The next
day, we discovered Villa Caracol, a small hotel hidden in a clearing in
the jungle, fronting a talcum powder beach. Darrell and Laura Campbell
originally from Kansas City, bought the property thirteen years ago, cleared
the land, got the required permits, and built their home. In the beginning,
they rented out the two bedrooms on the second story to sport fishermen
and divers. Since then, they’ve added four cabanas and several air-conditioned
rooms.
We sat around
a table under a palapa with Darrell, Mike--a fishing guide from Minnesota,
and Stephen--an American expatriate from Sweden who vacations at Villa
Caracol once a year for “the quiet and solitude.” Miguel popped open five
Sols behind the open-air bar. I looked around and thought, “Is this
real?”.
The emerald
Caribbean lapped at the scalloped edges of a bleached white beach, which
was dotted with inward-leaning palm trees, and best of all, no people.
There in the middle of paradise, the hours ambled by. Stories were told.
Palm fronds crackled in the breeze, pelicans landed on the pier and lit
off again, and the smell of the hamburgers Miguel was grilling filled the
air.
Stephen told
us about the time he went tarpon fishing and the fish jumped out of the
water shoulder high. Darrell talked about the fertile soil in the
area, and how almost anything grows in the area with minimum effort, especially
pot. Mike talked about his difficulty in getting a VISA for his Mexican
wife and their baby so that the two can return with him each year to Minnesota,
where he works in construction for six months. “It’s great living down
here,” he said, “but you gotta deal with the barracuda.”
Eddie asked
the men, “What’s up around that point?”
“A lighthouse
and then just more of what you see here,” Mike answered. ”But word is,
there’s a new 200 room hotel going up about ten miles north of here.
They say it
was paid for in stacks of bills.” He and Darrell exchanged looks. “Drug
money laundering.”
Mike said,
“I don’t think things are gonna change around here as fast as they’re saying
it will. It’s not going to happen like it did in Playa del Carmen, I’ll
guarantee you that.
I know an Alaskan
who bought a lot there eleven years ago for twelve grand. I heard he just
sold it for $385,000.”
“What are
lots selling for in this area?” I asked.
“Somewhere
around thirty to forty grand for a 180 meter lot.”
Christmas morning
I woke up to little boy truck sounds coming through the open windows of
my cabana.
It was 11-year
old Daniel, Marie and Dave’s adopted son, pushing his new yellow Tonka
Toy Trucks through the sand. In spite of Daniel’s worries, Santa had found
him down here on the Yucatan.
That Christmas
evening the Costa de Cocos restaurant filled early as many of Xcalak’s
expats gathered to share roast turkey, mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce.
Daana Urich and Jack Jacquemin from Carbondale, Colorado, were seated at
my table. The two had been building their house piece by patient piece
over the two years since their arrival.
“So, what
does an Xcalakan ask for for Christmas?” I asked them.
“A toilet”,
Daana said. “I finally got my Kohler toilet! It’s serving as a Christmas
tree stand now,” she added.
“Tell me about
the expatriates in Xcalak,” I prodded.
“They’re whole-ly
independent and half crazy,” Jack declared.
As had become
our habit, after the dinner plates were cleared , we moseyed up to the
mahogany horseshoe-shaped bar and squeezed in among the other escapees
from the north to schmooze and sing like grounded sailors, wishing we’d
never ever have to go home.
Tim, originally
from Florida, fell in with our unruly crew as well. The owner of a
communications service in town, he came through the door every night right
after dinner with a bottle of Meyer’s rum under one arm and a Martin guitar
under the other.
In an easy
drawl, he regaled us with tales about life among the renegades, the mosquitos
and the Mexican military. Nine years ago he was flying sport fishermen
regularly into Xcalak in his Beechcraft King. One day the plane went down.
“I didn’t see any sense in going back,” he said. “I’m treated with respect
here. And I was fed up with the FAA and IRS.”
And then there
was John (a.k.a. Bone Daddy), the fishing guide and bartender for
Costa de Cocos. At 40 years old, the retired science teacher from Florida
had come to Xcalak, he said, to live out of the right side of his brain
for a change. Eddie and I gave him a run for his money when we decided
to give bonefishing a try.
We floated
silently through the shallow pea green water of the flats, watching and
waiting. Suddenly John would whisper, “Bonefish!” and point to a
spot where he’d glimpsed a silver flash.
At that point,
as he had demonstrated, we were supposed to fling the fishing pole over
our right shoulder, then without a break in motion, swing it forward, so
that the fishing line snaked gracefully through the air, and landed gently
on the surface of the water at the precise point where he had pointed.
And then, if we’d successfully gotten that far, we were supposed to lightly
jerk on the line to simulate a bug twitching on top of the water. It didn’t
take me long to figure out why they called it “sport” fishing.
When we motored around the point of the peninsula later that evening to
speed back to Xcalak, we hadn’t caught a bone fish, but we’d definitely
caught bonefish fever.
