The Math Class

We six remaining advanced calculus survivors stared out the open second floor windows at the sun-dappled leaves on the oak trees just outside. The 110 year-old building was not air-conditioned, but the tall windows with their low sills allowed a fresh-smelling morning breeze to pulse its way into the classroom. The spring weather was perfect. We were concentrating on an afternoon of cutting our college classes while lying in the grass under those oak trees, letting the warmth soak into us after the long Illinois winter.

Our instructor stood at the front of the room, chalk in hand, going over our homework from the previous class. He wore his usual shapeless black suit and wrinkled white shirt without a tie. It made him look even taller and thinner than he already was. His worn, scuff-streaked shoes echoed his disheveled, gray-streaked hair.

He had taught math virtually forever at our liberal arts college. Everyone described him the same way: “Quirky, but brilliant.” He had PhDs in both mathematics and philosophy from University of Edinburgh in the UK. He was such a brilliant mathematician that we weren’t smart enough to really fathom how brilliant he was.

You could find him nearly every afternoon and well into the evening sitting at the bar in one of the college hangouts in town.He always smiled at us when he saw us come in. His wife had died some years before. People who knew him well said that without her, he’d become even more eccentric.

He stuffed his college office with mathematics books, journals, and papers – on shelves, side tables, chairs and nearly every other free surface. Over-full ashtrays were scattered about on top of the heaps. The blackboard on one wall was always crammed with densely packed rows of equations, none of which could we understand. His big wooden desk was stacked literally three feet high with papers -- stacked so high the pile seemed to defy physical laws of friction and gravity.

Amazingly, though, when we went in to ask about a test score, he’d mumble, with a cigarette dangling out of the corner of his mouth,  “Oh, um, ah, yes, your test, um, ah, Mr…. , ah. Yes, your test. From last week … your, ah, test.” And his arm would disappear nearly to the elbow into the stack on his desk and seemingly blindly he’d pull out a paper or test booklet. Magically it would nearly always be the paper he was looking for. Squinting at the paper through the smoke, he’d say things like, “Um, ah, it, ah, appears you passed, sir. Only a C+, I’m afraid, but perhaps I, um, made the test a bit, ah, stout shall we say? Anyway, ah, here … … um.” We’d take the test, say thanks, and turn to go. He’d already have gone back to whatever math problem he was working on.

Today, though, we were sitting at our desks in the classroom, working through the solutions to the homework. He wrote a particularly difficult problem on the blackboard, and turned to us, eyebrows raised in question. The brightest of us piped up, “Dr. H we couldn’t get this at all. We worked on it together last night. No matter where we started, we always came up with an obviously incorrect result. We finally decided the problem must be wrongly stated in the book.” The rest of us nodded in agreement.

He turned and looked with renewed interest at the problem on the board for a moment then he turned toward us again. His pale blue eyes darted around the room, looking over our heads. He said, “Yes, well. The problem is, ah, correct, you see, and it’s quite an, um, interesting one. Can anyone suggest where we might start?”

We threw out ideas that we had tried and that had failed us the previous night. He nodded and gave a crooked-toothed, but sympathetic smile to each suggestion.

 “Yes, er, ah, um, that’s a logical starting place, but it is quite difficult, um, complicated from there.”  

“Um, yes, I can see where you might start with that, but I’m not sure that will work.”

“Ah, no, you should see quite quickly that starting point will, um, immediately lead to a solution that converges to, ah, infinity.”

When we ran out of ideas, he said, “Well, yes, you followed many of the trails that most, um, undergraduate mathematicians might try, but perhaps, ah, let me show you how one of the more simple, uh, more simple solutions might be derived.”

He faced the board, circled part of the problem with the chalk and said, “Now if we convert this to a Fourier series …”, and he began writing rows of equations on the board. “And then if we differentiate this first in x …” and more rows of symbols appeared. “And then in y … “

He began writing this derivation, but then stopped. He stared at the board, chalk dangling in his right hand at his side, his left hand pointing to various lines of mathematics on the board. “Hmm, ah, no, ah, hmmm … hmm. No that isn’t quite it, is it? Do you see? Hmm.  Ah, that’s not right. Hmm. Ah! Sorry.”

He grabbed a large eraser and wiped several of the most recent lines from the board. “Ah, from here, no, ah, first, um, we need to use this … “and he circled a bit from higher up the sequence “… and, um, substituting …” and began furiously writing more on the board. I gave up trying to copy into my notes what he was writing.

He filled the entire first blackboard with equations and moved to the second board on his right nearer the window. “Now, if THAT is true,” he said, waving vaguely at something on the first board, “then, of course, then it must also be true that …” and he rapidly wrote across the top of the fresh board.  “Um, ah, so then … “, and he wrote yet more, but again stopped with his hand poised over the board.

 “Um … hmmm … ah … sorry … … sorry … … … sorry, uh, hmmm. This, er, can’t be correct either. Ah, oh, dear."

The bell rang in the hallway signaling end of class. None of us moved. The room was consumed by awed and complete silence. We felt ourselves quietly fade from existence.

He rapidly backed up a step then stood stock still except for his lips moving and his left arm conducting a pattern back and forth across what he’d just written. He ran his right hand through his hair adding a streak of chalky white with the gray.

“Ah, oh, of course. First, of course, it’s obvious that first I must …” With that he again erased several of the latest lines of work and slammed the chalk against the board writing a series of new equations. He mumbled as he worked, “So then, of course, this means …" more symbols … “so that THEN …” more and more symbols on the second board now. Chalk dust drifted around him in the sunbeams. As he attacked the board, broken pieces of chalk flew in the air and left trails down his suit as they fell.

“BUT, BUT … then, I see … I see now." More and more symbols. He stopped yet again. He stepped back, stared, and moved back another step. “Blast! What?” His eyes roamed the equations -- left arm pointing one way, right arm with the chalk pointing another. Sweat stood out on his forehead. “Where? Hmmm. Blast. Hmmm. Where?”

He charged the board, grabbing another piece of chalk from the tray with his left hand. “But if that’s true …” smashing the chalk in his left hand against the board, “… then THAT cannot be true …” slashing through that portion of work with the chalk in his right.

His head swiveled back and forth. “BUT! Oh, of course, but …” And chalk marks again flew across the board. He wrote first with his left hand then his right. He shouted, “And then …”

Clack, clack, CLACK went the chalk in staccato sequence.

“ … SO ! AH, SO! And THEN … SO, I have THIS AS THE SOLUTION!”

With his final flourish, he crushed the chalk in both hands against the last line he’d squeezed in at the very bottom of the board. Both pieces of chalk broke in two and flew in the air past his triumphant shoulders. With a delighted grin, he literally hopped back from the board and put is foot into the small waste basket near the wall. Losing his balance, he sat down hard on the low window sill, and, still grinning at the blackboard, began a slow motion fall out the open window.

Our trance of the last several minutes evaporated. I grabbed at his thighs and another guy caught him by his outstretched right hand. He regained his feet and didn’t seem to notice anything amiss. Still smiling he said, “So THAT’S the correct solution, class. Simple, really, except for that one bit. And um, well, simple. Ah, … class dismissed.”

Not knowing what else to do, we grabbed books and papers and rushed for the door.

We bought our lunches and took them outside to eat in the shade. We talked about the meaning of ‘simple’ and whether being brilliant was all it was cracked up to be. We couldn’t help but glance at the open window above us. Another math class was in session.

Mud

The building’s glass front lets lots of sunlight into the clinic’s entrance lobby, but it still smells like a hospital inside. I show my appointment letter at the long check-in counter facing the windows. The attendant behind the desk hands me a slip of paper and waves me down a corridor to my left, brightly lit by windows on both sides. The corridor is full of people. Many have obvious physical or neurological problems – amputees, paraplegics. I try not to stare. The number of wheelchairs amazes me. It seems every third person is in a wheelchair -- ‘normal’ kinds of wheelchairs, chairs powered by handles attached to the wheels, chairs powered by hand-cranked bicycle gearing, “chairs” that are actually beds with their occupants lying flat and powering them with their hands using handles connected by gears to the wheels. I see only one or two electric powered chairs. I walk slowly down the corridor making way for people coming toward me. It is surprisingly quiet for the number of people - just a background murmur of voices.

At the end of the corridor I turn left into a narrower hallway less well lit with fluorescent lighting fixtures in the ceiling. There are no windows here. Doors line each side. Metal benches sit against the walls between the doors. The walls are faded brown, paint peeling in a few places. The floor is smooth concrete – and smoother still from the constant traffic and constant sweeping and scrubbing. People sit or stand in small groups up and down the hallway. A few patients lay on gurneys.

I see a desk halfway down the long corridor and walk perhaps 30 yards towards it. A stern looking woman in a blue nurse’s uniform sits with her back to the wall on a straight-backed wooden chair behind the worn desk. I hand her the slip I’d received at check-in. She looks at it. Looks at me and frowns. She waves for me to give her something else. I stare blankly. She says, “Ka-ni’ga.” I should know that word, but I panic and give her another blank stare. “Dok’koo-ment!” she says, rolling her eyes. Ah! Document and she had said “book” first, I now realize. I hand her the thin passport-like book I’d been given before arriving at the clinic. She sniffs and writes information on a ledger in front of her, glancing at my paperwork as she does. She writes a number on my slip, slaps it between the pages of my book and hands it back to me. “Sem-nad’sit”, she says, waving vaguely back to my left and looking down at the ledger on the desk. I should know that word too, but it doesn’t register. I smile and say, “Thanks.” Walking down the corridor the way she’d indicated I pull the slip from the book and see “17” written on it. Seventeen, “sem-nad’sit”. Of course. That’s what she’d told me.

Walking along I notice the small white painted numbers on the dark wooden doors to my right. 33 ... 31 … 29. At least Ukrainian and American numbers are the same. Good. Soon I’m at 17. The door is closed. Now I’m stumped. Do I go in? Knock? I opt to wait it out. I sit on the bench outside the door. Other people sit on the benches around me. I play “Watch the natives”. Uniformed attendants periodically come out of the numbered doors and wave people into the rooms. I settle back and hope someone comes for me.

I amuse myself watching people, guessing their ailments, where they’re from, telling stories in my head. Pretty soon a large -- a very large, actually -- woman comes out of door 17. She has on the ubiquitous blue uniform. Her hair is covered in a white handkerchief tied pirate style. She looks around, squinting and asks a half-question, “Dzhon?” John, that’s me. I smile and stand up. She beckons and I follow her through door 17 into a small anteroom with a bench and a chair. A second door is on the opposite wall as I walk in. She says something and I hopefully hand her my slip. She looks at it and then stuffs it in her pocket. She says something to me. I stare. She motions at my clothes and says something again and points at a sheet folded on the bench. Now I get it. I start to unbutton my shirt. She nods and leaves through the second door.

I strip down and wrap the sheet around me. I hang my clothes on a hook on the wall and slide my shoes under the bench. I’ve left most of my valuables in the hotel. Now what? This time I decide to take action. After all, there are no natives to mimic in this little room. I knock on the second door, open it and start to go in.

The attendant is facing away from me as I start to enter. She whirls around frowning and holds up her hand in the universal sign for stop. She says something that I interpret as “Idiot. Wait until I call you.” I say “Eez-veh-ni’teh. Sorry.” And quickly back out and into the anteroom.

I plop down on the chair and wait. A single bulb in a fixture on the wall barely illuminates the room. The floor is scuffed and the linoleum worn through to the concrete in places. I hear voices from the other side of the door to the treatment room and water running. It’s stuffy in here -- airless. A trickle of sweat runs from my temple and down my cheek. It’s warm, and I’m nervous.

After several minutes the attendant sticks her head in and motions for me to enter. I begin to think of her as Olga; she looks like an Olga to me for some reason. I realize she’s nearly as tall as I am, and has shoulders almost as wide. Sturdy she is.

I pass through the second doorway into the treatment room. I’m standing in a high-ceilinged room between two empty bathtub-sized tin tubs sitting on slightly raised concrete platforms. Plastic shower curtains on the far side of each tub block the view beyond them to either side – effectively making a treatment room with two tubs in it. I imagine the entire wing is set up the same way: each door in the main corridor leading to a treatment room with two tubs. It’s even warmer and more humid here than in the anteroom. The smell is a mixture of sweat and a fresh water lake with a few rotten eggs thrown in for good measure. I hear the murmur of voices around me beyond the shower curtains. The concrete floor is wet.

Four or five paces beyond the tubs I see a red brick wall. Three or four exposed pipes run along it near the floor. It has windows set high up. I realize this room is a couple stories high. There’s no air conditioning, only the breeze finding its way in through those windows. Sunlight streams in as well. A drop of sweat falls off the end of my nose.

A young man in jeans and a faded blue t-shirt appears from the right in the space beyond the tubs. He’s pushing a wheeled cart with several buckets on it. I realize this space is actually part of a service corridor running the length of the building. Clever. The cart looks heavy; he looks hot and tired. Olga says something to him. Without breaking stride, he looks at her, nods, and continues out of sight to my left.

Olga motions me towards the tub on my right. She reaches down next to the tub, lifts a large bucket and dumps black, slick-looking mud from the bucket into the bottom of the tub. She motions for me to get in. I put a foot on a small box and start to climb in. She says something and gives my sheet a tug. I swallow hard and unwrap the sheet. Olga holds up the ends to somewhat block her view of me and turns her head giving me a bit of privacy -- at this point anyway. I quickly climb into the tub. I realize that it is lined with plastic sheeting. I just fit with my back reclining comfortably against one end and my feet just short of touching the other end. I also realize the mud I’m sitting in is more than faintly warm and feels oily. It’s little disconcerting at first, but not bad.

Olga bends down and comes up with another bucket. She upends it right on my crotch. So much for privacy. This bucketful is even warmer than the first. It’s a notch above disconcerting – not painful, but, well, unusual. While I’m getting my brain around this, Olga pours a bucket of mud on my chest. It’s hotter still. It smells of sulfur, but not unpleasant – thick and very smooth, a bit thinner than toothpaste. Olga motions for me to spread the mud around on my body. I start spreading it on my arms and chest. She dumps one last bucket of goo on my legs. She puts the empty buckets in the service area beyond the end of the tubs, then returns to spread the mud over my legs – paying particular attention to my ankles and knees. She motions me to lean forward and spreads mud over my back. I’m sweating like a horse – partially because of the heat from the mud, partially from the nervousness from what’s happening.

Olga motions me to lay back on a towel rolled up as a headrest behind me. She folds the plastic sheeting up and over me. She tucks me in like a baby. I feel claustrophobia setting in. She throws one more clean plastic sheet over me, and heads out into the service corridor. I think, I’m OK. This is going to be OK. I’m OK. And just then she’s back carrying three heavy, tan flannel blankets. She proceeds to lay these over me. I can feel the weight of them pushing my back into the mud that I’m covered in. Hot. I’m really hot. I can’t even wipe the sweat off my face because my hands are under the sheeting. I’m OK.

Olga looks at me and gives me a questioning, thumbs-up sign. I nod and give her a half-smile. I can see a clock on the brick wall of the service corridor. I only have to do this 20 minutes. I’m OK. Sweat pours down my face. Actually I’m not OK. I try to remember the Russian word for Help.

I look at the clock again. I tell myself to calm down. If some of the invalids I saw in the corridor can survive and even thrive on this, then certainly I can. I close my eyes and try to think of something pleasant. I hear a rattling noise near my feet and open my eyes. The attendant with the cart picks up the empty buckets from the floor near my tub, puts them on his cart, and pushes on down the hallway. He doesn’t even glance at me. Five minutes have gone by. Not bad. I close my eyes again.

Someone is shaking my shoulder. I open my eyes. I look at the clock and realize with a start that I’ve been in the mud for 30 minutes – sound asleep the last 20 minutes or so. Olga is taking the blankets off me. I’m done. I’m not even sweating anymore. Amazing. Actually I feel really relaxed and refreshed.

Olga unwraps the plastic sheeting and motions for me to help her scrape off the mud from my arms and legs and other places she doesn’t want to touch. I do, while she uses her hands to wipe some of the mud off my back. Then she motions for me to get out and she gives me a hand. The mud on the bottom of my feet makes the wet floor next to the tub feel like an ice rink. She indicates that I should stand where I am. She turns and grabs a garden hose that’s hanging on the wall between us and the anteroom. She sprays water on one of her hands and adjusts the hot and cold taps until she’s satisfied with the flow and temperature. Then she turns the spray on me. She washes me down from head to toe like she’s hosing down a car and then motions for me to turn around and does my back side. Mud cascades off me and through a drain in the floor.

She turns off the hose and motions me toward a shower stall near the tub to my left. She hands me a large clean white sheet. It’s clear I can finish washing off the mud in relative privacy of the shower stall. I lay the sheet on a chair near the shower, go in the stall and pull the curtain closed. Olga’s already started the water for me. I adjust it to make it cooler. No need to start sweating again. I start wiping down the mud. The shower head is on a flexible hose. I pull it out of its bracket and spray my hard to reach cracks and crevices. It’s surprising how much mud is still on me after Olga’s hose job. Every time I think I’m done, I find another spot with the black mud on it. Eventually I just declare victory. I turn off the water, step out of the shower, and wrap the sheet like a toga around me.

Olga is still cleaning up the tub and floor from my treatment. She looks up as I come out. She straightens up and points towards the door from which I’d entered.

I smile and wave. “Spa-see’bah. Thank you.” She nods, sighs, and turns back to her work.

I reenter the anteroom. My clothes are where I left them. Two clean towels are on the chair. I give myself a final drying with the sheet then use a fresh towel to continue drying off. I put streaks of black on the towel as I continue to find the mud’s hiding places. Sorry.

I’m pretty sure I still have mud in places I haven’t looked, but elect to get dressed without wasting any more time. (The next morning I’ll find streaks of mud on my pajamas.) I pull on my clothes and look around for anything I’ve forgotten. I pile the used sheet and towels on the bench. As I’ve been coached to do, I pull a few Ukrainian griebna from my pocket, open the door to the treatment room and hand the money to Olga. She smiles and nods a thank you. “Spa-see’bah. C zdah-roh’vee-yah. Do-sve-dahn’ee-yeh” Thank you. Good health. Good-bye. I turn and head back through the anteroom out into the main corridor. Outside my door a woman sits on the bench. A man in a wheel chair sits next to her.

I’ve lost track of which way the exit is. I see the desk down the hallway to my left and head away from it. In a few steps I see the larger windowed corridor leading to the main lobby. I turn right and again begin dodging people coming at me. I find the exit and walk out the wide doors onto the large plaza outside the clinic and into the bright Crimean sunshine and dry, fresh-smelling air. I’ve had my first mud treatment … and survived … and even enjoyed it. I hope the massage I’ve booked for tomorrow is as good. Or maybe I’ll take another mud treatment. I hope I get Olga.

My daughter participated in a month-long, Internet-based, poem-per-day exercise last month - NaPoWriMo - National Poetry Writing Month. One of the challenges NaPoWriMo posed for 10 April was to write a "mirror" poem: Quoting from my daughter's blog for that day (almost):

"Today’s prompt is a mirror poem. Find or think of a poem you admire, and write a poem that is a “mirror-image” of it. You can make this mirroring quite general, or very specific. For an example of the general approach, if the poem you like is about spring flowers, you might write one about autumn leaves. If you want to be more specific, you can go line by line. If the poem you like begins, “I was a blue bear,” your poem might start with “I will be a red ant.”

That prompt resonated within me for more than a month. Over the last few days, I finally did something about it. I don't know if what I wrote below mirrors one of my favorite poems or is a sequel to it. At the least, it's the first somewhat serious writing that I've done in many months. It feels good ... and it was a lot of work, I now remember.

---

Nor Valley of the Shadow

Tattered and torn,
Shop-worn with scorn,
The old man dragged his shadow.
Through desert heat,
His faint heart beat
A note increasing shallow.

And when he felt
His skin must melt,
And each breath a waiting pain,
Upon his cheek,
Like soft green leaf,
Came a single drop of rain.

Through wrinkled eye,
He looked to sky.
A drop caressed his face.
A dry smile rose
From his lost soul.
He kept his steady pace.

Moon mountain, no,
Nor Valley low.
He knew now where he must go:
The journey long,
Singing his song.
It was his Eldorado.

Trip Report - Club Med Cancun Yucatan

I posted parts of the following on TripAdvisor.com. This post contains some additional comments. I also posted a photo album of this trip on FaceBook.

We visited Club Med Cancun 8-18 September 2010. We enjoyed it a lot -- probably one of our top 10 holidays. We've been to several Club Meds and always approach them with the attitude that they are summer camp for adults. If you go with that attitude, you won't be disappointed.

• I'd been to this Club Med many years ago with two friends from San Francisco: Leslie Nipper, Hank Grundig. It’s where I learned to windsurf. We’d just moved to Tulsa and I left Deborah and Danielle home to take off on that holiday. My flight back to Tulsa via Dallas was cancelled. The airport, at that time, had no amenities – including pay phones in the departure area – so I couldn’t even call home. I finally got to call them when I eventually reached Dallas some 12 hours late. They thought: (1) I’d been killed. (2) Was in jail. (3) Had decided to never come back. (Sounds like material for a good short story there.)
• The airport has changed a lot in 25 years. It’s beautiful, modern and has all kinds of shops and restaurants. Immigration and security process is as easy as it can be.

Plus:
o The excellent service. This was a major plus and a pleasant surprise. GOs were friendly, accessible, knowledgeable, and anxious to make our stay a good one. Most spoke English, French, and Spanish. Calls to the front desk were picked up immediately. After about 3 days, many of the GOs knew us by name. Service in the bars and restaurants was fast and good.

 

• Was the service as good as Mauritius? Darn near, I’d say. There were so few guests, there should have been good service, and there was. I made particular friends with Fernanda, there on a college internship. L made friends with Kyle, the water sports GO. I think he took a shine to her as well. He’s from south of Houston and suggested we get together for sailing and fishing when he’s home. Oscar was the land sport GO and a Riki Martin look-alike. He organized volleyball, but we never played more than 1 on 2. I played the “one” and won more often than not.
• We had meals with several of the other GOs including “Mad Max” from the circus – Jamaica “yah, mon”. Others too, but now I can’t remember with whom.

o Uncrowded resort at this time of year. That meant easy access to all facilities -- and perhaps was one of the reasons the service was so good.

 

o Lots wildlife including barracuda, crocodile, frigate birds, iguanas, pelicans, stingrays. The highlight: seeing a Green Sea Turtle lay her eggs on the beach at night. Snorkeling was excellent. The reef is in good shape.

• See below about the barracuda and croc. The frigate birds are fun to watch in the air. L got a couple good pictures. The iguanas were fun to see. They were all over, especially on the walk to the lunch restaurant. L fed them bananas and it was fun watching two of them arguing over it. L liked pelicans best. We watched them fishing near the bar. Walking back to the room a couple evenings L saw a stingray in the lagoon. Not too exciting, but she got a few pics.

o Usual Club Med activities available. We kayaked, practiced salsa, sailed catamarans, snorkeled, swam, water skied and windsurfed.

• L won the weekly kayak race Women’s Division. She first raced one of the GOs, who let her win. She then raced a French woman. L did really well. She paddled out to the turning buoy while the Frenchie paddled way right. L made the turn first, then the French came on. She tried to paddle across in front of L. L comes right at her. French falls in the water. L wins. I’m VERY happy.
• They had salsa lessons morning and afternoon, but were only for beginners. A couple mornings we went over and practiced our moves. Their CD music constantly skipped and their equipment was crap. We tried to dance in the gym one afternoon using our PC for music. It didn’t work. PC speakers aren’t loud enough. Next time we’ll bring our travel speakers and use my iPod. We also danced to bands and recorded music in the bar and on the patio just for fun. We were clearly the best … well, OK, … the only salsa dancers at the club. L had to get a band-aid for a blister at the infirmary. When we walked in the nurse said, “Oh, it’s the salsa couple.”
• The club had one Hobie 16 catamaran, which is a real sailboat – sloop rigged, lots of lines to pull, goes like a bat even in light wind – and you can tip it over in a heartbeat.. We opted all but one day to take out the Hobie 12. It has just a mainsail and it’s pretty hard to get in trouble with it. We did take the 16 out on the last day in very light winds. It took me a while to make friends with it, but in light wind, it was really fun.
• Snorkeling was fun. The reef was in good shape. Lots of purple fan coral, big and lots of variety of fish. We didn’t see any eels.
• I swam perhaps 100m out to the swim area buoys each day. It was a good beach, with stones in the surf zone only. Even on the days when the beaches further down were red flagged because of waves, you could swim on our beach.
• I water skied one day. I told the guy I’d never done it before so I could get the beginner’s instructions. I got up on the first try. I made it through a turn just after getting up, made a turn at the far end of the lagoon, came back past the dock, made another turn, got outside the wake and back in, made one more turn and dropped off at the dock. I was TIRED and it didn’t last more than about 4 minutes. Fun. Next time I may try to do it more.
• I windsurfed almost everyday even though there was very little wind. I used the harness one day, but the lines were too short to be comfortable, so I pretty much gave up on that. I didn’t really need it anyway. I used a fun board and a 6.5 sq-m sail. I made a few gybes and tacks. It was fine, if not real windsurfing. I should also say that the sailing area is set up in the wind shadow of the land so even on days when it was quite windy on the beach, there was no wind (or waves) at the sailing area.
• No one wanted to play volleyball. We played three times total, I think. Disappointing. I played 1-on-1 with one of the GOs and beat him – 3-hit-must rule in effect. The other couple times we played 1-on-2 with me as the one. I only lost one game.

o Upgraded deluxe room looked out on the Gulf on one side and the lagoon on the other. Very nice. Internet access was available for a small fee. Bottled water and soft drinks were provided every day in the minibar. We could have had other drinks as well if we'd asked. Bed and pillows were extremely comfortable. We slept great every night.

• L complained about ants in the bathroom, but they didn’t cause much trouble. We had to run the A/C on full cold to keep the room comfortable. It was all OK. Don’t go to Club Med for the accommodations.

o Impeccably clean guest room and public areas.

• The tile floors were slick as heck when wet. To compensate, they had people mopping the floor of the bar all day everyday. This got the sand and the water out. Nicely done. Our guest room was very clean, I thought. They serviced the minibar everyday.

o Circus show was really good.

• The first show was outdoors on the patio and that was fun. The second week it moved indoors which was OK, but not as fun … and hotter. I thought this circus show was better than a similar show we saw in Florida. At both shows one of the guests performed. Pretty impressive for them to do that.

o Close to airport. Transportation to and from was comfortable and spot on time.

 

Minus:
o No smoke alarm in our room. That concerned me since some of the building is of wood construction, including the path to the single stairway exit. Most of the building was of concrete, however.

 

o Certain of the tile flooring became ice-like slick when wet. I went down once even wearing footwear. Barefoot was really treacherous. Beware.

 

o Cigarette smoke smell filtered in from adjoining room. Guests are not supposed to smoke in their rooms, but certain people must have felt that didn't apply to them.

• Guess where the people next door were from.

o Room was shabby, frankly. Quite acceptable, but far from a 4-star room. Small and a bit of a strange layout with a 'step-down' to the back balcony. Our experience is that you don't come to Club Med for the rooms.

 

o Food was good but not great -- standard Club Med quality. There was a wide selection, but the selections tended to be the same each night except for the specials of the day. I will say that the boiled shrimp and the steak nights were excellent. I'll also say that we put on 5 pounds each, so the food must not have been too bad. We never tried the ala carte restaurants serving steak and Mexican food.

 

o Because of the low occupancy, the main restaurant was closed for lunch, which meant a trek to the second restaurant on the beach. If you didn't want to wait for a golf cart to take you, it was a long hot walk. More shuttles would have helped.

 

o We felt the drinks were pretty watered down. But it was hot and we were drinking a lot, so that was probably all for the better anyway.

 

o Because there were so few people there, there were no takers for some of the activities like beach volleyball. Not the Club's fault, just the time of year.

 

o Evening entertainment was weak -- except for circus nights. Like all Club Meds, the GOs put on the shows, in addition to doing their day jobs. Go with an accepting attitude and just enjoy it for what it is.

 

o Night club played nothing but club music, so far as we could tell. We were hoping for a better mix, including some Latin music and some rock standards. After all, the guests were predominantly older at this time of year. It would have been good for the DJs to recognize and cater to that a bit.

 

Other notes:
o Celebration of Mexico's 200th year of independence was great fun ... for us and for the GOs.

 

o Seeing the crocodile in the lagoon was exciting. I'd visited this Club in the 80s and crocs were there then too. You water ski with them. Don't worry; there's never been an incident.

• If I can ever find the pictures from my first trip to Cancun, I can prove there was a big croc in the lagoon then too. I’ve hunted high and low, but can’t find the pics. I’ll keep looking, I know they’re here.

o The snorkeling area has some BIG barracuda. We saw one perhaps 5' long laying under a coral head. Very exciting.

• The barracuda was cool. We went snorkeling one day and I dove down next to a coral head. I saw this black eye staring at me. I figured it was a big grouper or something. I dove back down and realize I’m looking at a barracuda with a head that seems as big across as my two hands held together … and four white teeth sticking out. Wow. I got L and after several minutes I finally got her to see it too. We spent maybe 10 minutes with it. On the last dive down I see that he’s now facing me head on instead of in profile as he has been. I feel like a target. We swim out of there at that point. We talk with the lady at the snorkel shack, coincidentally nicknamed barracudita (little barracuda), who tells us that when the water is high behind the reef they see lots of big barracuda – some up to 2 meters long. That’s 6.5’. I couldn’t really see all of our barracuda, but I’d guess he was at least 4’ and maybe 5’ – a big fish. Memo to self: next time remember to bring the underwater camera, you dummy.

o Sailing area has little wind at this time of year because of the wind direction. The Hobie 16 was fun even in the light winds. The smaller Hobies would move, but not fly. The wind and wave conditions were ideal for learning to windsurf, and the Club has the right equipment for it too.

 

o The iguanas love bananas ... but you're not supposed to feed them.

 

o The Club has an optional dress "code" for the evenings. For example on various nights they had all black, all white, jeans-and-white-T-shirt, "safari", and Club Med 45 shirt night. Dress for it if you feel like it, but don't worry if you don't. If you want to play along, bring a selection of colors.

 

o The boutique is eye watering expensive. We nearly bought a pair of $30 flip-flops before we double-checked the exchange rate. Buy the Club Med logo stuff there if you want, but be careful of the prices on the other items.

 

 

 

Club Med Cancun: what a fun time. We'll be back.