Still Life with Tornado(30)
On the walk to the lobby, I assaulted Bruce with Tulum facts. Tulum was the last Mayan city where people lived. It was a major port for the area. Diseases brought by the Spanish probably killed everybody there. It was built between 1400 and 1200 BC. At its peak, 1,600 people lived there. One of the things traded there was obsidian. I didn’t know what obsidian was, so I asked Bruce, but he was just walking fast and trying to find the Amstar representative so we wouldn’t miss the van. So I kept saying the word over and over. Obsidian. Obsidian. Obsidian. It was a cool word.
We got in the van with six other people.
I was the only little kid, so I knew not to be annoying. Bruce and I sat in the back and there was barely any air-conditioning and it was hot and my seat belt was slashing across my neck because the seat was so low.
The driver started talking to us and telling us all about Tulum. I looked out the window as we drove from the safety of our resort and onto the main road south. It wasn’t nearly as pretty outside of the resort. There were a lot of small towns where people hung their laundry on lines strung between buildings. We drove a stretch of road where it was nearly all jungle to the right and I wondered how many howler monkeys were growling there. The driver hit a bump in the road too fast and swore in Spanish and apologized. He said, “No matter how many times I drive this road, I forget this new bump!” The adults laughed. I readjusted my seat belt so it didn’t cut into me the next time he did that.
Bruce looked down at me a few times during the drive and asked if I was okay by giving me a thumbs-up and raising his eyebrows. I returned the thumbs-up with a smile to let him know I was fine. Really I wanted to ask him about Mom and Dad getting divorced. But we were in the van—with other people. Probably not the right time.
The driver told us too many facts about Tulum. How fortified it was. How many buildings there were. Something about the Descending God or a diving god or something about a pyramid and then some words I didn’t understand. I lost track of every sentence he said halfway through.
We hit another bump too fast. All of us bounced and a few of the adults said something to the driver. He apologized. He said something was wrong with the van. There was a scraping sound under me and Bruce. It had already been an hour since we left the resort, so I thought we were close, but we weren’t. The driver said, when he pulled the van over to the side of the road, that we were still twenty minutes away.
He left all of us in the van and went outside to talk on his cell phone. He looked at all four tires and then he leaned over and looked under the van and talked faster into his cell phone.
He got louder. He said, “Okay, okay!” and then he hung up.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we will have to be patient. Our vehicle has had some problem. Help is on the way!”
Adults up front complained. We need to be back by two thirty! I paid money for this trip! Can’t you fix it yourself? Bruce and I stayed quiet but it was getting so hot in the van that I asked if I could get out, and when I did, all the others wanted to get out of the van, too.
One guy, who we learned was from Michigan, made a joke about how our trip to see ruins was ruined. Nobody laughed.
There was no shade on the side of the road. It felt like 110 degrees and Bruce helped me put sunblock on my shoulders and my back. I had a hat on but I put some on my face just in case. Every Tulum tourist van that drove by after that beeped at us, but they didn’t stop to help us.
The driver opened the back doors of the van and handed us each a bottle of water. It was hot. Mom always told Bruce and me not to drink hot water out of plastic bottles, but we figured if there was a time to do it, that was it. I don’t know how much time passed before a van finally stopped.
The driver pulled in behind us and I noticed there were already people in his van. Too many for us to fit in with them. I asked Bruce what time it was and he checked his phone and said it was almost eleven thirty.
“Eleven thirty?”
This one guy kept badgering the driver about getting his money back. The driver was too busy talking to the other van driver to answer. They seemed to be figuring out a plan. I tried to follow in Spanish, but I knew un pocito espa?ol.
I knew what autobús meant. I knew it meant a bus. I told Bruce a bus was coming to pick us up.
That’s also not what happened.
The van driver told us to get our things out of the van and crossed the road with us all in tow—he held one of my hands and Bruce held the other. He said we would catch a bus. We had to walk about ten minutes in the midday sun to get to the bus stop. Every adult with us, Bruce included, was soaked from sweat. It was past noon. The bus was due any minute. The driver said we would all get a refund, he was very sorry, and we could try to see Tulum again tomorrow.
The Michigan man made his ruined ruin adventure joke again and this time people laughed.
It was a public bus and the van driver took care of our fares. It was crowded and didn’t have air-conditioning but the windows were open.
The people on the autobús stared at us. Some smiled, but not that many. Most of them glared because the Michigan guy was talking so loud and the complaining guy complained about the autobús and wasting a morning of his vacation and I realized that we were the annoying American tourists that give annoying American tourists their reputation. Stupid jokes, expecting luxury, loud—all while riding on a public bus with people who were probably going to work to wash American tourists’ sheets and towels or something. The glares made me uncomfortable, but I got to see a part of Mexico that Mom and Dad would never see from their perfectly lined-up chairs over the rims of their never-ending drinks. I got to see a man spit out the window of an autobús. I got to see a woman hand-sewing the hem of a baby’s white dress. I got to see the driver let a man onto the bus who didn’t have enough pesos to cover the fare.