Wanderlust

So I’m going on a honeymoon in two weeks. Which we plan to make a unique travel experience by doing no work whatsoever — no assignments or notebooks, no phone calls to experts or emails to chefs. An escape from travel writing for two travel writers. I found a hotel near Yelapa, Mexico, which is in a jungle on a hill over the beach, and which I’m told we can only reach by boat and donkey. I think I always thought that any honeymoon I ever had would be a trek across Siberia or somesuch. But this feels right.

Post Office Guy: Are you getting married?

Me: Yes.

POG: Why?

Me: Ha.

POG: Where are you going on your honeymoon?

Me: Mexico.

POG: Be careful!

Me: Can I have my stamps?

POG: Have fun.

Paris, as it turns out. We took a fast trip to the Yucatan for an airline magazine, me writing and Joe taking the pictures. We had possibly the best fish tacos of my life in Champotón. (Sorry, Baja). We went from tarantulas (okay, just one) and howler monkeys one night to an all-in resort the next. (Not our choice. Totally surreal.) We missed Thanksgiving because we were on a plane. We spent 24 hours in New York and then flew to Paris, where I’m working from a soothing room in the 18th with rooftop views out every window. We’re going to Chez Rose for dinner, which I’m told is tres kitsch and not at all chic.

I landed in Cancun today and began speaking Spanish for the first time in a year. Those first sentences in a foreign language after a long hiatus begin like tangled paths, me not knowing where they’re going to end. Will my mouth remember? When I feel myself careening through my side of the conversation, uncertain as to where my vocal cords will land, I try to slow down and pay attention to the consonants. I watch to see if I’m understood, in this case by Axel, our driver. And then I see that yes, it’s all working, I remember how to do this. I am understood.