Feliz Ano Nuevo

I woke yesterday morning to all the detritus of New Year’s Eve and then some. Every year, on the first of January, I sneer at the concept of a New Year’s resolution, knowing full well that the first morning of the year inevitably begins with a pounding headache and a startling inability to function. This year January 1st fell on a Saturday, which will allow many of us to cling to the fiction that our fresh new existences can remain on hold until Monday.

At least I didn’t wake up to miserable weather. The Acapulco sky turns blue every morning, like clockwork, and the ocean breeze allows you to acclimate gently to the blazing heat of the day. But even there, where life can seem like paradise (as long as you don’t venture out onto the streets teeming with cars on the verge of break down and scantily clad people who shouldn’t be scantily clad) New Year’s Day starts with a buzz kill.

Still sprawled sideways across my bed, I looked out onto our pretty pink patio only to see piles of dirty dishes on the table, and a trail of chewed up leftovers that had been dragged by nocturnal critters across the tile. Some of the uneaten food wasn’t even appealing to the critters, and still lay shriveled and hardened on the crusty plates. Music still blared from a club across Acapulco Bay (I envisioned throngs of revelers passed out in their party masks on the makeshift dance floor) and the loud pop of an occasional stray firework pierced the morning quiet. To top it off, I stumbled over to the little box in the wall of our casita where I am generally greeted by a basket of fruit and rolls and a lukewarm pot of coffee and found it empty, except for the final hotel bill listing our incidentals for the week.

Cynical as I am, though, I tried hard to start the year off on a positive note, and trudged off to the gym to try to minimize the effects of the seventeen tons of guacamole and chips I’d eaten in the last five days. Back home in the tundra, the gym is where even the laziest slackers head on New Year’s Day, deluding themselves into thinking something will change. I gotta hand it to the folks at the hotel in Acapulco, not feeding into that kind of bullshit. The gym had not even been straightened from the day before. There were no towels, there was no water, and there was certainly no equivalent of the valet service offered in January at my home gym so the brand new exercise nuts won’t have to walk from their cars.

Why kid myself? I turned around and went back to the room to await delivery of my breakfast, and set my mind to thinking about where I would get my final guacamole fix before heading home.