The Finite

I messed up a Mexican lizard. But he was totally asking for it. Let me explain.

I have a little trouble sleeping one night so I go out onto the balcony for a nip of Oso Negro. I get out onto the cool dark balcony and find my empty tumbler sitting on the table from earlier in the day. It’s dark, but there’s just enough starlight for me to open the bottle and pour. I top off the glass with some ice water from my water bottle. I raise it to my face, but I stop because I can hear and feel something drowning in it.

It’s this.

By this point he is literally up to his eyeballs in vodka water which I immediately pour out. I rinse him off with more of my water because it’s probably sucky to get a highball to the eyes. After a while he stops struggling and flailing and just sits there. I dump him out onto the table and he just chills there for a while. Then he slowly walks off the edge of the table and onto the underside where he hides from me as I make myself another drink. (In a different glass of course.)

*A skink is a lizard-like reptile.

I forgot to mention my intent for this trip. In addition to the airplane itinerary, I had a non-travel itinerary.

This is all stuff that I don’t do enough of. Well, that and sleep, but who has time for that? In retrospect I like to think I was moderately successfully with most of these although some of them are kind of iffy.

But what better place than here to be young and dumb and drunk? As a wise friend of mine put it, “Better to be filled with alcohol, than with diarrhea.” I mean, it’s not like you can go to restaurants and safely drink their water. You’ll have to get beer or in my case, lime juice with Corona in it. And in addition to the restaurants, there’s also beaches with Segway-riding waiters, night clubs with a surprising amoont of Canadians, and tequila shops just freaking everywhere. And drinks just taste better when they’re delivered by Segway.

I also made great progress on my “tour of cocktails” checklist at the poolside bar. I knocked out Mojitos, Bloody Marys, Tequila Sunrises, and Pina Coladas. By the way, Bloody Marys are apparently very spicy. No patron saint would have that kind of blood without some severe phlebitis, it burns so much. But at least I have a healthy prostate (Thank you, Lycopene!) and a newfound respect for Worcestershire sauce. (In the same manner one respects .50 caliber bullets.)

We didn’t just stay out on the resort the whole time, there was nightlife involved too. While out pretending to be a young person, I discovered some things:

I didn’t learn that last one out on the town but it’s good to know, I think. I couldn’t post any of these at the time because of roaming charges and all so I took notes on a pocket notepad. Which came in very handy in a deafeningly loud bar on the beachfront. Carried on a entirely written conversation with a polyglot Malaysian girl. Let this be a lesson: bring pens and scratch paper to loud bars to meet cool people.