Lost and Found in the Pacific (Near a Mexican Resort)
or How We Met Arturo the Lifeguard - Issue # 40
A view of the crystal-clear water of the Pacific and the quiet beach in a bay between Zihuatanejo and Ixtapa greeted us as we stepped onto the balcony of our room for the week.
Dear Reader,
I will return to the story of my honeymoon in Yucatan soon, but in the meantime I wanted to share my latest experience traveling to Mexico, this time spending a week on its Pacific coast during our 31st wedding anniversary trip.
We are not the resort-type travelers. In fact, I tend to speak out against resorts, especially the all-inclusive type. However, this time we stayed in one. And I felt like a hypocrite, especially because I enjoyed it.
We were eager to tell Jaime, our taxi driver, and any local we came in contact with, that it was our first time staying in a resort, after traveling extensively for over thirty years. We don’t usually do this. We are a different type of travelers.
To be fair, we only used the resort as a hotel. It is possible to book a room - and nothing else - even in an all-inclusive resort in Mexico. Keep it in mind if you ever want to stay on a beach that you can only access through one of these resorts. That was the reason we did it. The beach.
And more often than not, we took a taxi to Zihuatanejo, to spend time with locals.
However, this wasn’t one of those days.
It was our actual anniversary day, and we took it slow. We had our morning coffee and breakfast (pastries we bought in town the previous day) on our balcony overlooking the ocean, and enjoyed the soft breeze while watching gentle waves lapping the shore below.
Eventually, we went down to the beach. It was a perfect morning, with bright sunshine and a calm ocean. With the beach still deserted, we had no trouble finding a palapa to lie under before getting into the ocean.
I don’t swim, and I’m generally not a huge fan of waves or deep water. I love the ocean - from a safe distance -, and a quiet beach though. So there I was, enjoying a pleasant morning, until it got hot enough to warrant a dip in the crystal-clear, cold water of the Pacific.
When Jeff stood up, I noticed him taking his sunglasses off. He always does, even though he can barely see without them. But after losing a pair, stolen by ocean waves on another beach in Mexico, thirty years ago, he learned to leave them on the shore.
I should’ve learned from his mistake.
But of course, we all need to make our own mistakes to learn from.
“Maybe I should take my sunglasses off, too,” I said, seeing him put his down. “Nah, never mind. I don’t go in deep and I don’t swim, I’ll be fine. I usually keep them on, anyway.”
The ocean must’ve heard me, and thought, “Really? Are you so arrogant, you don’t think I can take your sunglasses? Well, I’ll show you what I can do.”
That’s the explanation I came up with for what happened next.
Relaxed, I walked into the calm ocean with gentle waves lapping at my feet. I kept walking in deeper, almost past the area the waves break. Almost.
Before getting there, without warning, a wave knocked me over.
I tumbled into the water as the wave rolled me over, keeping me down as I was struggling to get up onto my feet. As soon as my head was almost out of the water, a new wave knocked me over again, and then another one, as I kept tumbling until it all stopped, and the ocean was calm again.
Well, at least I got my hair wet, and tasted a bit of the salt water of the ocean.
I just hoped no one saw me.
When I finally stood on my feet, face out of the water, everything was much brighter than I expected. I instinctively reached to fix my glasses when I realized they weren’t on my face. The waves claimed it.
Jeff was by my side. “Are you ok?” he asked. “Yes, I’m fine, but my sunglasses are gone.”
As I walked out of the water, he went back in, looking for them. “What makes him think he could find them”, I wondered, remembering the time he lost his own in the ocean, never to find them again.
Before I was even out of the water, the lifeguard came over.
“Are you ok?” he asked, with a concerned look on his face.
“Yes. Si, todo bien” I assured him. Oh, great! Even the lifeguard saw me tumbling. I was too embarrassed thinking about how I must’ve looked from his tower to warrant him coming over to check on me.
However, he didn’t linger, but waded into the water and started snorkeling, as if looking for something.
I didn’t tell him I lost my glasses. Did he actually notice that, too? I thought.
By then, another guest from the hotel joined Jeff, looking for my sunglasses. The lifeguard went over to them, and all three of them kept searching the ocean. The lifeguard, whose name Jeff learned was Arturo, snorkeling. Later, Jeff told me he actually saw the glasses, but when he reached down, a wave snatched them just out of his grip.
In the meantime, all I could do was watch. I did not dare wade back into the water yet. Great, I thought, watching them. Looking for my glasses, when they all know too well that once the ocean claims something, it won’t give it back.
And here is the thing about those glasses. They were about fifteen years old, an old prescription I only wore for about a year or two when they were new. I recently found them and realized that the old prescription is now better than my latest one - I am nearsighted, so as I am getting older, my eyesight is improving (while people with good vision might become farsighted as they age).
So, while I was happy to have found them and took them on my trip, I wasn’t upset about losing them.
I felt terrible about adding to the plastic pollution of the ocean, though.
So, I promised myself to donate to 4Ocean, an organization working to clean the ocean, and waited for everyone to give up the search. Which they finally did.
We, and everyone else, went on with our day.
Two days later, we were in the ocean, enjoying the gentle waves, when I noticed Arturo on the shore. When we came out of the water, he walked over to us.
“I found your sunglasses,” he said.
“No way! How?”
I didn’t believe it. He might’ve found some sunglasses, I thought, but probably not mine. What are the odds? We walked with him to the lifeguard tower, while he told us about finding all sorts of things people lose in the water.
The glasses he showed us were indeed mine!
But surely they would be so scratched they would be unusable, I thought, as I tried them on. I could see no scratch on them (besides the ones already there from years passed)!
“How is this possible?” we kept asking him, again and again.
“Oh, I rescue many things people use,” he said. “I go out snorkeling after work far into the ocean, to where the bay starts. I find many things there.”
“Your glasses were on the bottom, standing up stuck in the sand by its handles, the lenses up,” he continued, showing us the position he found the glasses in. “So they didn’t get scratched,” he added.
We couldn’t thank him enough, and invited him for a drink for later when he was off duty. “No, I can’t, but if you want to give me a tip, I won’t say no.”
“Sure, happy to! When we see you next time.”
Next time we saw him, we gave him a generous tip, and chatted with him again, asking him what else he found and rescued.
Even if he “rescues things” in the hope of a tip (though he can never be sure he gets one), to me he’s a hero. Not necessarily because he gives things back to people who lose them - if or when he can find the owner -, but by doing so, he cleans the ocean.
On our last night, we had dinner in the restaurant overlooking the ocean. The sun has set, and in the dark, we noticed a light underwater.
“I bet it’s Arturo, rescuing things,” Jeff said.
He pointed the light out to the server.
“Oh, that’s normal,” was the answer. “they are sea creatures that glow in the dark, what do you call them? see-through, you know?”
“Jellyfish?”
“Yes, jellyfish.”
So, we learned bioluminescent jellyfish are common on the coast of Ixtapa-Zihuatanejo.
Still, this was no jellyfish.
As we watched, the light turned and we could tell it was a powerful flashlight skimming the water.
Hope you enjoyed reading about the adventures of my sunglasses. Next, I’ll tell you about Zihuatanejo and its surroundings.
Until then,
Happy travels and all the best,
Emese
Yay, for Arturo!
"We are not the resort-type travelers. In fact, I tend to speak out against resorts, especially the all-inclusive type. However, this time we stayed in one. And I felt like a hypocrite, especially because I enjoyed it." --> this made me chuckle, I oh-so relate to this guilty feeling! But I also try to talk myself out of it by telling myself that a little treat every once in a while never killed anybody :) Great article!!!