After ‘I do,’ trip doesn’t

ON a sweltering evening several Ice Ages ago, my bride, Maggie, and I arrived on Isla Mujeres, a so-called virgin paradise off the coast of the northern Yucatan, Mexico.

It had all the makings of a storybook honeymoon, or so Maggie’s Uncle Rich, the travel agent, had said. Vast stretches of pristine sand. Rare aquatic birds known only to the enthusiasts of crossword puzzles. Exotic tropical fruits. And a cottage by the sea for pennies a day.

Believing that story required a kind of gullibility of which I’ve always been capable.

In the gathering darkness, we asked about a place to stay, and were directed to a certain Senor Zorro, a genial fellow with strangler’s hands and the silhouette of a roll-on deodorant. Zorro owned two hotels, six sightseeing boats and all the mopeds on Isla Mujeres. He was the tiny island’s biggest entrepreneur.

He drove us to his most secluded hotel -- a white stucco mosquito hatchery called El Camaron Inquieto, which, with my rudimentary Spanish, I loosely translated to mean “the Troubled Waiter.” Later I was told that “the Restless Shrimp” was more accurate.

I guess it was the way Zorro eyed the wad of traveler’s checks in my shirt pocket that made me suspect he drove a hard bargain. But Maggie and I were determined to stick to our Spartan budget. We resolved not to give in until Zorro met our price.

We offered him 15 cents a day.

He laughed. He said he wanted $1,000 for two weeks.

“Twenty cents a day,” Maggie countered. “That’s our absolute limit.”

“Impossible, gringos, impossible!” Zorro said. His smile was like the beam of a lighthouse.

“Impossible” proved to be the only word of English he would speak.

Four hours later we were still haggling. Maggie had given up in Hour Two. I wouldn’t. Neither would Zorro. Neither would the mosquitoes. A sustained aerial attack had left our lips looking as if they had been Novocained.

I came up to $100 for two weeks. He came down to $1,000. I came up to $400. He came down to $1,000. I came up to $750.

Finally, he relented. We settled on $1,000.

Maggie and I didn’t fully appreciate the extent of our isolation until the following morning. El Camaron was five miles from the center of town. The heat -- which would have been considered mild only on Mercury -- kept us from walking there in daylight. Zorro offered to rent us mopeds for $75 an hour. It was, he said, his special guest rate.

The jellyfish kept us out of the water. The insects kept us indoors. And night left us prisoners in our breathlessly hot taco of a room.

At dusk we would nail a sheet over the tiny, pane-less window and burn mosquito coils ($53 for a pack of five, Zorro said). Then we’d wedge towels under the door to keep out the scorpions.

Conditions at El Camaron may have driven a previous tenant mad -- deep gashes in the walls suggested someone had been fond of swatting flies with an ax.

*

A room with a reputation

ONE evening, while tossing in our bed like restless shrimp, we were awakened by a loud thud. I switched on the overhead lamp. Staring down at us was what appeared to be a mangy sewer rat -- a human sewer rat.

“Hi, I’m Vern,” he said in a slurred, lurching bark, as if addressing a couple of deaf Eskimos. “Where’s Wilma Lou?”

Vern, it turned out, was a sailor on shore leave. And Wilma Lou was a not-so-happy hooker who had once set up shop at El Camaron.

Vern grabbed an empty can and filled it with rum.

“Where’s Wilma Lou?” he repeated, scanning the sheets.

“Not under here,” I said.

Vern shrugged, then stumbled off into the starry Mexican night.

We later learned that Zorro had installed Wilma Lou as a sort of tourist attraction. He had doubled the size of his fleet and operated daily excursions to El Camaron from neighboring islands. At the height of the season, we were told, long lines of suitors stretched from Wilma Lou’s door to the water’s edge. And Zorro, the gracious host, had made a point of shaking the hands of every one.

Though the hotel no longer teemed with Wilma Lou’s lovers, the grounds were by no means uninhabited. Around noon, scores of gringos would march over and camp on the foot-wide shore Zorro passed off as a beach. He had enlisted Gregario, a local 8-year-old, to lug coffee cans of sand there from the other side of the island.

The fact that the other side of the island was four miles away and that the boy carried only a can at a time didn’t concern Zorro. The operation was in Year 2 and already the kid had built a patch of coastline the size of a beach blanket.

Maggie and I marveled at Gregario’s industry, for we had become increasingly lethargic. Physical activity -- of any kind -- exhausted us.

You can imagine our sex life.

I know I did.