Pinche Elton John and the Riviera Maya

I've been in the Yucatan for well over 2 months and I just now made it over to the Caribe side. The beaches along the Mexican Caribe, or Riviera Maya, are as nice as I've ever seen. White sand, ridiculously blue water, you know, the usual fantasy. Equally as nice are the tranquilidad and seguridad I've come to expect in the Yucatan. The weekend of Domingo de Resurreccion (Easter) comes with a 4 day puente here in Mexico, and Aldo, Aldo's brother Leonardo, and I took advantage of it by bopping over to the "other side".

On the way we made a couple of detours. First we hit Chicen Itza, probably the most famous Mayan ruin in Mexico. Unfortunately, Elton John was going to perform a concert there in two days, so they cordoned off a bunch of the site, including the front of the largest piramide (pyramid), the famous reclining man, and the largest cenote. Of course they didn't tell us that when we were buying tickets, and getting a refund in Mexico..... well, I'll leave that up to your imagination. Anyway, it was a bit disappointing. I've never liked Elton John, but now.... well, I'll leave that up your imagination too. Anyway, here is a picture of one of the nicer parts of the ruin that we could access.

After Chicen Itza, we went to a nice cenote (you can't spit in the Yucatan without hitting a cenote) in the middle of this town halfway between Merida and the Caribe called Valladolid. We stopped there for lunch and tooled around. They were doing some sort of shoot there, the place had a camera crew and a Mexican model getting all dolled up. Here is a picture looking up at the restaurant from the inside of the cenote.

Finally, we got to Playa del Carmen, which is about 50 miles south of Cancun (everyone here told me to take a miss on Cancun, too crowded and lousy access to the beaches). Playa del Carmen is plenty touristy too, but suprisingly, once you get off of Avenida Quinta (Mexico's answer to South Beach), you could just as easily be in any small town in the middle of the Peninsula. For instance, there was this great little taqueria run by two very Mayan looking woman just 1 block off the drag.

Our hotel was tucked up right next to the beach, right off of Avenida Quinta, was clean, had air conditioning, a pool, hot water, two queen sized beds, and was less than $100 U.S. a night. Mexico, you gotta love this place! Couldn't resist a picture of the beach right off of the hotel. There is an active night life in Playa del Carmen, it is totally asses to elbows every night until about 4 am. Aldo and his brother closed the bars every night, stumbling in around 5 or so, slept 4 hours, and were ready to go again. I managed to make it until 3 one night, was asleep by 12 the other two (which I'm sure is still some kind of record for me). If you happen to be older than 25, you feel older than 75 when your there.

After 4 days of such tonterias, we were ready to get back, and we blew across the peninsula on the suprisingly good carreteras that run all throughout the Yucatan (yet another misconception about Mexico is that the roads are all bad).

The difference between Mexico and the U.S. are so vast its hard to generalize, but I'm going to do it anyway. In (at least this part of) Mexico, people spend less time being angry, stressed, depressed, judgemental. They work hard, but when they leave work, they leave work. They have much less guilt about having fun. We could learn alot from them (I already have). I only hope that when I get back, I don't fall back into the same old stress fest we have come to accept in the states. Certainly there are things that are better in the states, hmm...for instance, coffee and beer. I'm sure there are others, I just would need more time to come up with them.

Work really has gotten to be more fun. I saw a patient for another therapist the other day who presented with a diagnosis of pes anserine tendinitis. It was obvious that isn't what he had, so I sent him back to the referring MD to see if he would consider an MRI to check for a possible medial meniscus tear. The referring doc wouldn't budge, so I told the PT that: 1. The patient wasn't going to get better with the current treatment, 2. Eventually, the patient would insist on getting an MRI, and 3. He will end up having a degenerative tear of the medial meniscus. Now, if you know me, you know I wouldn't be telling you this story if I didn't end up being right. Anyway, the doc didn't get mad at me, I'm now a bit of a rock star. Hardly a day goes by where I don't get a referrel with imaging included. I'm seeing the staff's family members, I casted a fractured hand the other day, I'm fabricating splints, giving mini-inservices on taping techniques, etc. It really is quite an experience. In addition, I'm going to give a talk for the entire staff here in 3 weeks (of course, in Spanish). I'm going to use the opportunity to contrast PT in the U.S. with PT in Mexico (OK, the list of things that are better in the U.S. is now coffee, beer, and PT). I'm going to use two different treatment approaches for chronic tendinosis as a vehicle. I just want to show the docs that the new generation of PT's being produced here in Mexico are capable of so much more than they realize (and utilize). Wish me luck.

Which brings me to the language part. I'm still struggling with comprehension, so much so that I've now decided I have audio dyslexia. I'm sure the diagnosis doesn't exist, but my audio processing skills are so terrible, they simply deserves a diagnosis all their own. I am improving in speaking though, and my reading skills are good enough to read novels in Spanish.

The daughter of one of my patients has taken pity on me, and I am going over to her house three times a week in the afternoons to talk with her. Her English is only slightly worse than my Spanish, so we trade off languages. She also has two incredibly precocious sons, one 5, the other 8, who are more than willing to correct my grammer and pronunciation. I used to think I was able to speak Spanish as well as a 6 year old, (which, according to Vicente Fox would make me 2 years better than George Bush) but now I'm not so sure.

All told its been quite a ride so far, but I'm not sure I will have much to talk about for quite awhile, so I will sign off for now. Chao.