Mexico? Hell Jack, you know me, about all the travelin' I ever done is round a coffee pot lookin' for the handle.

Shot Glass of the Month

Playa del Carmen, Mexico

I love this shot glass because it reminds me of the trip Sage and I took to Mexico in 1994. And since it’s an interesting story of how we got to Mexico, and I know everyone loves interesting stories, I thought I would share.

It was 1993, and Sage and I were living together in Concord, NH. Neither of us were in any sort of career path at that point; Sage was working at Wal-Mart, and I had just gotten a temp job at Rivco in Penacook, a millwork company. Every year in Concord (since at least the early 80’s), the local radio station WKXL ran a contest called “Dinner for Two Anywhere in the World”. All you had to do was send in a postcard with your name, address, phone number, and a city anywhere in the world. They made a random drawing of all entries, and that entry won dinner for two in the city of your choice. So Sage and I sent in a bunch of entries, and we put a different city on each one. So one day I’m at work at Rivco, and since I’m a temp I don’t have a desk or anything (I think I was doing data entry work in their conference room), and the receptionist came down the hall looking for me. “WKXL is on the phone for you…what is that all about?” At that moment, I don’t know if I remembered the drawing was that day or not, but I think I figured it out pretty quick. So I had her forward the call to the conference room, and sure enough, it was the morning radio hosts telling me I was the winner of Dinner for Two Anywhere in the World! “Great I said!” And then remembering that we had put a dozen different cities into the drawing, I said, “Uh, where am I going?” The hosts kind of chuckled, I think, and asked don’t I remember. So I owned up that I had put a few different city entries in the drawing. “You’re going to Wellington, New Zealand!” they said. WOW! How great is that? The only thing else I remember about the phone call was them asking me why I picked Wellington. “Well, it’s about as far away as you can get from Concord.” I realized as soon as I said that it sounded bad, but I meant it as, “If you’re going to get a free trip somewhere, you might as well go as far as you can, right?” Anyway, after some chit chat, I got off the phone, and told a few people at work. Immediately I became a celebrity in the office, and I probably got some jealous remarks as well.

I got home around 5 that day, and Sage had been at work all day. Of course, this was before the days of cell phones, emails and instant messages, so I had no way of telling her before hand that we had won. I got home, and she wasn’t there yet. But I noticed 2 messages on the answering machine. The first was from Aunt Polly. (Not my Aunt, but Lynn’s aunt, but everyone calls her Aunt Polly. It seems that everyone in East Concord knows Polly, and she was even a NH State Representative for a few terms as well.) She said something like, “Uh, Douglas? I think you just won the contest on WKXL!” And then she hung up. (I found out later that she is the reason I got the call at Rivco. She had been listening, recognized my name, called my home number and got the machine, then called Lynn, who told her I was working at Rivco. Then she called WKXL to let them know where I was. I guess there was some dead-air time for 30 minutes or so while they were trying to locate me. And I’m pretty sure to this day Polly takes all the credit for our winning the trip.) The 2^nd message, I think, was from our old friend Brenda’s parents. (Sage and I both went to high school with Brenda, and Sage roomed with her for 4 years at Ithaca College. For her privacy, I’ll leave out her last name.) They left some sort of message as well about congratulations, going to New Zealand, etc. It wasn’t more than 10 minutes later that Sage arrived. If I remember correctly (and that would be a first) I was waiting for her with a huge smile on my face, and she knew something big was up. So I told her, “We won the dinner for two contest!” She looked at me and went, “No way, you’re lying!” I knew she wouldn’t believe me, so I immediately hit play on the answering machine and played the two messages. We both jumped up and down, we were so happy. (Looking back now, it’s kind of funny that we were so thrilled at winning this prize, but at the time, we weren’t on solid ground at all. Since graduating I had only had a job at the NH State House as a Legislative Page, which ended after the session ended, and then this temp job at Rivco. I’m sure I made less than $15,000, and I was driving a car that stalled every time I came to a stop sign. Sage’s job at Wal-Mart was a Manager’s job, but still, I’m sure she wasn’t making much dough either. So winning a trip like this was HUGE.)

After the immediate excitement of winning, we found out what we actually won, and what we needed to do. They told us we had $2,000 for the trip, and that Penny Pitou Travel Agency in town would handle the trip planning. Plus, WKXL would throw in $200 cash for the dinner expense. So we made our way to Penny Pitou one day and sat down with one of the agents. That’s when we learned that they didn’t care if we went to Wellington, New Zealand or Berlin, NH. We had $2,000 that we could spend on the trip anyway we wanted. So of course we looked into New Zealand and figured out right away that wouldn’t be worth it. Even in 1993, the price of flying 2 people to New Zealand was going to eat up almost all the $2,000 – we would have basically have flown 16 hours for 3 nights, and then flown back. (And at the time we had ZERO money of our own to really contribute to this trip.) So we said, “Tell us where we can go for a week”. That’s when she pulled out the Caribbean brochures and told us to take a look. We brought a bunch home, talked to some people who have traveled to the Caribbean, and finally decided on Playa del Carmen, Mexico. At that time, Playa del Carmen was a sleepy fishing village about 40 miles south of Cancun that had only about 4 or 5 resorts. After looking at it, we knew this was the place for us. The resort was an all-inclusive resort, including all food and alcohol, which made it ideal for traveler newbies like ourselves. It was right on the beach, it had nice small bungalows (instead of high-rises like up in Cancun), and it was a short walk to the town, where there were ferries to Cozumel. And the best part of all, we got down there for just over $2,000, including airfare, all-inclusive accommodations, transfers to/from the airport, and 2 daily excursions. Not a bad deal at all, in our mind.

So that’s how, in late January 1994, we spent a fabulous week in Mexico. These days I understand that Playa del Carmen is almost as built up as Cancun. But when we were there, it was incredible. Our resort was the “last” one on the coast heading south, so we could just walk down the beach and see nothing but dense jungle and pristine beaches with no one else around. (Well, there was a lot of trash that washed up on those beaches, and we did get chased by 3 wild dogs one day. But you get the idea.) We went to Cozumel to go snorkeling at Chankanaab National Park, we visited the Mayan ruins of Coba and Tulum, we went bike riding around the town, and mostly we spent days on the beach, drinking pina colodas and Coronas, thinking about how cold and snowy it was back in New Hampshire. It was really sweet, and this shot glass reminds me of how much of a great time we had there.