“Take it,” he commanded.  “This rain won’t be stopping soon.”

“Only if we can return it to you.  Where do you live?” I asked, more curious about our charismatic, dark-haired driver than anything else.

“Puerto Morelos,” he answered.  “Just twenty-five miles south of Cancun there’s a Pemex  Gas Station.  Turn towards the ocean and you’re three miles from the town square.  Ask anyone where my house is.  It’s on the beach right past a small hotel with cabanas.  I’m Alejandro.  The town is small; everyone knows me.”

Auspicious beginnings?  Perhaps.  After a week traveling through northern Quintana Roo, we  ventured to Puerto Morelos.  The local bus dropped us at the turnoff and we walked down the narrow two-lane road bordered by coco palms  all the way to the square.

Walking out towards the pier we watched pelicans dive effortlessly into the water.  Fishermen, in typical Mexican fashion, were bringing in the day’s catch, dragging fish in coolers to the well-worn dock.  This was the real Mexico.  Just a half mile offshore, waves broke on the Palancar Reef, second in size only to the Great Barrier Reef of Australia.  The Palancar hugged the Mexican coast southwards all the way to Belize, accompanied by some of the whitest sand beaches in the world.

We eavesdropped on conversations, thankful they were in Spanish.  Could this be the place we’d been searching for?

In the past couple years my husband and I had fallen in love with the Yucatan.  We’d seriously tossed around the idea of buying land and building a house there, for our retirement.  But up to this moment,  we had never felt like we’d landed in the right spot –until we found Puerto Morelos.

We asked where to find Alejandro’s house, and a fisherman pointed us up the road with a grand wave of his arm.  Heading north, we trekked on a path cut through low scrub jungle, walking as briskly as we could, bearing our duffel bags, and our talisman, the umbrella, with us.  The path curved towards the ocean, and we passed a small hotel with cabanas and a large reception area with attached restaurant.

As we headed past the cabanas, we saw his house.  With its curved walls, white trim, arched  windows and bright purple and red bougainvillea growing up the sides, it was more than we expected.  I felt like Alice going through the looking glass.  Surely I had passed the point of no return.  How could I ever return to my city job after seeing life being lived this languidly, this fully?  We approached Alejandro’s house, knocked on the mahogany door.  He greeted us, in the  Mexican way, as if we were longtime friends. He insisted that we settle in as his guests in this  luxurious, beachfront house.  All this over the return of an umbrella.

In conversation, we learned Alejandro had beach lots for sale in Playa del Carmen, twenty miles  south of Puerto Morelos, and Paul and I decided we wanted to see them and possibly purchase one.