The Promised Land—It's Just a Shot Away

Chapter 18: Delayed in customs

Cancun Airport, early days

Hola Amigos! Today’s Mexico Soul presents a chapter from Where the Sky is Born, my memoir on building a house and opening a bookstore. Christmas is close and so are we—to finally experiencing the culmination of years of planning, dashed hopes, elation, and, dare I say it? Completion! But not before the customs gods have their way with us.

The seductive song of the Mexican Caribbean charmed us. We’d been seduced by an enormous sky, clear blue waters, never-ending coastline. Whenever a serious boost was needed, little bits of magic crept in, reminders that we were still under the Caribbean’s spell.

As we neared completion on the house, there was only one thing left to be finished—the façade, the outward face of the building. Paul had designed the house layout, but even in his most creative moments, he drew a blank on the exterior. So he pushed this back into Joe and Enrique’s court and asked them to sleep on it.

Amazingly, that’s exactly what happened. About a week later, Enrique called, very excited. “You won’t believe this!” he said. “I dreamt about your house last night, and in my dream, the façade looked like the stone structures that surround the tops of the pyramids at Chichen Itza.”

He was right. I found it unbelievable . . . a dream about our house and it looked like a pyramid?

“It looked fantastic!” he continued, his enthusiasm extending over the miles. “We’ll use Mayan rock and since the roof is flat, it will add the perfect accent.”

How could we say no? Then an idea came to me.

“We can call the house Casa Maya. It sounds as if it will look like a modern day pyramid.” (In Mexico everyone names their houses, as if they were dear friends. A charming tradition).

Enrique continued, “We’re going to Chichen Itza this week to take photos and study the pyramids. I’ll call you when we get back. I knew I’d come up with an idea, but I never thought it would be like this!”

Enrique’s dream became reality and the house façade turned out very similar to the Temple of Kukulkan at Chichen Itza. Call it Maya Modern. With only five weeks left until Christmas, everything was on schedule. We were getting the best Christmas present of all.

Even though we planned on celebrating Christmas in Mexico, there was much to do in the US before we left. I wrote out Christmas cards at home and at work, wrapped presents, and mailed those that required it. At the office I prepped my accounts for my absence, working later than usual and daydreaming every possible moment about paradise: a white sand beach, a translucent turquoise sea, and doing absolutely nothing for two weeks.

After a series of non-stop Christmas parties, we reached the magic date, December 22, our day of departure.

In Mexico before NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) was ratified in 1994, it was nearly impossible to find many standard issue items for building. Even simple things like switch plates or plugs for lights could be on back order for weeks, plus the quality on many “hecho in Mexico” products did not compare to what one could buy in the US. Because of this, our luggage was always packed to near overflow with an odd assortment of hardware.

We carried electric light switches, rheostat devices, circuit breakers, junction boxes, Halogen beach lights, toilet parts, ground fault switches, a voltage regulator, can openers, wine, cheese, spices, pepperoni, See’s chocolates for friends, spun honey-baked hams, linens, cotton sheets, bath towels, pots and pans, radio alarm clock, ghetto blaster, toaster, blender and more.

This was just what we put in our suitcases, most which would not be declared. We had also air shipped other items too large for mere tourist travel and hoped all would be waiting for us at customs in Cancun. Of course we’d heard the infamous stories of “la mordida,” known as the bite to any gringo crazy enough to travel with more than the shirt on his or her back. Wary though we were, we were also children of the material world. (It was the 1990s). If we couldn’t buy it there, we’d haul it ourselves, thank you.

As we disembarked the usual rush on arriving in Cancun hit us. The airport, though international, was still small and we exited the plane onto an outdoor tarmac. A wave of heat smacked me in the face as I stepped outside the air-conditioned cabin. Then came the smell, that musty, dank odor of the Yucatán and the low-lying overgrowth of jungle that seeped into the pavement on which we walked.

Nothing could truly subdue it.

We had merely borrowed this land, these buildings, that tarmac. Given time, the elements, and the slightest hesitation on man’s part, the jungle would again be vanquisher in this ancient pattern we’d established with nature. The smell—that emanation from the decaying jungle—was nature’s way of alerting us that the battle hadn’t yet been completely won . . . it was still working on a victory of its own.

Photo by Chris Abney on Unsplash

We breathed it in—the jungle odor. We knew we had arrived. What’s said about the fifth sense, smell? That it’s the strongest of our senses, spontaneously carrying us back to moments in our personal history, identifying previous times and places in the cell block of memory.

We pushed and pulled our carry-ons towards the first line of demarcation where a secondary customs official would look us in the eye, size us up, give a small grunt, and stamp our passports. Next we would push our carry-ons over to baggage claim and wait for the airline staff to do their share of retrieval, moving parcels and suitcases from gurney to conveyor belt.

Mexico customs had developed an egalitarian system for baggage inspection of incoming passengers. One simply pushed a button attached to an apparatus that looked like a traffic light. It would read either red or green—there was no mistaking what course would be taken once the light was triggered. Green meant freedom and on with your vacation. You were free to frolic in the ocean, dance at Coco Bongo, drink margaritas till dawn. Let the games begin!

Red meant some over-zealous official with prodding hands and a certainty of purpose—your contraband—would rifle through your personal effects while scores of others—tourists and bean counters alike—looked on.

We weren’t one hundred percent certain the button pushing was a random effort at checking bags. I’d noticed on more than one occasion the poor nerd standing dejectedly at the customs checkpoint with underwear and other assorted items—camera, jeans, deodorant—strewn everywhere, was more often than not a long-hair with a beard and backpack. Were backpacks a barometer to customs agents of the world branding those carrying them as the likes of the troublesome traveler?

After countless trips to Mexico we developed our own atmospheric pressure guide for sailing through customs. We waited until someone pushed a red light and immediately dashed for that check point as red lights were the exception. So at Cancun International that day, it was much to my amazement that when I pushed the button, the light flashed red. Paul cleared customs just moments before with a green light on a meter next to mine and was already in the safety zone on the other side, locating a porter.

Photo by Raquel Brepohl on Unsplash

“Take your things to that table,” instructed a young woman in uniform who stood at the counter, already eyeing me suspiciously.

I gazed in trepidation at the customs’ debriefing area, and stared down into the eyes of the smallest adult I’d ever seen. Hand to God, the man was little more than three feet tall.

Am I hallucinating? I wondered. Let’s see, I had two drinks on the plane. Our flight was really early, maybe . . . I blinked twice and looked again. No, there was a super tiny man wearing a little uniform standing right in front of me, bandying a small baton from one hand to the other. Apparently he had plans for it; he would use it to shuffle through my things like a cleaner version of the white glove test. Ay, Chihuahua! I was headed for trouble!

“Buenos tardes.” Good afternoon, I gamely began, as he pushed and pulled my numerous pieces of baggage closer to his check point. They were bigger than he was, no doubt about it. Actually, they were bigger than me.

“Buenos tardes,” he replied, with a glint in his eye.

I felt he was defying me to give him the once-over but I was too politically correct for that. Well, what could I do? Mexico always managed to throw me a curve ball when I least expected it. Damn that red button. I pulled myself together and put my best foot forward.

“Ready for Christmas?” I asked, trying for perfect Spanish pronunciation.

He eyed me tentatively and nodded with a curt, “Si.” Then he seemed to reconsider and asked in hesitating English, “Where are you from?”

“California,” I said. For some reason, when asked this question of location in Mexico, California is always the right place to be from, probably because so many Mexicans have family in the Golden State.

“Hollywood?” he pressed, with a devilish grin.

“No, San Francisco, but I know Hollywood.”

While we engaged in this verbal exchange he slowly began to rustle through my luggage and with sure, swift movements began working his way into the heart of darkness, the center of my suitcase. What evil contraband he would find, I wasn’t sure. By this time, even I couldn’t remember what purloined objects I’d put where.

I winced as I saw his baton fondle a stick of pepperoni (no meat products!), dawdle over my honey baked ham, and move on. He caressed my Halogen light, pretending it did not exist, and then motioned towards bag number two.

“Do you know Rambo?” he asked, eyeing me again.

“Sylvester Stalone? No, but I know his movies,” I answered demurely.

By this time he was well into my second suitcase, again dancing all around my belongings. As I watched in horror, I realized there was nothing in the suitcase that wasn’t contraband! My God! Hadn’t I declared anything?

“Next,” he stated, as he aptly pushed aside my taboo valise, pretending he hadn’t see the voltage regulator, the radio alarm clock, the blender.

We were moving on to bag number three and back to the name game.

“Schwarzennager?” he demanded, holding his baton authoritatively, like a conductor’s wand. “Do you know him?”

“No, but he is, como se dice, how do you say it? A real dude? En español?”

“Duuuuuude?” the agent asked.

“You know, que hombre! What a guy!” I gushed.

By then I was feeling lightheaded. I knew I was over-reacting but I couldn’t help myself. I don’t know if it was the heat, the agony of being stopped, the under-sized agent. It felt like I was auditioning for a Fellini film.

For a moment I glimpsed Paul in the safety zone of the free world on the other side of the customs terminal. He was helplessly watching my mini-horror flick unfold. I caught other tourists giving me sidelong glances as they wheeled their respectable, untampered luggage through the turnstiles, into a waiting crowd of tour guides and porters. The promised land.

“Arnold . . . Schwarzenneger!” the customs agent announced for a second time, like a battle cry. “Terminator!”

By this time he’d reached my last bag. He handled it gently, holding the baton under his chin as he carefully opened the latch and took a perfunctory look inside.

I could tell he wasn’t going to fine me, detain me or trouble me in any way at all. Why? When my bags were rife with contraband?

We’d stumbled onto a universal maxim, he and I. It was as simple as that—the movies—Hollywood—a common denominator in our global village. In his poorly rendered English and in my fractured Spanish, we discovered a language in which we were both fluent.

As he pushed aside my last bag and closed it with a demonstrative thump, he gave me one last look. “Okay. You remember ‘Hasta la vista, baby?’ Who said it?”

I burst out laughing. “Schwarzenneger! Hasta la vista baby, á utsed! Y Feliz Navidad!”

Paul had watched this entire production from afar. I had seen him physically cringe a couple times as he stood on tiptoe to view the loathsome, illegal products the customs agent had encountered in my suitcase. He smiled a big one at me from his safe haven where he’d secured a porter who would soon whisk us out to the unforgiving afternoon heat . . . and freedom.

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Backstory—Puerto Morelos sits within 100 miles of four major pyramid sites: Chichen Itza, Coba, Tulum and Ek Balam. By living in close proximity to this Maya wonderland we pyramid hopped on our days off from Alma Libre Libros, the bookstore we founded in 1997. Owning a bookstore made it easy to order every possible book I could find on the Maya and their culture, the pyramids, the archeologists who dug at these sites and the scholars who wrote about them, not to mention meeting archeologists, tour guides, and local Maya who popped into the store. I became a self-taught Mayaphile and eventually website publishers, Mexican newspapers and magazines, even guidebooks asked me to write for them about the Maya and Mexico. I’ll never stop being enthralled by the culture and history and glad there’s always new news emerging for me to report on right here in Mexico Soul. Please share this post if you know others interested in the Maya. Thank you!