and block the sun's reflection, I could not see anyone inside. It was getting late and just as I began to fret, a young man in his late twenties rushed around the corner and put the keys in the door. He had not noticed me behind the tree and was startled when our eyes met, as I appeared seemingly out of nowhere next to him as the latch clicked open.

“Hi sorry to startle you, I am looking to get a bus ticket to Tulum, are you open?” The expression on his face immediately changed to a warm welcoming smile.

“Hi there, I am open, but I have to run home and drop off some diapers for my wife, I forgot my car keys at the office, and was just coming to get them. I will be back in 20 minutes, can you wait for me?”

I followed him inside while he searched for his keys on a large cluttered desk.

“Are you sure you can't just sell me the ticket now, quickly?” I said with some hope in my voice.

“I would my friend, but I need to boot up the computer, that takes a few minutes, and I have a 2 week old son at home with no diapers and my wife needs them immediately. Why don't you have a beer around the corner while you wait? I won't be long, 25-30 minutes tops.” I noticed the time interval had somehow expanded and I was not sure I wanted to wait; the clouds were getting thicker again. He found the keys and politely shepherded me to the door.

“Do you want to come with me?” he asked as he was locking up. “All I have to do is go by a pharmacy and pick up some diapers and some medicine.”

The plot thickens, I thought to myself. I hesitated for a few moments; I could not make up my mind... I did have to buy a toothbrush and toothpaste. He seemed like a nice guy, and the office seemed legit and tidy and in order other than the desk, which I could relate to. Fuck it, let's do this.

“I need toothpaste and a toothbrush so I guess I could get those from the pharmacy,” I blurted out halfheartedly.

“Perfect! Come with me, we can get you what you need, then you can come over to my place, I drop off the diapers and medicine, I bring you back here, you get the ticket, I close the shop and then I can take you out to see the real Cancun.”

Big drops started to fall as we walked to the car, and I realized that I had left the poncho and the LP guide in the office but we were already at the car. That was my cornerstone; I could not afford to lose it. I had heard that the guides were hard to find on the road, and I had notes in it, most importantly, the address of Hostel Margarita which, by now, I had completely forgotten how to get back to. Being driven around the city to unfamiliar neighborhoods without the map was going to make my return quite challenging.

I was about to get in the car when this shiver of doubt flushed through my brain. Who was this guy? Where was I going? How would I get back? Maybe he is a kidnapper? Maybe it's a scam? I realized I did not even know his name.

“Wait a second, I forgot my LP guide at the office,” I stalled. “I am really sorry but I need to get that before we leave.”

I slightly cringed and expected a souring of our newly founded relationship, but on the contrary he smiled again and said:

Relax my friend... what's your name? I realize that we have not been properly introduced with all this rushing

BLAAAAAM!!! A lightning bolt struck what seemed to be only a few blocks away. Get in the car, it's going to rain again. He reached over and opened the passenger side door.

I crouched and sat in his white Honda Accord, which was messy and cluttered with toys, papers, trash, and a pair of smelly soccer cleats with a pristine brand new soccer ball.

My name is Oliver, I am from here, born and raised, a true Mayan of the Yucatan. I was born just outside Cancun, what about you? He started the engine.

My name is Nikos and I was born and grew up in Athens Greece. I just started a-year-or-more traveling adventure, I actually just started 3 days ago and this is my first stop, beautiful but... rainy Cancun.

I smirked and looked out the window. The rumbling thunder blended in with the vibrations of the car engine and massaged my abdomen and lower ribcage.

“I could tell you are a traveler and not a tourist,” he smirked back and winked at me.

“What do you mean, what's the difference?” I asked, perplexed. He pulled out from the parking space into the road and began to drive.

“A tourist takes their home with them on vacation. The traveler makes their home everywhere, and what a tourist calls a vacation, a traveler calls their life.”

I had never thought about the distinction, but it reminded me of what I had just been writing to my sister about. The need to travel, to experience an adventure, enough of these pre-fabricated experiences and cookie-cutter lives; it felt like a breadcrumb, a clue; I got that feeling inside me again.

Oliver continued, “Listen, if you want me to stop at the office I will, but it's in the opposite direction and I will have to make a big detour to get there. I promise I will bring you right back and I will take you out for dinner, deal?”

“Sure.” I was sold; I needed to begin to trust these feelings, wasn't that the whole point of the trip? To trust my intuition and follow the rabbit down the rabbit hole?

We sort of confusedly high-fived and shook each other's hands.

Oliver was charming, light skinned, spoke English better than anyone I had spoken with in Mexico yet, and while seemingly absent-minded and slightly scattered, there was something calming and reassuring about his tone. I could not put my finger on it yet, but he was very inviting and friendly.

“How did you end up speaking such good English?” I asked.

My father was a school teacher and we also had American TV playing Hollywood movies that were not dubbed. My father would teach me from when I was a very young boy, and then I remember watching cartoons like G.I. Joe. Do you know what G.I. Joe is? The cartoon and the action figures, fighting Cobra?

Yes I do. I replied. We had the same cartoon on TV in Greece when I was growing up too, a new form of American imperialism if you ask me. A way to get kids, mainly boys, excited about war, weapons, and a mindset of having to defeat an evil villain.

He glanced over as he veered into a side street. The sun was setting and the combination of dark gray, pink, and white clouds popped out of the baby blue and pink sky. The street was narrow and the white walls were punctuated with bright purple bugambilias in full bloom. We had bugambilias in Greece, but not like these; these were like Greek ones on steroids, bigger, brighter, stronger, and more like a tree than the ones in Greece that look like little undernourished bushes.

The light was golden and had transformed the white walls into a peachy pink pastel color. On my side of the car, the silhouette of the car's shadow glided across the wall, its shape morphing as the wall's uneven surface danced that eternal dance of recurrence between light and darkness.

“I guess you're right,” he said. “I had not really thought of it that way. The stories we tell our children shape them into the people they eventually end up being. You said you were from Greece, right?”

“Yes, my father's family is three generations of Athenians and my mother's side is from Sparta.”

He belched out a loud laugh. “Nikos from Athens and Sparta?! Can you get any more Greek than that! That's great, well your ancestors told great stories. My father had studied archeology and had worked at the ruins in Tulum in the fifties before he became a teacher. He was fascinated with the Mayan culture, with its myths and legends. That's what got him interested in Greek mythology; he used to tell me all the stories about the Greek gods, their battles, and squabbles, their human vulnerabilities. Mayan gods looked like combinations of animals like the Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent, but the Greek gods looked and behaved like humans. That always fascinated me, how different the idea of god or gods can be from one culture to the next.”

I listened with interest as we turned into his driveway, and as he was parking the car, I responded.

“I think it has to do with the environment; they always told us in school that the reason Greece became the cradle of western civilization was because of the human scale. I did not really understand what they were talking about till very recently I think. We have 4 relatively mild seasons, our sea gets rough, but not too crazy like the hurricanes you have here. Humans stand out and contrast on the Greek landscape. It is no wonder that nature with its animals is much more vivid in the gods, stories and myths you tell. I think we take our cues from the environment around us when making up the stories that inform meaning into our lives. It’s like the landscape is a stage for us to get inspired from and stimulate our imaginations for the legends we make up for ourselves. Here the human body is lost in the richness of nature; in Greece the human body stands out in the landscape which has less nature to compete with.”

“I agree,” he said. We walked up to the front door and were greeted by an excited little 5-year-old girl who darted out of the house and wrapped herself around Oliver's legs as his wife, Clara, stood in the shadows of the interior holding a newborn in her arms.

“This is Leeloo,” he said as he whisked her into one arm, holding the diapers and medicine in his other. He pecked Clara on the mouth and eagerly invited me in. “This is Clara, my dear wife and Jose my beautiful baby boy. This is Nikos, he is from Greece and is just beginning a South American adventure. He was hanging out around the office and I promised to help him as soon as I got home and brought you the groceries for the baby.”

“Mucho gusto, encantada,” she said, and politely ushered me deeper into their hospitable cozy home. It was a small 2-bedroom house with white tiles on the floor and a large living room/kitchen which was modestly furnished with the basic needs of any house. Children's toys were neatly arranged along the wall and a couple of drawing materials were scattered in the middle of the room on the white fluffy carpet. There was a comforting smell of home-cooked food in the air mixed with that baby smell, the smell that coats any household that has just brought a newborn into the world. I felt safe, comfortable, relaxed and welcome; it must have been the aura of optimism that echoes the baby smell, that relentless sense of life-affirming conviction that permeates a loving young family.

Leeloo gazed at me with a smile, shyly peeking through her dad's embrace, and Clara immediately insisted that I stay to eat. I sheepishly looked at Oliver, realizing that this might not end up being the short pop-in, pop-out operation I had been promised, but I was getting hungry, and a home-cooked meal sounded good after all the airplane and airport food.

Oliver gave me a hesitant grin, “Come, stay for dinner and we will get you your ticket when I take you back to your hotel.”

It was hard to refuse the offer, so I politely accepted their invitation. As I washed my hands in the sink, Leeloo eagerly gave me a towel to dry myself, and giggled back to me when I thanked her.

“Is she the fifth element?” I asked, smiling.

“You have seen the movie?” Oliver asked.

“Yeah, it’s one of my favorites.”

“Mine... ours too,” he said with a confirming glance into Clara's eyes. “Our Leeloo was born only a few weeks after we saw the movie in the theater; we wanted our daughter to be just like the main character in the film. Strong, bold, but also vulnerable, funny, nurturing, and intelligent. We loved the name too so we named her after her. It feels like we need more warrior women in this male-dominated world.”

“I agree with you, there is too much testosterone in the world it feels like. Too much need to dominate, to destroy, and to tame. I wish there would be more estrogen out there; we need more nurturing, caring and healing female heroes, role models, and Leeloo's character in the Fifth Element is one of my favorites.”

I helped set the table and we gathered around it and sat, as Clara served us rice and beans, and an assortment of vegetable and meat fillings for us to make tacos with. The baby was slung around Clara's chest and was breast-feeding quietly in that heavenly baby slumber. I could barely notice her feeding him; it was so natural and seamless. Her movements were not obstructed in any way by her newborn being attached to her, literally at the hip. It was almost like she took pride in how she was able to take care of the household while also nurturing her baby. She was glowing, and she embraced the role of motherhood with such pride and ease. It was such a stark contrast from how upper-middle-class mothers in the West got so flustered and overwhelmed with bringing a child into the world. Life seemed to be disrupted with the introduction of a new family member with the act of birth. From that moment onwards, cascading waves of stress and angst seemed to consume the young parents' child rearing process. Starting with sleep deprivation, all the way to stressing over what kindergarten to enroll them in, or how much sugar and TV time to allow, or whether or not to feed them organic products, raising children in the West just did not look or feel like how Clara was handling this dinner, feeding and nurturing her husband, 5-year-old daughter, guest, and newborn.

They say how you do something is how you do everything.

Leeloo looked at me as she chewed a big bite of her taco. In Spanish, Oliver told her that I was beginning a long adventure, and that I came from Greece, the same place Odysseus (Ulysses) was from. He explained that I was interested in the Mayan Calendar, myths, and magic of the forests. Her eyes got bigger as she chomped away listening intently.

“We are halfway through the Odyssey,” he told me. “I read her a children's version at bedtime every night; she loves it, don't you, love?” She bashfully nodded as she gulped down some tamarindo agua fresca.

“It’s one of my favorite stories too! It’s wild to think that it was memorized and recited for hundreds, maybe thousands, of years.”

Oliver nodded and urged me to go on by nudging his fork in my direction as he was cutting a piece of steak.

“It was like the Bible, the one master story with many small sub-stories like parables, that everyone knew yet wanted to listen to again and again. It’s almost like because so many people had heard it and wanted to hear and had delivered it in some sort of presentation, that it accumulated in the collective consciousness. It was like a cloud and then the performer would channel it, they would become a channel, and just deliver and coat it with their ego, their unique touch. Sort of like how rappers freestyle, they get into this state of flow and begin to ‘spit’ truthful rhymes. I think that that's what happened then too. They were so self-aware of how important they were, and the act of telling a mythical magical story about the lives of gods and men was religious and spiritual. The fact that the orator could channel this incredibly long and wise mythical narrative with grace and flow was in its own right proof that the content was truthful, making its teachings all the more persuasive and meaningful.”

I realized I was rambling so I stopped to feel the room.

Oliver raised his eyebrows. “Why did you stop? This is very interesting, I believe that all myths are born this way. Tell me more about this idea of the collective consciousness. Some believe that 2012 and the ending of the Mayan calendar is related to the collective consciousness, but go on.”

“I am sure you sing nursery rhymes with Leeloo, right?” He nodded. “I am sure we have different ones in Europe, but take Twinkle Twinkle Little Star for example; you know that song, right?”

“Yes, we actually have a Spanish version we sing which is identical.”

“That proves the point I am trying to make even better. We don't know who wrote the lyrics or the music, yet it is sung to us as babies and children and it seems to exist inside us or maybe outside us and we tap into it. It is a useful song to help children relax and get ready to go to sleep, so we use it and each generation passes it on to the next. It becomes part of our unwritten collective culture. What's incredible about the Odyssey is that it's 12,000 lines long and there is almost no repetition, which is very different from Twinkle Twinkle. So it makes one wonder what made the Odyssey such an important and useful story that generation after generation, it was considered such an important story to tell, enough so that large groups of people learned to deliver it in some sort of sacred performance.”

“It’s about the importance of self-discovery through adventure and traveling, pushing yourself beyond your comfort zone and surrendering to your destiny,” Oliver blurted out eagerly.

“Wow! That's exactly it in a nutshell!” I said.

I was surprised that we were still on the same page and that Oliver was still interested. These conversations were usually reserved for my nerdy college buddies and some of my most philosophical friends from back home. Everyone in my family, except my great aunt Dolly, found these musings, if not boring, a waste of time due to their lack of practical, immediate and obvious utility. Here I was with someone I had just met, in a foreign country, eating at their home with their entire family, and was having one of the most interesting conversations.

I continued.

“The Aegean, a protected body of water within a larger protected body of water, the Mediterranean, is a womb within a womb. Scattered across this gentle pool of water, within visible distance of each other; islands, like stepping stones for civilization to seed the sea. The reward for those with adventurous spirits was the island, a land they could call their own.”

Oliver nodded with approval. I noticed Leeloo squirming in her chair, visibly bored due to her inability to follow our conversation in English.

Clara began clearing the table. She picked the plates up and asked me in English:

“What about the heroes? Who are the protagonists in the story? What are their main virtues and flaws? It seems like a very masculine heroic journey, celebrating the achievements and adventures of men. How are women portrayed? What are their roles in the story?”

Her question seemed more rhetorical; I was not sure she was looking for an answer. Nonetheless I was taken aback; I had never considered her question. Perhaps because I was a man, perhaps because most stories have male protagonists, I had not thought about her point. She was not being assertive, nor was there any irony or confrontational energy in her question; it was simply a statement phrased as a question.

She walked over to the sink without waiting for a response. In a semi-awkward silence, I thought for a moment about the female characters in the Odyssey. There was Penelope, Ulysses' wife, waiting for him patiently in Ithaca, pursued by the suitors. Then there was Circe the sorceress, who turns Ulysses' crew into pigs while seducing him, inevitably delaying his return. The sirens, the nymph Calypso, and the beautiful Helen of Troy, all of whom were characters who either instigated or complicated his journey, and in an adversarial way, butted heads with the protagonist.

There were some female characters who help him as well. His aged loyal servant Eurycleia, the blue-blooded princess Nausika, and there was also Athena goddess of wisdom, Ulysses' protector, appearing ex machina to get him out of all perilous precarious situations. I could not say that all female characters in the Odyssey were antagonists or somehow adversarial to Ulysses AKA Odysseus. But I could also not deny that female characters in the epic poem were definitely getting the less flattering roles as a whole.

The lack of female protagonists seemed appropriate. As we were discussing before, the myths and stories we tell ourselves mimic and reflect the values and truths that our community believes in and is accustomed to. Ancient Greece was definitely a man's world. Most women, with few exceptions such as the Hetaires, were confined to the duties of raising the children and taking care of the household. They were not allowed to participate in many of the freedoms of ancient life which defined the ancient Greek experience, thus being excluded from voting, listening to the orators and philosophers, watching the Olympics, being educated, or being taught to read or write.

Clara walked back over to the table to continue to clear it. I looked into her dark brown intense yet calming eyes.

“There are a few female characters,” I replied and continued in a slightly defensive tone. “None have significant presence in the sense of length, but they are significant in affecting the plot. In that sense, they are not irrelevant to the story or functioning as part of the background. Even though the epic poem came from a time when patriarchy was at its golden age, the Odyssey is not a chest-beating celebration of the masculine archetype.”

Clara paused as she was clearing the table, baby still slung around her hip and chest, sleeping as far as I could tell.

“When I was in university, I was very politically active. My mother's family comes from Chiapas, and I have Mayan, indigenous blood going through my veins, as does he.”

She pointed with her eyes to her newborn attached to her, and continued.

“I was confused and afraid growing up; my Mexican identity was unclear to me. Frida Kahlo, and what she stood for, her character and role she chose to play in the theater of history, inspired me, motivated me, and gave me faith to understand who I am. It's the person she wanted to be remembered as and her behavior that built her story that made me proud of my Mayan heritage. I became political, and stood up for the rights of indigenous farmers joining the Zapatistas in Chiapas, and through their struggle I discovered my own truth. If it was not for Frida and what she represented for me, I don't know if I would be who I am today.”

The intensity of what she was saying was strangely in contrast with the tone of her delivery, which was gentle, almost hypnotic. It was evident that she was speaking from a place of personal experience and it informed her truth with a conviction that had led her on her own journey of self-discovery.

“I completely understand the need for myths, legends which feature female protagonists,” I responded.

“You should go to San Cristobal de Las Casas, in Chiapas and see for yourself how the indigenous farmers are struggling to retain farming rights over their inherited lands. The Zapatistas, largely inspired by Ché, became their voice and mobilized a political movement to confront the new form of colonialism and imperialism, globalization. Everyone is being rushed into this new world, and those who don't want to or can't keep up with this acceleration are destined to be disadvantaged. It really breaks my heart to see simple people being used again and again as pawns on someone else's chessboard. I really am not sure about all this progress; it just seems like the same story just packaged in a different wrapping.”

“Baby... my love? Why are you getting so political?” Oliver said in slight discomfort. “We were just musing about the role of myths and how they come into being, and now we are diving into an issue which has very deep roots. Besides as far as I know the Greeks did not colonize anyone, at least not recently.”

He glanced at me as he picked up the stack of plates Clara had placed on the table.

“No, we were actually slaves ourselves during most of the colonization period from the mid-1400s till 1821, which is when we gained our independence from the Ottomans, and also the beginning of the modern nation state of Greece.”

Her expression softened and she slightly smiled before saying, “The stories are important! The stories we tell weave together a collective web of narratives and they are what inspire us to act. The better stories we tell, a better world will result as a consequence.”

“Well, on that note I think it might be time for me to take you back to your hostel, and pick up your bus ticket from the office on the way.” Oliver got up from the table and carried Leeloo over to her bedroom to put her to sleep.

I delicately got up from the table, folding my used napkin carefully and placing it gently on the table.

“Thank you, Clara, for the amazing dinner and thought-provoking insight; I will definitely make it to Chiapas and write to you about my time there.” We hugged and said goodbye.

It was dark outside and Oliver kept on trying to convince me to stay another couple of days and he would show me the real Cancun, the local version of this otherwise tourist mecca.

“I can’t afford to stay in the Margarita for another 2 nights, plus the weather looks like it will be clearing up.” I had splurged on my first hotel in order to ease my way into the ruggedness of the trip that was to come, but I was above my weekly accommodation budget, and it was only day 3.

“Stay with us! You can sleep on the couch in the living room, it pulls out into a bed!”

He looked over his shoulder, eager to hear my acceptance. I really wanted to get going, but something made me pause at that moment, and looking at his genuine desire to share his town with me, I felt that I needed to honor the invitation and allow for a slight detour on my otherwise very tightly timed travel schedule.

“Sure, thank you, I would love to.”

I really enjoyed our conversation over dinner, Oliver said. It's not often I get a chance to dive deep into philosophical chats like the one we had. It's part of the reason I wanted to be a travel agent, I wanted to meet all kinds of people from all over the world. Even if we just had a 5-minute conversation at the office, I would be so satisfied from listening to other people's perspectives and stories. But I always enjoyed the backpackers who were heading to Tulum to camp on the beach the most. They would all buy bus tickets from me, just like you, and go and camp out on the beach or in the jungle. Only a few years ago did they make the small government-run camping site with the beach huts, and it's the only official accommodation at the beach next to the ruins. There have been more and more backpackers coming to see the Mayan Riviera as we are getting closer to 2012; they are always so colorful and lively, and they often want to chat about the Mayan calendar and our myths. I learn so much from all the conversations I have.

He pulled up in front of the travel agency and turned off the car.

I'm really glad you decided to stay I promise you you won't regret it. Let me go get your bus tickets and I'll take you home i'll only be a few minutes.

I waited in the car. Looking out into the darkness I could tell it was still cloudy, I could not see the stars. I was happy, and calm, I felt like I was at the right place the right time and I was being flexible on my journey, following my intuition, that made me believe that Oliver and his family we're good people and willing to share an authentic side the city that they loved with me. It felt like I was reaching out and stretching to meet my destiny halfway, and it felt good. Besides I wasn't in a rush really, time was the one thing I had in abundance, and the adventure felt like it it just begun.

Oliver exited the office with the ticket in his hand and jumped back into the car. Here you go my friend. One ticket for Tulum for the day after tomorrow. Don't worry no need to pay, my gift.

Come on! No way! please let me pay! I protested.

No I really consider you my friend, you're not a client. I cannot let you pay. Plus you'll be staying at our house for the next couple of days so technically you are our guest, consider it part of our Mexican hospitality. He grinned, then chuckled, patted me on my shoulder and started the car again.

Akiko stops typing. “He would not let you pay?”

“No. My gift,” he said. That afternoon I had been standing behind his banana tree wondering if he was a kidnapper. By night I had a ticket for Tulum, a couch to sleep on and a friend. That is how fast it goes once you get in the car.

I appreciated the gesture even though I felt a little uncomfortable not paying, but I was eager to get to bed and process everything that happened that evening. So I let it go. Oliver dropped me off at the entrance of the hostel and drove off into the night. The lights were off and I worked my way up to my room only to be greeted by the frigid stale smell of cigarettes mixed with humid air conditioning. I opened the window and lay on the bed. An orange glow from the street illuminated the ceiling and I could see the texture of the stucco wall. It was bumpy, the shadows slightly quivering as the light from the window changed so slightly. I thought about the next few days, I was looking forward to having tacos with Oliver and seeing the city through his eyes. I also wanted to go back to the internet cafe and check and see if Sophia had written back to me. I was excited to tell her about my new friend and how as soon as I had drifted beyond my comfort zone, things started to happen. I wanted to sound more upbeat than my last email, I did not want her to worry.

Thoughts whirled around in my head, and I thought I would have difficulty sleeping...

Next thing I know, the hot sun rays through the still-open window beam on my face. Still wearing the clothes from the night before and lying on top of the sheets, I stretch like a cat on a couch wondering about the surprises of the day. The internet cafe must be open by now, I thought; I should go there now so I have time to come back, pack and check out before 10AM.

I hustled to the cafe; the sky was bright blue with a few cotton-candy-like clouds. Everything felt a lot more colorful than the night before. There was still debris from the storm, but the rain had freshened up the colors and there was a really beautiful light which made every color have a punch to it. The pink, peach and baby blue walls on the side street felt very fairy-tale-ish, and young children accompanied by their grandparents or older siblings moved around as if choreographed as extras in some film production. It all felt very… perfect?? It was almost too perfect… I wondered if that was just because I was having a good day or that I had just not noticed it the night before because of the storm and the lack of light.

I scurried to a terminal, and logged into my Hotmail account. The page loaded and I eagerly waited for each section of the page to blink from white to a section of the website.

You have 1 new message from Sophia it said on the top left of the screen.

Hi big brother,

Thank you for checking in and sharing your worries/hopes for your trip. I am very excited for you, a little worried, but I am sure you will find your way and whatever you are looking for. All the things you want to explore, the Mayans, the Zapatistas, the Amazon, make me think of you of some sort of James Bond meets Indiana Jones character (haha!) in some weird new reality show that I can follow through your emails! Think of me as your Oracle and Moneypenny fused together. But I still can’t get over that we can communicate like this! It’s crazy that we can share what we do each day with each other instantly across the globe. I feel strangely close to you even though you are so far away. It makes me think of all the letters that were sent in the past. Remember when you turned 18 and Yaya gave you all the letters Dad used to write to them when he had left Greece to go to college in Minnesota, when he was 16. I remember her saying that he would write a letter every Friday and they would receive it a week later, and they would read it at lunch around the table on Saturdays, with Grandpa and Aunt Irini. I don’t remember how many there were, but there must have been at least 100. Each of those pieces of paper with some squiggles in ink traveled across the Atlantic every week for years, keeping a family connected. Now I sit in my dorm room and instantly, a little sound reminds me that someone is thinking of me. It’s kind of crazy. It really is like we are connecting all of our minds together into this collective consciousness thing you talk about. I can’t wait for you to start sending pictures. Please send some pictures! I know you have to develop them and scan them... which I am sure is a pain, but I want to see all these places you are going to. I am so jealous! I wish I could come and find you at some point, maybe Christmas? New Year’s? Do you know where you will be? Not sure how the parents will feel about it, but screw it, it’s my senior year so I gotta make the most of it, and they can’t really stop me, so let me know where you will be and I will start planning.

You should be super excited, I am for you. You took the leap so enjoy the fall ;) I am here if you need me, just a few clicks away… Smile, the world is your oyster. Love ya xoxoxo

Again, I kind of choked up while reading her words. I felt her voice inside of me when reading her words. But I was in a different place now. I almost felt like I had worried her for no reason. Today the sun was shining, I was going to get tacos with Oliver, and I had just gotten a sweet note from my sister in Vermont through the internet.

My heart was pumping, and I realized it synced with the flashing of the cursor on the screen. I began to type.

Dear Sophia,

I can’t tell you how happy I was to read your note. Things have really changed here, the storm has passed! (both literally and figuratively). I met this cute couple; I am going to stay at their house, and they even bought me a bus ticket to Tulum. I can’t explain, but just after I wrote to you, I went to try to get a bus ticket, and that’s where I met Oliver. I was not sure at first, but then I ended up at his place, and since that moment I got in the car with him that first time, and trusted my intuition, everything changed. Anyway, I am going to Tulum tomorrow and today I am spending the day with Oliver and his family.

How much impact on your life could your loved ones really have? There needed to be a lot more faith in the upbringing of your children back then. Now I can read your words instantly and change my plans if something you say or suggest makes me feel I should. The information we take in affects the choices we make, and those determine the buses we take, the people we sit next to on those buses, what street we decide to turn on, which shop owner we end up befriending etc. The adventure is the result of the amalgamation of the choices we make following our intuition and the data we have accessible. We now can share the unfolding of our destinies with each other in real time.

There was a story that Yaya once told me about her mother and herself when she was 13. It was right after WWII, when Greece was in a civil war. It was very violent, and there were more deaths during the civil war than there were during WWII. One day the communists were rounding up the right-wingers, and Yaya and her mother were caught walking on the street where they were not supposed to be. They were taken to Klathmonos Square (the Crying Square) in the center of Athens to be executed. There were long lines of people waiting to have their throats slit with a tin can because they did not have enough knives to be able to kill enough people fast enough. She told me there were rivers of blood and buckets with eyeballs and testicles, and that she could not forget the endless wailing women and children who were being herded to their death. She told me it was the scariest day of her life; she held onto her mother’s hand so tightly her fingers turned blue. She squinted and tried to keep her eyes closed, avoiding as much detail of the horror around her as they waited in line. She prayed that her father, a respected doctor in the neighborhood, would show up out of nowhere and save her and her mother.

There was a young armed man who was guarding the line making sure no one ran away. He shot at a scared young man who panicked and ran out of the line; he missed, and was now being extra vigilant and mean to the ones left in line. Yaya recognized him. He was from the neighborhood; he lived a few blocks down the street and his wife had given birth in our family’s home kitchen. It was the end of the war and medical supplies or operational hospitals were non-existent. Our great-grandfather, who was a doctor, had turned the ground floor of the house into a makeshift clinic and provided as much medical support to the people of the neighborhood as he could. They would thank him with cans of olive oil, a couple of eggs, or a chicken, and he never accepted money.

Yaya remembered the night the man had come in with his wife in labor and it was the only time she had ever seen a birth. She was 13 at the time. It was late at night and her mother was sick with the flu; Great-Grandpa needed help and so he woke Yaya up to assist. It had been a long night, but the baby was safe and the young couple was radiating with joy. The man had come back a few days later and tried to give our great-grandfather money, and she had answered the doorbell and he had greeted her… his name was SOTIRI. Like a flash of divine inspiration the name came to her, and she shouted it out loudly. SOTIIIIIRI! He saw her and remembered her, and quickly took Yaya and her mother out of the line. Had he been looking the other way, had he not remembered her, had she not been able to remember his name, there are so many things that could have gone differently, and we would not be here.

I guess what I am trying to say, is that now we have more information, and we can request input from other people from around the world to shape our destiny. Traveling is like a stage on which to test your true self. Will people like you? Will they show you their secret places, their secret knowledge, their secrets in general, because they like you and get a good vibe from you?

That’s exactly what happened with Oliver!

In regards to you coming and visiting me, I am not really sure where I will be in December, it’s too early to tell. There are so many things that might happen till then, but I will keep you posted so you can make plans. I got to run and check out from the hostel. Will write more when I get to Tulum in a few days. Xoxo

I quickly made it back to the hostel, threw my stuff in my bag and took a shower; it could be the last one for a while. I paid, checked out, slung my backpack on my shoulders, and walked over to the travel agency to meet up with Oliver for lunch. He was helping someone as I walked in; he looked up and signaled me to come over with a bright enthusiastic smile.

Niko, meet Tarquin! He is going to Tulum tomorrow too, and I convinced him to take the same bus as you, so you will have some company. Oliver gestured with a gentle nod, directing my attention to this young man’s face.

Tarquin was tall and thin, with broad shoulders and long hair loosely held in a ponytail. He nervously smiled and extended his hand. Nice to meet you, mate, he blurted in a subtle Cockney accent, palm sideways, he clasped my hand and curled our thumbs in a bro-like handshake. He was wearing a weathered blue T-shirt which had a few small burn-holes just below the collar, and on the front, a fluorescent print of a Mayan sarcophagus engraving. I knew that print from somewhere, and the holes and stained teeth were a dead giveaway of a hash connoisseur, and the T-shirt… Tarquin was a British psy-trancer… oh this was going to be fun.

I have a few things to do today, but let’s meet up tomorrow and head to the bus station together? He winked at me, and I agreed as he walked out into the street.

“Ready to go?” Oliver asked. He locked up and I tossed my things into his car. We drove to a taco stand a few minutes away and he ordered 48 tacos.

“Dude!!? What the hell? What are we going to do with 48 tacos?”

“Relax my friend… they are not all for us.” He paid and jumped back into the car, seemingly in a hurry.

“I am going to take you to my favorite places, it’s where I feel most at home.” We drove for a few more minutes and he pulled up to a soccer field. A group of young boys and girls ran across the pitch.

Oliver had a bright smile on his face. He walked towards the kids, his arms wide open, a bag of tacos dangling from his right hand. He was glowing.

“These are my little heroes, and I coach them every weekend.”

We walked towards the bleachers and sat in the shade.

“We are a little late, so they started already; I get them all tacos to eat after the game. They are from the poorest part of Cancun, most of their parents are indigenous Mayans and work as gardeners and cleaning staff at the hotels. I love to come and encourage them to learn how to play soccer. It lets them get away from their problems for an afternoon while also teaching them a sport, sportsmanship, teamwork…. It’s also great exercise.”

He grabbed two tacos and handed one to me, and bit into his.

I reached for the taco and said, “I never really liked team sports, I was never good at them. I like to skateboard, snowboard, ski, water ski, cliff dive, and do martial arts, I did not really ever like competitive group sports. I guess I did not like someone having to lose in order for someone to have to win. I took a Sociology of Sport class in college and it made me see modern western sports very differently.”

Oliver’s eyes darted following the ball on the pitch. He looked over and without having fully swallowed his bite he said:

“Team sports teach camaraderie, putting the group over the individual, pursuing a goal that is bigger than your own personal ambition. It’s about teamwork and collective sacrifice in order to achieve a long-term goal. Following a set of rules and competing fairly within those boundaries. When you are with your team, you become part of this larger organism, a collective consciousness and you learn how to be part of this complex system with rules and challenges to overcome. All these kids need all of these things so much in their lives, a little discipline really empowers them to be stronger adults later in life. Most of them won’t even go to high school.”

The dark brown mole sauce on the chicken taco dripped out of the back. Oliver extended his upper body so that it would not drip onto his shoes.

“I don’t deny that there are amazing benefits to group sport, and that these kids benefit greatly from it. There is something very militaristic about group sports. They feel like they are a gamification of warfare, and that’s what makes it necessary to have a clear winner and loser. Football, rugby, cricket were all used as imperialistic tools, initially to entertain the officers and military during their leisure time and then later as a means to interact and share the imperial values with the administrative and higher class of the colonised nations. It was during the mid-19th century, with the global fascination with the British superpower and Anglophone culture, that football was introduced to South America.”

Oliver started on his second taco.

“Sports have always been connected to warfare, you should know that, you are Greek,” he said, amused by our philosophical chat about sports.

“Wasn’t the whole idea that they invented the Olympics so that they would not have to compete in battle?” Oliver said. “And that they would let sportsmanship and these specifically designed games become the measure and determine whose city-state, or Polis, was the most advanced and sophisticated?”

“Wow! I am impressed! You really know your ancient Greek history,” I said, wide-eyed.

“In fact the Olympics were not even the first Games,” I said. “The Iliad mentions that when Patroclus was killed in Troy, the trauma was so great for the Greeks, for he was a fierce warrior and the embodiment of Greekness, they created the Patrokleia which were games in his honor. Through the competition the participants would be forced to their limits, just like on the battlefield, and their true essence would shine for all to witness in all the vibrancy of life, honoring the light that had dimmed of the fallen warrior. The Olympics come many centuries later and are the most evolved, ritualized even further, and the most popular, that’s probably why we still know about them. There is a legend that says that the winning Olympians would return back to their cities and their fellow citizens would tear down a part of the city walls. A sign that the city was a city that nurtured Olympians and it was not to be fucked with.”

“You see?” Oliver said excitedly… Interrupting himself, he whistled loudly at two players on one of his team’s offense, signaling them to get back and play defense.

“Volver!” he shouted… “Get back…” he waved his hands and signaled to two of his players who were dragging their feet. “They are tired, the game is wrapping up, but they need to learn not to give up, to push hard all the way till the end, even if the game is lost. If this was a battle, I would not be surrendering to the enemy if my tribe was losing, I would fight stronger all the way till the end. It’s interesting how the Romans introduce death into sport again with the gladiators and the Colosseum. Raw competition without imminent death lurking around the corner seemed too vanilla for them.”

Oliver wiped his hands on his trousers and put his fingers in his mouth and whistled the ending of the match. The players exchanged hugs and walked over to the gazebo we were at, excited for the tacos. This ritual had obviously played out many times before.

“Have you heard of the Mayan Pitz ball game?” he asked.

“No, I haven’t, tell me more.”

“The Mayans played this game with a ball made out of rubber, about the size of an American softball. It was heavy and even though it bounced, it was not soft and probably hurt when it hit your body. The toughest warriors would come and play this game on designated dates in the year tied to their astrological cycles. There is a large court in Chichen Itza still today, with large stone amphitheater viewing areas on either side where the crowds would watch the game. At either end, the royals and the priests would have the best view. There were two large stone rings placed high up in the middle of the court on either side. But the rings were not parallel with the ground like with basketball hoops; they were 90 degrees, perpendicular to the ground. The hole was only slightly larger than the ball, and what was amazing is that you were not allowed to use your hands and feet to kick or pass the ball. Everyone could only use their hips, shoulders, and chests. It’s kind of incredible that they were able to get the ball through the ring at all. The most fascinating part: it is said that the winners were the ones who were sacrificed. It was a great honor to win the game, and often the leader or the entire winning team would be sacrificed. The game was often used as a way to resolve conflict without having to resort to battle. It’s sort of like them saying ‘rather than both of our clans battle each other, let’s play a game which is religious in nature, and let’s sacrifice the heroes who revealed to us this truth and averted the bloodshed’. They attained immortality and the most honorable death, and the clans were spared. The priests and royals would watch the ball, and infer narratives about the future of their tribe. Another form of collective divination, a stage where chaos and order dance together, and through that unpredictable drama, reveal something deeper about ourselves.”

“Wow! It makes modern sports feel so dry, empty, and lacking the enchantment that they had back then. The whole ritualisation of the game and the way it was woven into their lives had such a different impact on their lives. Now sports are a distraction, an opium for the masses as they say, a way to keep everyone complacent, and in line. The only thing I find fascinating about modern sports is how they bring us all together. Every week, every month, year, 2 or four years we are brought together, and we can all observe in real time the unfolding of an unscripted drama. At the final of the World Cup 2 billion people watch that game. That’s 4 billion eyeballs focused on that ball. In the history of the planet, never before could we concentrate so many billions of people's attention on one single point. The ball literally is that point. As it moves back and forth across the field, it connects us. It is like the game is calibrating our collective consciousness.”

“Whoa! Now that is profound, brother. Did you just come up with that?”

“I guess so… think of it for a second, maybe that’s what all sports are about.”

I got into the car and we drove off.

We pulled up outside his house.

“Phew… what an afternoon! Let’s see if Clara needs any help in the house and if not we can continue with some beers in the backyard; let me help you with your bag.”

He reached in and swung my pack over his shoulder.

“Man, this is a heavy pack, what you got in here that is so heavy?”

I followed him to the front stoop and he unlocked the door to his home with his spare hand.

“I have a video camera, tapes, and batteries, some disposable Kodak still cameras, along with some speakers and this amazing Creative Labs Nomad mp3 player with 6GB of memory, and all my amazing tunes. Oh and plus a MiniDisc player with some mics and audio recording equipment.”

Crossing the threshold into his house, he turned to me with one eye half closed.

“That’s a lot of tech gadgets to be backpacking around South America with. You better be careful, it could attract the wrong attention.”

“I know, but I feel like I need to be using the most advanced tools to document the details of my story. While I also want to be able to share music, video, and other recordings with people I meet along the way.”

“You have not brought out your camera or any of your recording devices all day. What are you talking about?”

“I know, I have been thinking about this in the back of my mind all day, but I felt that if I would take out the camera it would break the flow, and so I just went with the flow. You know?”

“You are going to have to work on that if you want to get the juicy stuff on your trip.”

We entered the side door. Leeloo and Clara were drawing on the table in the kitchen. The baby quietly slept slung to the side of his mom.

Oliver kissed and hugged all three of them. He quickly negotiated an hour of free time in exchange for helping with dinner. He grabbed two Coronas and headed to the back porch. I hurriedly said hello, and tried to make it as un-awkward as possible. Unfortunately it was. I scurried out the back after placing my things in the corner, and sat in a plastic chair with a flimsy leg.

“What do you want to film and document on your trip?”

“I don’t really know. It’s hard to put into words... I will try.” I felt literally off balance, but something inside me jolted, and a clarity came upon me. Words started to just pour out of my mouth effortlessly, everything that was fuzzy came into focus. I was finally articulating what I was trying to achieve.

“Now in this new interconnected world it seems like we can go on longer more ambitious adventures with access to this web of information that is constantly getting thicker. I want to document those moments, those synchronicities on camera. I want them to be proof of the magic of pursuing your highest potential and stand as inspiration for others to do the same. I also want to document everything that is being destroyed by progress, mainly the animistic, shamanic and indigenous mindset, the ritualisation of life in its simplicity, authenticity, and rawness. Oh and utopias, I want to also document modern utopias. Are there people out in nature living off of the land in small intentional communities in Latin America at the dawn of the millennium? Are they happy? Is life sustainable and fulfilling?”

“Salud! To Niko the philosopher from Greece, I like you! To your modern day Odyssey! May your journey be long and rewarding and may you find answers and many more questions to further fuel your adventure. Geia mas! Isn’t that what you say?”

We clinked the bottles.

“Thank you, Oliver! Honestly, you have been a very generous host, thank you for getting me out of my hotel, showing me around town, and thank you for the conversation and taking me into your home with such warm hospitality. I could not have asked for a better start to my Odyssey. You have a wonderful family; you are a perfect honorer of Xenios Zeus, the god of hospitality.”

“I have also been a traveler, and know how important it is to find a place that feels like home. May you show similar hospitality to someone else whose path may cross with yours. Isn’t that the idea?”

It had begun to get dark. The almost empty beer bottles had absorbed our hands' heat making the last gulp warm and unrefreshing. I lit a cigarette and watched the smoke rise in a straight line penetrating the humid stillness of the evening.

“It reminds me of earlier today when you were describing the ball synchronizing the emotions of everyone watching the World Cup final. Theater, film, and popular culture do that calibration of emotions on a more complex level; it’s not that simple binary excitement vs fear spectrum. Popular culture lets us explore the whole rainbow of emotions, and calibrate the collective consciousness with a little bit of envy, a sprinkle of lust, a pinch of sarcasm.”

“What about shock?” I asked. “Can you really shock people on a collective level? Is it possible to program shock into the collective consciousness? I mean at the end of the day you still know it’s a horror film, you know that it’s not real, so how can you really program shock and horror if it’s scripted, and the audience knows deep inside that it’s not real?”

I smiled cheekily and looked at him as if we were playing a game of mental chess and I had just taken his queen away and threatened his king. I put my cigarette butt in the empty bottle and he waved his hand to get rid of the lingering smelly smoke. He paused and wondered for a minute before he responded.

“What happened last week in NY, the twin towers collapsing. I saw that on live TV and my heart dropped when those towers fell. I felt everyone’s heart drop together.”

I was silent; I knew exactly what he was talking about. I had felt it too on the other side of the planet a few seconds later. A literal shock wave across the planet echoing the transmission of the live televised moving image.

“It’s a real shame we tell such vicious stories about each other, and we create a vicious circle of negativity. We pump all this fear into our dream factories, knowing that science fiction becomes science fact. Why can’t we come up with better stories to create awe and shock not through death and destruction, but through inspiration and creativity?”

“Like what?”

“Like live transmission of the moon landing, or the Earthrise photo, or NASA and the International Space Station, or have you heard of the rover mission to Mars that is going to launch in 2003? We need better myths, better stories to calibrate the collective consciousness, otherwise we will self-destruct.”

Oliver got up.

“On that note, I think I am going to go inside and help with dinner.”

Leeloo was tired. She rubbed her eyes and slouched in her chair slowly pouring her little body onto the floor. Every so often she would readjust and place her elbow on the table so as to keep her head stable. Clara had made a delicious chicken soup with refried beans and rice on the side. The conversation had a quieter tone than the night before. I felt an immense sense of peace and gratitude for this family having shared their life with me for 24 hours. I felt like I was home, even though I was thousands of miles away from what I had considered home to be till now.

Wiping off the last dishes by the sink, Oliver reminded me to check in with Clara’s cousin in Chiapas, Carlos the curandero.

He has been living in San Cristobal de las Casas for 10 years now, studying Mayan traditional medicine. You should definitely meet him if you end up heading that way.

A somber bittersweet tone began to overtake me as I walked to my room and began packing my bag. Little did I know it would become a defining feeling for the years to follow. The feeling was complex, and contradictory in its components. Part excitement for what lay ahead, but coated with a melancholic sadness knowing that you might never be back to this place or see these people again, and that the moment was special, unique and fleeting. In some respects, life is a thread of those moments, and a good life was learning how to embrace each moment to its fullest and then being able to let go equally gracefully. In order to be a traveler and not a tourist, one needs to be able to fall in love with a place and completely immerse themselves instantaneously and then be able to leave and enjoy the next place equally without feeling that sense of loss we all feel when we leave a place or person we have connected with. It makes no sense to skip across the surface and not connect along the journey; if that’s all I was looking for from traveling, I would be on one of the cruise liners lined up at the Cancun port.

With a blink of an eye, morning had arrived. Oliver, half asleep, gently opened my door. A rooster crowed in the distance, and the dark room had slowly begun to glow with the bluish light of early dawn.

Are you up? he murmured.

Just barely, come to think of it I don't feel like I slept at all.

Excited about the beginning of your Odyssey, my young Odysseus?

The butterflies in my stomach began to flutter and I hastily grabbed my stuff and prepared for leaving.

Come, I will give you a ride to the bus station, let me put on some clothes.

I placed my backpack by the front door and went to the kitchen and waited for Oliver. With his T-shirt only half on, he entered the kitchen and opened the fridge.

Some orange juice? Oh and I can't forget, Leeloo insisted that I give you this.

Oliver opened the fridge and handed me a dark paper bag. It had two sandwiches in it, but on the exterior was an illustration of a man (a stick figure) on a boat in a rough sea and a small island just off the bow of the boat.

She drew that for you after I told her about Ulysses and your journey that was just beginning. I think it's supposed to be you as you set off for your journey. We made you some sandwiches for the bus ride. There is not much on the road to Tulum, and it's about a 4-hour drive.

I choked up and, overwhelmed by Leeloo's gesture, I reached out and spontaneously hugged Oliver, who almost dropped his glass of orange juice.

Thank you, Oliver, I blurted as I slowly released him from my hug. You are the best person I could have met at the beginning of my adventure. I can’t tell you how much this drawing, sandwiches and your generous heart have inspired me and feels like a blessing. You have a beautiful family, and you are a great father. Please thank Leeloo for her lovely drawing.

As we walked out the front door, I looked back as it closed and wondered if I ever would see Clara, Leeloo and the baby again. We jumped into the car and sped off into the misty early morning to the bus stop.

Mexico, Guatemala / September, October 2001

So here we go folks. A few weeks in Mexico starting with Cancun, touristy as expected and very boring, thank god to Oliver and Clara who took me in and showed me around the real Cancun. Their 5-year-old daughter Leeloo sent me off with my first Spanish lessons while teaching me about the dolls that clean her room for her.

That was Cancun. A ticket I never paid for. A bag of sandwiches with Ulysses drawn on it by a five-year-old, for the bus.