…The taste of her rubber-bat nose.
Way back in February, My Liege and I went to Mexico for two weeks. I intended to blog about our holiday, I really did, but I didn’t click “Save Draft” within WordPress, you see—and my beautiful prose disappeared when I stupidly clicked a key I shouldn’t have.
I was so bummed out I couldn’t continue.
But now weeks—nay, months—have passed. Surely, I can try again.
This, my friends, is the tale of two cheapskates.
You see, when we went to Mexico, I had three “must-do’s” on my plate: (1) I must rent dune buggies and put my back out of alignment bouncing all over the desert; (2) I must prove I have vanquished my fear of heights (or fear of falling, as Youngest Son would put it) by going ziplining; (3) I must swim with dolphins!
Number one went South faster than a Canuck in November. We tried, oh, we TRIED, to rent dune buggies, but the dune buggy place in the area of Cabo we were visiting had gone belly-up, we discovered. We learned this while trying to rent dune buggies long-distance for a weekend jaunt to Cabo San Lucas. But the fellow at the kiosk in the monster-sized grocery store was much more interested in getting us to a Time Share presentation that would save us big bucks riding the dune buggies than he was in actually booking the excursion that we decided the whole thing was too much of a PITA. If we really want to ride dune buggies, we can go to Oregon. Right?
Number 2 was the ziplining. I did not care how much it cost, I was going! My father (with whom we were staying) said, “Very well, I shall taxi you to the ziplining place.” (It sounded more like, “Pass me a Corona,” but I was translating.) Well. Not only was the ziplining absurdly expensive, but it consisted of acrobating over a dry, dusty canyon with monster rocks on which to crack my skull. Terror overcame me. If I’m going to die ziplining, I’d rather it be over a green jungle canopy, thank you very much (I vow to go ziplining in Ecuador next year—you heard it here first). (I’m trusting that when the time comes, you won’t remember).
Sigh. Two adventures that didn’t materialize.
But I would, I vowed, I WOULD swim with dolphins while we were in Cabo San Lucas.
Then I visited the website. What? It was ultra expensive. So I knocked it off my list, too.
I know, I know, it’s ridiculous. We had a free place to stay—what was our problem?
Off we went to Cabo San Lucas. We stayed in a nice hotel in the marina area, had fun whale-watching and visiting Lover’s Arch and Divorce Beach (where a rogue wave tried to kill me, but I am nimble of foot and quickly scampered out of harm’s way). I even did a nice Rambo-roll getting back in the boat for our trip back to the marina. Our glass-bottomed boat captain dropped us off on a Saturday afternoon and we began trotting back to our hotel. When, what should we pass but the Swimming with Dolphins place! “Let’s just pop in and see what it’s about,” I told My Liege.
Turned out we were there in time to watch the last show of the day. So we did. And it looked marvelous! It looked wonderful! Fun and exciting! I bopped M.L. over the head and said, “You’re going deep sea fishing with my dad, so I want to swim with dolphins. I don’t care how much it costs. I’m worth it!” To which he replied, “I’m going, too!”
Hmph.
But we had vanquished our Inner Cheapskates! We booked spots for 10 a.m. the next morning.
And it was wonderful! It was exciting! We were separated into groups of eight, and each group had two dolphins with which to cavort. And cavort we did. They’re beautiful creatures, and it was amazing to be so close to them. To pet and stroke them. To panic as two converged on me at once (they’d swim wherever the trainers tossed the fish). And the swimming portion was great fun. Our dolphins swam on their backs. To swim along, you had to hang onto their “upper arm fins” while resting on their bellies. Cameras clicked the entire time. But they weren’t our cameras, oh, no. You see, cameras weren’t allowed within the pool area. I’d already figured out why. Because the lovely trainers were snapping dozens of photos and surely we would be allowed one each. After paying nearly $170 U.S. each for the pleasure of swimming with the cool dolphins?
Silly me.
After the show was over, we were herded into the Photo area. Smiling, I asked the attendant, “How much are the pictures?” My Liege had our surely-it’s-included-in-the-price piccie all picked out. But they cost—gasp—$25 apiece!! Apiece! Or $100 for 8.
I had stopped listening at this point. “I have my memories,” I sniffed. “And a dislocated elbow from Rambo-rolling into the glass-bottomed boat. I don’t need no effin pictures to remember how wonderful it felt to swim with dolphins.”
And that was that. I swam with dolphins, but I had no proof. At which point it occurred to me that while I had no proof of swimming with dolphins, neither did I have proof of NOT swimming with them. Which meant that maybe I DID go ziplining and dune buggy riding and simply have no proof of that, either. Just because I don’t have pictures doesn’t mean I didn’t do it, right?
Well. You all know me. I can not tell a lie very often. We did not rent dune buggies and we did not go ziplining. We DID swim with dolphins but were too cheap to buy proof.
We flew home knowing we had paid over $300 U.S. to swim with the dolphins and could not fork over another $25 for the photo.
But fate loves us. Fate was on our side. Because a couple of weeks later, whilst (nice word, that) I was Skyping with my parents, they said, “Steve’s in the Gringo Gazette!” (an English newspaper).
All those pictures the dolphin place snapped? They plastered one of my dh all over a half-page ad. Hah! NOW we have proof of our experience! A little grainy, but what can you expect from a pair of cheapskates?
