i was going to go off to the west of ireland in october, and stay isolated until november, when jim and i would travel to amsterdam for a round of the old masters.

i kept not finding good fares. which are currently:

delta with 855, one leg thru jfk the other nonstop. open-jaw is 1011.

i kept getting anxious about swine flu, which is at 205 confirmed cases. plus my sister and my friend kay. and since they went to the u2 concert at croke park tonight, they’ve given swine flu to everyone in the park and everyone at the restaurant they must have gone to.

anyway, it’s 205 today. by next week it’ll be 400. then it’ll be 800. then 1600. by the time october rolls around i predict half the country will be in bed or flat out on the couch.

so i thought this might not be the time.

i’d been getting anxious. what if i got it right away – because i get sick every time i travel, so wouldn’t you expect i’d catch the flu in the airport -

tho i didn’t get swine flu when i went to cancun at the beginning of july. it was lovely. i recommend it, especially unspoilt bits of the state -

what if jim got swine flu while i was gone, off painitng and not a thing i could do to help him, oh the guilt.

or what if i caught it coming thru immigration and went to my bed on arriving at the residency, never to rise from my bed only die expiring in agony in my little stone cottage by the sea.

so i emailed the kind administrator of the cill rialaig project, and asked her if it would be okay if i chaned my dates to the following year because i’m getting worried. and she sails back and tells me i can have a better range of dates in 2010.

i feel like i’ve lost ten pounds, the relief is that light. i can enjoy watching epidemic levels of sickness sweep up from the edges and flood the towns. i can laugh hahah.

it leaves me with a lot of art supplies and a sudden hole in th things i’d been planning to do with my art. i went downstairs and started a new encaustic painting – of my left mammogram, masquerading as a planet.

maybe i’ll start that quilt for my mom out of old clothes i had my brother dave pack up and bring to me. first i’ll get the mold out of the clothes, an intricate chemistry.

so i won’t be going to ireland this year. i can stop looking up airfares and worrying about acting at the right time, and being overwhelmed with all the alternatives and yet with no choice at all…

i wrote last in isla holbox, about our trip to cancun and holbox, but was interrupted by the familia for la comida, which i never miss. i probably should. i don’t do well in the heat wtih a full stomach.

but we’re back in atlanta now, so this will be some of the things i forgot to mention while i had the time. by the way, the price for an hour’s use of internet cafe in holbox – don antonio, owned by a french pirate’s descendants) was 15 pesos, which is about a dollar-fifty. in cancun it was considerably more than that. this is because cancun is for the tourists, and holbox is for the residents. i so prefer holbox.

unfortunately, they tell me that the government has big plans for holbox. they want to turn it into the yucatan riviera, just like they’ve turned cancun and cozumel into the mayan riviera. but the residents don’t really want that. they like their laid-back lifestyle, and tourists are always ugly.

i’m rambling, i know. this is my recovery day, and i’ve just now plugged the computer in and am going about answering emails and washing the sand out of the clothes.

did i mention the beaches at holbox? the sand in cancun is manufactured, like the rest of the place. they grind up the dead coral (dead because of the pollution from all that building, all those hotels, and the big city of cancun proper). the sand washes away, and they dump it back on. after the hurricane a couple of years ago they lost a lot of beach, and there’s been some foundation damage to the sea walls of the fancy hotels. the sand is rough, full of bits of coral, sticks to your feet like glue, and doesn’t compress worth shit, so you flounder and flail as you try to walk the beach.

on holbox the sand is like powdered sugar. it packs nicely, there are shells. near the part of the beach used by all the fishermen, it is also littered with fish heads and parts of yesterday’s catch, so you have to watch your step.

actually, i think i’ll download the photos now and use them to tell something more coherent than i’m able to on my own.

we were at the westin spa and resort first, on the south end of the barrier island they call cancun, inc. (est. 1972). cancun runs from the mainland in a C shape, like this:

l
Cl
l

our hotel was just north of the club med, and that’s situated out on punta nizuc, which is the southernmost part of the island where it turns abruptly to go around the lagoon to the mainland. it’s a rocky point, the limestone or coral that it’s made of is very sharp to the touch because of the erosion of the waves. i guess it must be a coral outcrop. it was really neat, with tidal pools (pretty empty, actually), mostly invisible hermit crabs, this cool sedum-like plant that reached out branches and berries wherever there was a somewhat sheltered spot. the wind blows all the time, and waves pound the shore at any excuse, just because it’s a point, and waves concentrate on a point.

it was a nice hotel, with half a million rooms. coffee maker in the room that they didn’t charge you for, minibar fridge that they charged for everything inside, that we emptied and put our own boughten drinks and food into. marble lobby, plants, wide couches and chairs, intense wavy rugs, 10′ square acrylic abstract paintings with lots of color and some rhythm. a big pool, or rather a central pool with lots of little pools. the great thing about the westin resort is that it has a nice wide beach, and the turtles were nesting at the moment – early july. the high tide mark was a shelf, a good 2′ drop, and the waves broke right at the littoral, with no wide shallow run-up like you find on the outer banks of the carolinas. it was a narrow, steep beach of sticky, soft sand that wouldn’t pack. treacherous.

after the high tide drop-off, and the breaker drop off, both about equally wide, say 10-15 feet at the second hotel halfway up the island and about twice that at high tide at the westin, the slope leveled off to around peoples’ chests until the string of floats that marked the area where you wouldn’t get decapitated by jet skis. the immediate shore, the littoral, was a great blend of colors to us. there was the wonderful lovely teal turquoise manganese green-blue clear blue breakers with the white of the sun glaring along the curl, and there was the cream white breaker and the seafoam sea foam rolling up the beach, and in between like the leading of stained glass, was dashes of pink-brown sand  dashed into and over the incoming water and foam. it was very dramatic, loads of great rhythm, we could hear the crash from the room (because we immediately turned off the air conditioning and flung open the double doors).

we stayed out of the water, it was too hard to get down to it without slipping down the beach.  jay told us that there were great lumps of coral floating around on the bottom of the breaker line, and showed us a nasty scrape. coral is not nice.

i’m just noticing the smell of the clothes we brought back with us. there’s a particular blend of bug spray, sunblock, resort shampoo, salt, and dead fish. it’s the smell of the hotel rooms, too, so there must be mold in it too.

are we still in cancun? still at the start of our trip? there’s so much to tell, i need a nap. i can’t even remember the name of the second hotel we stayed in, after we went off to paradise.

oh, when we got on the plane to come back, the captain got on really cheerily and welcomed us back to reality. really rubbed it in. gave us a hard landing as well. thanks, guy.

i’ll write more later.

we arrived in cancun on sunday. hartsfield airport had signs up warning about swine flu, and in cancun airport we had to fill out a report about what symptoms we might have. i cançt = sorry, no apostrophe = imagine why anyone in their right minds would say they had any symptoms at all, when içm pretty sure they would just quarantine you. and whatçs the point of going to the beach if youçre going to report sick and be forced to stay in bed.

we brought the two grandkids with us, theyçre 8 and 12. contrary to all the denial about swine flu that i find in the states, these kids were actually paranoid about falling sick, and used up their supply of antibacterial wipes on the plane coming down here. i of course had a whole huge box of wipes that i doctored myself  = alcohol and essential oils like geranium, tea tree, eucalyptus = antibacterial all by themselves.

cancun is very nice, especially if you like artificial. pristine beaches only because the workers sweep them clean after every high tide. big hotels, paradise-looking grounds, immaculate white rooms, 600-count sheets, ice with everything, air conditioning everywhere you go.

i hated it.

we went to cuidad central, the cancun that was built for the workers. the cancun that was built for the tourists is on the barrier island, and like i said, looks pristine. the cancun built for the workers looks like any spanish city, with colorfully painted buildings that look falling down, apparent squalor everywhere, barefoot kids in rags. when i was younger, this kind of apparent squalor would make me very depressed. i thought it meant poverty. but it doesnçt necessarily. i had to learn that in the tropics, the roof over your head is all you need, and it can be made of scrap materials. in fact, the less money you spend on your housing the better, because a hurricane will come along soon enough and whip it all away. so tarpaper shacks is all you really need in that environment. the people here make do with what they have or find, and are much better off, because theyçre not spending all their money keeping roofs over their heads.

the priorities are completely different in the tropics. you get your work done early because itçs so fucking hot, and then you hang out and eat and rest during the heat of the day, and after about 5 oçclock everything opens back up again, everyone comes out, everyone eats and socializes and parties, and goes home to rest sometime around midnight. itçs the same thing in spain when i went there a dozen years ago. itçs a very laid back lifestyle. i like it.

i actually enjoyed cuidad cancun. it reminded me of a cross between barcelona and new orleans. if i werençt so intimidated by vendor tactics, i would have explored the market a bit better and maybe come away with some harmless little things to take back. but the vendors are quite aggressive, maybe because there arençt any tourists, or fewer. the occupancy rates at the hotels are perhaps approaching 45 percent, which is dismal, and i guess the vendors are hurting.

we came out to the island after 2 days in cancun. betty, who is mexican, had all sorts of running around to do, including taking her 8 year old son to a local doctor who is very good, hoping to solve an obscure medical problem. see, the doctors are better in other parts of the world. i told you so.

the island içm talking about is isla holbox, which was settled by pirates centuries ago. itçs a backward place, with nothing over two stories, sand roads, no english spoken, no sunglass shops, only recently water and ice you can drink. the inhabitants used to be fishermen, going out for the lobsters. now, theyçve made the decision to go after the tourist bucks, so the best lobster areas are now fished bypeople from other islands and ports, and the locals now spend all their boating efforts taking turistas to look at the whale sharks. there used to be only one store, bettyçs auntçs store, but now it seems every other palapa is a tiny little mini-super, and the streets are full of tourists mainly from europe, where they donçt expect ice and air conditioning.

all this smallness and privacy and old fashionedness is going away. it used to be you couldnçt buy property on the island unless you were from one of the three or four original families. but theyçve opened that up, and gridded off the western edge of the island, and now theyçre starting to build, the city is starting to creep out from the center, theyçre starting to run water and electric farther out, and strangers are starting to build houses out of cement block instead of tar-paper and sticks. of course, even with large windows and ceiling fans, theyçre installing window air conditioners in these new houses, because nothing is as breezy as stick walls and palm-thatch roofs, and mostly theyçre not building things like that now. there are a few, tho, because the islanders are still aware that thereçs nothing like a breeze. but the lure of modernity hits everywhere. they all have tvs. they sit in their hammocks of an evening and watch the tube.

every room in every house has three sets of hooks on the wall. these hooks are used to string hammocks in the evening. they have beds, but thereçs nothing cooler than a hammock. and everyone uses them. i caught jim taking a nap in one the other day, and 8year old jamie insists on sleeping in one.

la comida is wonderful. in cancun beach it was all expensive resort cuisine, which i find boring. in cuidad cancun it was regional. we chose a vera cruz restaurant in mercado 28 and had huevos mexicanos and some great garlic soup and black beans con arroz and cerveza mas fina. jay persuaded everyone to take a taste of his omelette de langostine so that we would be able to tell the difference between fresh lobster and lobster just now dragged from the sea, like we would be eating in holbox. just now lobster is sweet, thatçs the difference.

so, the farther away we got from the tourists, the better the food got. while weçve been here on the island, weçve been eating at the tiaçs place. tia cooks fish that tio just caught, they make lobster salad, lobster ceviche, lobster scrambled eggs. the kids wonçt eat anything, and cry and whine for macaroni and cheese, and the only solution for that is to let them starve, so thereçs a little of the ordeal around every meal, but the oldest one has come around after 3 days here, and the youngest one has promised to eat something for lunch if he can have a hotdog later. as they get older theyçll get over this. i remember being just the same.

weçre not seeing any flu here. thereçs nobody sick on the island, and altho the next state over, yucatan, has has a recent upsurge in cases, with 30-40 cases a day and 50 hospitalizations and 6 deaths. so weçre still using sanitizer and içm taking my herbs, but so far weçre pretty convinced that we had more of a chance of picking it up in the states than here in mexico. going back might be problematic, because itçs in places like airports and airplanes that the virus is spread, with that closed, air conditioned air system. but içve got masks and alcohol wipes coming out of my ass.

i was sick when i first got here, but that was because i get sick when i travel now. for the last five years or so, since i got cancer, i get sick whenever i go somewhere, and itçs because içm away from my own bed and my own routines. it takes me a couple of days to remember this and learn to cope, but for the first day or so i forget to eat lightly and sparingly, and go ahead and stuff myself with all the wonderful food.  but içve been here most of a week, and my digestion is much better, thanks.

jay and betty have property here on the island now, and in the next 5-10 years, as the kids grow up and get into college, theyçll be building here. he plans to make a restaurant, and she to make a hotel, and theyçre very entrepreneurial, as is everyone on the island, so i have no doubt theyçll do just that, and bring a new standard to the island, as bettyçs family is famous for.

itçs great. her dad was one of the only people to leave the island, and he is a very sophisticated world traveller. so he came back and built the first cement house for his mother, and so they had the first store on the island. and every cousin and every tia and tio are also entrepreneurial, so theyçve got the only gas station, a bunch of tiny hotels and restaurants, and one cousin is poised to become fly-fishing king of the island. the youngest member of the family has just opened a little hot dog stand, and the islanders and tourists alike are lining her pockets. she dreams of opening up a restaurant upstairs from tiaçs shop, and she will no doubt do very well.

you expect islanders to be all about mañana. and these folks know how to relax and enjoy themselves. but they work their butts off, too.

bettyçs here, itçs comida time. weçre going. more later.

i noticed a sale today. delta. jfk to dub for 199 each way.

wow.

i”m a little out of their rule, tho. i’m not returning in 30 days.  it’d be 299.20 round trip if i was only staying a week.

wow.

from atlanta, it’s still the same old 847, and if i want to do an open jaw atl-dub ams-atl it’ll be a thousand dollars.

still. for all these months. with record losses at the airlines. if i want to go from atlanta, i’m going to do it delta’s way or nothing.

my ex used to work for delta’s data center, and we got flight benefits, reduced ticket prices, standby. those were the days.

my ex used to work for pan am back in the day. not reduced fares, free flights. in first class. but that was panam, a real gentleman.

and here i am trying not to wish ill on the airlines just to get me a lower fare. how about if the pr lady from delta were to read this and decide to help me out with buddy passes for me and my husband. i could make a very enthusiastic booster, and every one of the millions of people who read my travel blog will be favorably impressed.

i just thought i’d put that out there. i’d like a miracle or two to occur during this upcoming trip. like none of us catch swine flu. like getting a great deal and a free upgrade to first.

the deal i can get being outside their sale dates is this. 488 for jim, 588 for me. from jfk. which leaves atl-jfk round trip (not to mention dub-ams rt). i checked airtran and usair and it was over 200 for the rt.

that’s 700 for jim and 800 for me. going thru new york.

jim won’t go thru new york to save a hundred dollars. he won’t think of it for under 300 savings apiece.

so fine. we’ll go nonstop delta. no skin off my ass. i like flying delta. i’d like it even better with a first class upgrade.

i once let the ticket agents switch me from my planned flight thru jfk to a nonstop home because they were overbooked. i was kind, especially when they offered to upgrade me as well. except that they didn’t get around to it, because things were a little crazy, and who am i to push.

i’ll keep checking out the fares. i’m not ready yet. it’s the beginning of july and i’ve still got august and september to go before i leave. surely there’ll be last minute sales. but boy is it an antsy thing. like watching the spread of swine flu.

i’m starting to get nervous. the prices are rising. see, i’m waiting for swine flu to really hit and all the fares to plummet at the last minute…

on the other hand, aer lingus, if i want to go atl-bos-dub rt will give it to me right now for 564. but i have to get to boston.

air tran will do it for 254. that’s 818. not much different from the delta flights that go thru another city first.

still no deals. i’ll keep checking.

we’re going to cancun next week. sunday, the 5th of july. jim and i are going with jim’s son, his wife and their two kids.

of course i have to mention, since nobody’s hearing anything at all in the press these days, that there’s swine flu in mexco. in fact, yucatan, which is the next state over from quintana roo, is currently the leader in new cases of swine flu.

Swine flu cases spike in 2 Mexican states
Associated Press
2009-06-26 11:07 AM

Mexican health officials say swine flu cases have spiked in the southern states of Yucatan and Chiapas prompting authorities to start the summer break weeks early.

The Health Department says that confirmed infections spiked by 25 percent in each state this week. In Yucatan, cases went from 683 to 913 and in Chiapas from 492 to 657.

Department spokesman Carlos Olmos says Mexico’s epidemic is under control and that the infections in Yucatan and Chiapas have been mainly at schools.

Officials in Yucatan said summer break started Wednesday, three weeks ahead of schedule. In Chiapas, the break would start 10 days early on July 4.

The statement Thursday says 9,028 people have been infected with swine flu resulting in 119 deaths.

evidently the numbers peaked in quintana roo in early june (i can’t find where i read that. some swine flu forum)

anyway, just in case, i’ve bought hand sanitizers to pack, along with echinacea, elderberry and a homeopathic flu remedy. these go along with the pepto bismol, sting-stop, bandaids and sunscreen you’d automatically take to the beach in mexico.

i’m going to sam’s club for the masks, because they’re 2/$6 at cvs, and at sam’s they’re 20 for $10. i’m bringing them just in case there are sick people on the plane. the air is recycled over and over in planes, and flu virus is airborne in droplets of hacked up snot that willingly go thru the ventilation system of a plane flying for 2 or 3 hours.

i look and act like a nut. it’s okay, somebody has to. at least i’ll have fever reducers and cough syrup and expectorant when somebody starts feeling bad. and if i don’t need them they’ll stay at the bottom of my bag. well, fine, the 2/3 of my bag. it’s getting to be rather a long list.

of course, i don’t really expect to see bad flu until the fall, when it goes around again. and besides, we figure we’ve already had something that came around right before easter.  plus, jim and i are old, so we’re more immune, altho kinda frail.

i went looking for more discount fares, this time at wholesale-flights.com. they gave me 439 for the entire multileg trip atl-dub and ams-atl.

this sounded suspicious, so i checked them out, and they’re not recommended at all. so there. oh well.

so i looked further, and found 775 for the same route on 1800flyeurope. stops in paris degaulle. hmmm, we could delay our travel a day and go to the louvre…

they won’t say which airline, but sounds like airfrance to me.

ooh. i figure, as long as i’m stopping in paris, i might as well layover. but it would cost more. oh well.

i might well call them back when i make up my mind. they’re competitive, and they’re helping, which is good.

travelocity is giving me atl-dub from 1 oct to 9 nov for 802.

the thing that bothers me is that when it shows the available dates for the fall sale fares, they’re not available when i’m flying, and i’m wondering what happened to all the discount fares all of a sudden.

i read that ryanair is cutting back flights, and delta is cutting back flights,  and so is aer lingus. some of the cutbacks look like they’re immediate, some are for the winter.

i have to get flight insurance that covers pandemic flu outbreaks. i’ve read up on travelocity’s insurance partner and don’t want to use them.

on the other hand, what’s the likelihood that the whole trip will be canceled? i’m waiting until the last minute to buy my tickets, i can’t commit before then because i can’t know. but this next couple of weeks will tell, especially in great britain, where cases are spiraling up and they’ve had their first death.

here’s what has me so worried. this is a simple plot of the official swine flu death numbers, which as everybody knows are low by orders of magnitude. as you can see, it’s an exponential curve, with case numbers doubling every couple of days. and the swine flu has been outbroken for two months now, since the middle of april. and it’s just beginning to take off in places like england, australia, manitoba, boston, chile.

i can add.

this chart came from a flu forum.

from an ireland travel guide website:

Airlines flying to Ireland from North America

* Aer Lingus
* American Airlines
* Continental Airlines
* Delta Airlines Inc
* United Airways
* US Airways

so we’ll just check out these various airlines and see what they’re offering for the fall.

aer lingus 572.70. FROM jfk (atl-jfk 279) = 852
american airlines 820.60 thru ord
continental 812 thru ewr (newark)
delta 743.20 w/stop in jfk or nonstop 854
united 890 thru ord
us air 852 thru both phl and crt (a day later in and out)
consolidators 970 thru iad and lhr

well, that’s no good at all. there’s not a sale among the bunch for these dates. and we might as well go nonstop for the price. the best we can do is save a hundred bucks by going thru jfk. this sucks.

my husband’s son’s wife’s father’s people come from isla holbox, mexico, an island on the yucatan peninsula just north of cancun. my husband’s son and his wife have bought property and are planning to build there. we’ve just been invited to go spend a week there and see everything.

so we’ll be flying from atlanta to cancun next sunday, july 5th, taking a bus to isla holbox on monday, and coming back for the flight out the following sunday.

too cool. since i figure we’ve already had swine flu when it came thru atlanta unannounced right before easter, i figure we’ll be okay in mexico. don’t know about the husband’s son’s family, tho. anyway.

here’s a link to the island so you can read up. there are internet cafes on isla holbox, so i figure i can write here, from there.