Fantasy I-Land

Vacation, all I ever wanted

Hello Readers. This week, I decided to give new life to a ten year old piece. Some of it is edited, some of it is new…I’ll let you guess which parts. I hope you enjoy this visit from the past - I enjoyed Frankensteining it!

1.

I learned about Troncones in the travel section of the New York Times, on a cold Sunday morning in the spring of 2013. My Sundays are defined by the tension between wanting to do what I want, and needing to do what needs to be done. More often than not, a Sunday morning is a race against time with the paper and my own attention span.  If I find an article I want to nestle into, I will waste precious time situating myself with a coffee refill, or looking for the reading glasses I don’t really need¹, or relocating myself on a different piece of furniture, and then promptly succumb to the anxiety that I won’t have enough time to read the rest of the paper.  Most Sundays, the blue sheath waits patiently until the end of the day, when I allot 20 minutes to scan the headlines, look at the recipe in the magazine, check for new books from authors I like, and read the first paragraph of any op-ed piece that piques my interest, but rarely go beyond that. ² 

This was one of the few times when I let myself read the travel section. In my chronic quest to punish myself at every opportunity, I almost never open it.  Not because I’m not interested in the surge of eco-tourism of Cambodia or what to do with 24 hours in Nashville, but because (cue minor chord) I don’t have the time, I can’t afford it, I am single, I’m not the kind of person who gets to do these things.  My internal score-keeper usually doesn’t grade me above passing to earn a peek at the endless possibilities the travel section offers.  But one particular Sunday last spring, my day started strong.  I had allotted myself time to not only to read for as long as I wished, but I made the bold decision to read the Travel Section when I saw the headline “Sun and Surf in a Small Mexican Beach Town”. Based on the promise I made to myself last Christmas, it was too prescient to ignore.  

To explain last Christmas requires me to explain the Christmas before that, which happened to be the inception of an ill-fated romance that ripped through me like a flesh-eating bacteria. Girl meets boy, girl and boy fall in love, boy “needs to think,” boy has eloped with a new girl six months later.  As the next Christmas neared, the wounds felt fresh again, and I was amazed to learn how the quality of light, the smell of the air, and the flow of traffic at the end of December viscerally resurrected those memories. I needed a change of scenery. That year, 2012, a visit with my mom in Florida was the best I could muster.  It worked, to the extent that I was far from the scene of the crime, but mine is not a warm and cozy “Christmas” family, so I was trading in heartbreak for Ashkenazi Jewish ennui, arguments with my step father about whether drinking 8 glasses of water a day was even good for you, and long, not unpleasant mornings with the Sarasota Herald Tribune.   

But after performing my daughterly duties, it dawned on me that I could spend the next Christmas doing whatever the fuck I wanted. Not only am I an adult capable of my own choices, I have a responsibility to honor them! Flying back from Florida, I was determined do something “for me” next Christmas, and my dream immediately turned to something between Club Paradise  meets 92 In The Shade, and we might as well throw some Fantasy Island in for good measure.  I needed to go somewhere hot, that felt small but had good local bars with tacos and tequila, and where maybe I would meet other people running away from their Christmases for their own perfect reasons. If they happened to look like or possibly be Viggo Mortenson, I wouldn’t complain.

Then, a few weeks after I read about Troncones, I came across this article about traveling alone in the T-Magazine (I must have been having a REALLY good Sunday) and remembered how adept I had been traveling across Europe alone in college. Emboldened by these two recent endorsements, nay, life-affirmations from The Times, I selected the resort, the vacation package (yoga/surf combo), and hit Purchase.  I put my down payment on a story about a single woman in her early 40’s (who looks like she’s in her 30’s) who goes on her dream vacation and only to find _________.  Fingers crossed it would be a rom-com, and not an episode of Unsolved Mysteries.  

2.

The morning before the winter solstice, I boarded a plane to Los Angeles, then another to Mexico City, and another to Ixtapa. It had been so long that I traveled internationally alone that I convinced myself that something would go wrong, but nothing did.  I found gates and taxi cabs like a real grown up, and arrived at Present Moment Retreat & Resort about ten hours after I left Portland.  

Why Present Moment Retreat & Resort? Not for the name, I can assure you. But they had some inclusive surf-and-yoga packages, and that’s what I wanted and felt that I needed: structure in paradise.  My package included 2 surf lessons, a massage, and sundry activities that took place in the big hut including yoga, qi gong, and meditation.

Upon checking in, a petite woman with a bronx accent named La greeted me, explained that she taught yoga, gave massages, and did counseling here at the retreat. She treated me to a smoothie at the juice bar, and probed me on what I was hoping to get out of this week. Tired and dehydrated from travel and stunned by the temperature change, I probably answered something like “Just get back to myself” with a tremble in my voice, which is why she suggested I come to the big hut for “Happy Hour,” a “really fun and freeing hour of dance and movement", which was starting in 45 minutes. Too scared to offend La with my introversion and cynicism, I went back to my bungalow and changed into some less restrictive clothes.

With an overwhelming sense of “what now?” and less certainty of who I was “getting back to” by the minute, I reluctantly made my way to the big hut for Happy Hour. Two couples waited inside, talking to themselves. I instantly knew I needed to flee, but I also felt so dissociated from my body and identity that I had no will to go anywhere. I stood. A shirtless man in his mid 40’s with a taught body sauntered into the hut, introduced himself as Chris, and gave instructions: “There are no instructions” he explained, “This is about feeling whatever you’re feeling, and expressing it through your body. Take your time. Everyone is on their own journey” We took places across the floor. One woman laid out like a snow angel. I took child’s pose. Chris put on music that was half-tribal, half-techno; is there a name for this music?

Thumping. Drumming. Synth? Oh god, what did I get myself into?

“Come on Robin, don’t be such an asshole.”

How do you shop for this kind of music? How does one select?

I looked up and saw that the snow angel had started to awaken and writhe. Others were swaying, starting to take up more space. Realizing that I couldn’t stay in child’s pose, but unable to make myself stand up yet, I kind of…bobbed by hips up and down, to demonstrate that I was catching a beat. When the chanting started, I rhythmically crawled to the entrance of the hut and power-walked back to my bungalow. I fell into bed.

It was the most myself I felt all day.

3.

Like the sound of a tree falling in the woods if no one is around to hear it, so too does my solo vacation remain a mystery, even to myself.  My shoulders are bronzed, my arms are scarred with bug bites, there are photos on my computer of sand, water, and beach dogs, so it appears that I have already gone to Mexico.  

When I decided to take myself on vacation, I chose a tiny town in Mexico that happens to be a big surfing destination. Why? Because I wanted surfing to find me. I couldn’t help but to be lured into the idea of putting on a rash guard and holding communion with the elements of water and air, achieving balance through strength, and living the law of universal gravitation.  Perhaps I would not only become “someone who surfs,” but someone who catches the fever so furiously that I have no choice but to become the best woman-over-40 surfer in the world, someone who spends every weekend on the Oregon Coast in a 6/5 mm wetsuit and every holiday in search of a more exotic swell.  I was ready to hit the ignition on my destiny.  

On my second morning in Troncones, I had a coffee and a banana-mango-yogurt smoothie, and waited in the designated area to meet my surf instructor.   I was introduced to a Mexican man in his mid 20’s who spoke only a little english.  He introduced me to Tonio, a boy of about fourteen, who spoke no english.  He was my surf instructor.  

Tonio and I walked about a quarter mile up the beach, establishing exactly how many Spanish and English words we collectively knew (around 6). I was given the universal hand gesture for “wait here”, and a few minutes later, Tonio and his downy mustache reappeared with my board. He laid it on the sand, pantomimed strapping his ankle to the leash, paddling, and popping up, once. As in, one time. And then he gave me the universal hand gesture for “you’re ready to go.” I humored myself by practicing this on the sand once or twice first, because at that point dread and panic were taking the place of excitement and awe, and I was pretty sure this would be the only time I would be actually standing up on a surfboard.  

We went in the water, paddled a ways, and fumbled around a language barrier for cues to convey instruction and comprehension.  Before I knew it, I was turned around, facing the beach, and attempting to transition, in yoga speak, from chaturanga to warrior 2, in one fluid movement.

A funny thing happened early on in my surf “lesson”.  While I was paddling into the ocean and towards oncoming waves, it occurred to me for the first time that I should not be doing this.  I am a descendant of German-Russian Jews. My people were merchants and city-dwellers, not people of the sea.  Genetically speaking, I am not in my element in the tropics, as evidenced by the feast the local mosquitos made out of my arms and legs, and I’m pretty sure there are no competitive lady surfers out there in triple-D cups.  This body is more suited for 20 minutes on the elliptical and private pilates lessons.³ 

It wasn’t long before I started remembering years of recurring nightmares, of being gripped by undertows or consumed by huge and slow moving tidal waves, nightmares I didn’t think about when I signed up to learn surfing.  I grew up swimming in lakes and oceans, but it seems that a touch of cymophobia found its way into my psyche over the years.  Being out in the ocean isn’t nearly as terrifying as lying down on a bed of snakes, but it’s a little bit like discovering you’re afraid of heights when you are riding a gondola.

Still, it wasn’t  like I never successfully got up on the surfboard; I did, more than once even.  And it’s not like I didn’t enjoy the fluidity of being carried by a wave for those micro-moments I was in stance.  But the other 99% of my time with my board was spent bracing myself for death or enduring a pummeling the likes of which I haven’t experienced since fights with my brother in junior high school. I thrashed my neck, I crushed my toes, I shredded my already bad shoulder, and maybe 20 minutes had passed. I didn’t have the courage or to say “No mas” (nor could I remember how to),  but before too long I didn’t have the strength to keep up my charade.  Tonio was legitimately surprised that I cut our session early, but he kindly gave me a kiss on the cheek and left me with a “Me gusta”.    

Before leaving for vacation, I entertained inserting my pending adventure as a narrative  in various film tropes.  “A [beautiful] [adorable] [accident prone] 40 year old woman takes herself on vacation to tropical paradise and __________ ensues”  Ok, they were all romcoms.  From the moment I left Portland, though, I felt like I was walking through a Michelangelo Antoninoni film.  Very little dialogue or action, ennui and alienation painted in wide frames with few cuts.  In my favorite of his films, The Passenger, a man bored and trapped in his own life seizes an opportunity to assume a stranger’s identity.  But every step he takes to burrow deeper into his new life draws him ever closer to the inevitable trappings of the reality he was running from.  No matter the lengths you are willing to go to, you do not escape being you. 

Woozy from the tidal pull and the death of my dream, I made my way back to the playa, a mosquito bite-pocked Russia-German figure lumbering across the sand. I let my fantasy of chiseled thighs and triceps roll away with the surf and began to take refuge in the knowledge of who I am versus who I am not.   An older couple strolled past and asked if I had just been surfing.  “If you want to call it that?”  I said, working a new bit.  “Pretty sure I just had my first and last surf lesson…You know, I always wondered f those recurring dreams I have about being caught in an undertow meant anything, and it turns out, they mean I am not a surfer.  NOTE TO SELF!” (pantomime of lightbulb above my head) The couple laughed, and I laughed too.  I was not Marion Cotillard in a remake of “The Passenger”, I was Rodney Dangerfield starring in “Eat Pray Love.”    

1. Apparently I had “fake” reading glasses as recently as 2013.  This is a revelation to me, as I can’t even make coffee without glasses anymore

2.  In 2024, this procedure still exists, but for only 1 out of every three Sundays. On the other two Sundays, the paper lies in its bag for one or more days until it’s thrown in the recycling and the blue sheath becomes a poop bag. 

3. A decade later, I’m proud  to say that thanks to powerlifting and olympic weightlfitng, this body can squat ~230 pounds.