A Respite From Winter

by Mike Dang and Meaghan OConnell

Mike: Meaghan you went on vacation for a little bit — when was this planned and how did you decide where to go?

Meaghan: Yes! I went to Tulum, Mexico from Saturday to Wednesday night. Um, I’m not allowed to say “babymoon” but Dustin and I wanted to take a vacation before we had a kid. So we debated for a while — we were going to go to San Francisco because neither of us have been there and we have friends we could stay with, then one day I was like, THIS IS OUR LAST VACATION EVER and we were both like, ‘Oh god we have to go somewhere more exciting’?? But then I am pregnant and wouldn’t be able to do all the fun things places, so we decided to do the in-between, kind of exciting but also relaxing and not-too-far or too scary thing.

Mike: And you decided on Tulum!

Meaghan: Yes, and we bought flights and a hotel and a rental car probably a month before we left.

Mike: Was it expensive?

Meaghan: Ha! Not that bad! Flights were $400 each, so expensive, but not that much more than say San Francisco.

The hotel was $184/night which is more than we usually spend on hotels and a lot for Mexico, but not a lot considering it was on a cliff on the beach and had like, a hanging bed and an outdoor bathtub. And the car was supposed to be $8/day, $120 including all the fees, but we got there and HOO BOY. They get you on the insurance. We ended up paying $375 to rent a car for four days, which I don’t think was worth it but we just ate it. The guy wanted to put a $2,500 hold on our credit card, which is an amount of credit neither of us has, so Dustin was like, “That’s hilarious! And not going to happen!” Then suddenly the thrifty rental car guy started writing new numbers on a piece of paper and literally sliding them across the counter.

Mike: What, that is amazing. What did Dustin do?

Meaghan: Ha, yeah! He looked at me and we shrugged and I was like, “Well what else can we do?!” (it was 11 p.m. and I hadn’t eaten so the thought of ‘shopping around’ at car rental places felt…challenging). So we got in the car and drove to Tulum and missed the turn off to our hotel, then got to the hotel and there was only a guard there who didn’t speak English, and no electricity, so we sat there with flashlights speaking our respective languages and shrugging until he led us in the dark to our cabana and then I had a panic attack and cried! But after that everything was amazing!

Mike: Oh wow. Do you or Dustin speak Spanish?

Meaghan: Um, I studied it for a few years in high school but failed to brush up before we went, so I would kind of remember words and phrases about half an hour after I needed them. And Dustin doesn’t speak it at all. So that was…dumb of me, but we got by.

Mike: I also studied it in high school and college and didn’t use it for a while, and then I was in a situation where I was talking to someone who only spoke Spanish, and magically, it just started flowing out, hah.

Meaghan: I like to think if I could have drank that would have happened, but alas. I kept remembering Italian.

Mike: Did you make plans on what you were going to do before you left? Or was it a casual, “let’s just do whatever we want when we get there” situation?

Meaghan: We made no plans! Which I kind of freaked out about but eventually embraced. We would basically wake up, get breakfast, sit on the beach, and do a thing if we felt like it. Basically meals were our big events for the day, ha. We ended up visiting some ruins one day and going snorkeling another day. Then just ate a lot of tacos and popsicles and sat on the beach.

Mike: Um, that sounds like A DREAM. Especially since we have been in this long, cold winter.

Meaghan: Ha, yeah I am not normally the “relaxing vacation” type but I would definitely recommend it! Um, yes when we were about to leave to come back to New York I was like, “Wow we should try to go where it’s warm EVERY winter!” Then realized that is a thing people do.

Mike: The lucky ones, yes.

Meaghan: We went from like 85 degrees to 18 degrees — standing in that taxi line at Laguardia Airport was quite a welcome back.

Mike: And now it’s supposed to snow again on Monday.

Meaghan: I can’t! I had my sights on February being over but it’s March and it’s still horrible! And Daylight Saving’s Time is coming on March 9th but according to the 10-day forecast it will still be terrible and not the beginning of a new life I previously assumed.

Mike: We should get a timeshare next winter and just skip the cold altogether, hah.

Meaghan: Omg. Everyone refresh this page a few times so we can get some ad revenue up in here.

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