No Crowds? No Rush? In Mexico, No Problemo

Davison Collins leads birding and snorkeling eco-tours for visitors to La Manzanilla who've had their fill of relaxation. (M.L. Lyke)

I've also kayak-surfed with Collins into a lagoon choked with red mangrove. The vegetation was so thick, the gnarled roots so entwined, that only solitary sun rays peeked through to light the milk-chocolate water. It was spooky-silent, a desperate, decomposing, dreamy waterscape that suggested the beginnings of time.

Whatever that was.

I've lost track of it after every one of these mad exertions, returning to La Manzanilla to settle back in my beachside chair and stare for hours at the mini-curl of surf, ice cubes melting in my Cuba Libre, skin glowing, mind blank, system on zero.

"Nice," I said to my musician friend at day's end. She nodded. We'd gone from complex sentence structures to simple, one-syllable words.

In front of us, the sun went yellow to orange, and bloated as it touched the horizon. Fishermen waded chest-deep into the water with their nets, teens rolled soccer balls up their legs and off their heads, and sailing dinghies came in on a shush of swell.

Near us, a girl spread her arms and kicked at the water, throwing orange diamonds in the air. A thick woman -- her mother? -- sat at the tide line, her wet dress frilling and unfrilling around her in the surge of sea foam. Her face was blank, not a muscle stirring.

I knew that feeling. It was the feeling of doing absolutely nothing.

Nothing never looked so good.

"A toast?" I asked my friend as the sun finally slid beneath the blue divide. We air-clinked our glasses in salute. It was simply too much effort to get up and reach across the table. We were two grown girls in slo-mo, going nowhere, totally sand-sucked.

M.L. Lyke last wrote for Travel about deep-sea fishing in British Columbia.