Mexico: Early 1980s

Somewhere around 1982, Karen and I booked a package holiday to the then fairly new resort at Cancun, Mexico. The place was't really our style, but it was a cheap package and we were intrigued by the nearby Mayan temple ruins, which we researched before we left. 

As I remember, we didn't spend a lot of time at the hotel, which had only recently been built, or in Cancun. There was nothing much in the town at that point anyway. I do remember a couple of restaurant meals we had there. One was in a part of town we sought out because it was where actual Mexicans lived. It was the kind of snacky Mexican food we were familiar with from home: tacos and the like. Another was in the tourist zone and a little more upscale. I had a mole chicken, the typical Yucatecan dish flavoured with chocolate. I didn't like it much and I think I was sick from it the next day. 

The phrase book Karen is reading is one we're pretty sure we only threw out about six months ago. Karen thinks it was one she got in the 1970s.

Today, we'd never go near Cancun. By reputation, it's the tawdriest of tawdry tourist traps with a mass of high-rises crowded along the coast, attracting, most famously, spring-breakers. The tourist blight has apparently spread all along the peninsula's west coast. It's now, laughably, called the Mayan Riviera. We did go back to the Yucatan in the 1990s, taking a 13-year-old Caitlin to some of the places we'd enjoyed on this trip. But we didn't go near Cancun.

On that first trip, we rented a car - whether it was for the entire week, I can't remember, but probably was - and drove to the archaelogical sites. We also drove one day all the way to Mérida, an interesting colonial town about three hours away. When we went back in the 1990s, we stayed near Mérida. I don't remember us staying overnight there the first time, so that would have been a long day. 

On another day, Karen reminds me, we went to Isla Mujeres, which is very close to Cancun. I can't think why we did. It involved going on a boat - not one of Karen's favourite things - and it was and is mainly known as a great place for snorkeling. We don't, and didn't on that occasion, snorkel.

The prints from which I scanned these images were in an album that also included pictures from some of our trips in the 1970s. Since the pages they're on, each holding four 4x6-inch prints, are a larger format than the binder itself, the pages were clearly added much later. If the pictures were arranged in any order, I've long forgotten what the order was. There are a few (above) clearly taken at the resort, but the rest were taken on various excursions to archaeological sites. There are pictures from visits on at least three different days as Karen appears in three different outfits. I'm pretty sure the first one we went to, and the one we remember as being most impressive, was Tulum.

The pictures above I have tentatively identified as being at Tulum, mainly because I remember parts of that site having a jungle-y feel. But Tulum is in fact right on the coast. Pictures on the Internet show parts of it being at the water's edge; none of mine do. So who knows?

The rest, I'm not sure about. I don't think we went to Chichen Itza, the biggest and most famous of the Mexican Mayan sites. I'm pretty sure I remember that we went to that one for the first time when we went back in the 1990s with Caitlin. And yet, Chichen Itza is not far off the route we took from Cancun to Mérida (see map above). The other significant one we probably went to is Cobá - just based on its proximity to Cancun and Tulum. But which of the pictures below are from Cobá, if any, I have no idea.

I've arranged the pictures in three groups. In one, Karen appears, wearing cream-coloured linen trousers and a peach t-shirt. In another, she's wearing dark trousers and a white blouse. In the third group, she doesn't appear, so I have no idea.

I have a clear memory of taking the last one. I made Karen go and sit under that lovely yellow flowering tree - don't know what it is. She went, but was very nervous about the loud buzzing of bees in the branches above. Were they Mexican killer bees? She's looking up in some alarm, wanting to make sure they aren't coming for her. In the first one of the group above, Karen is standing next to a ubiquitous type of Mayan carving, of a reclining figure with a bowl in its belly. It's called a chacmool. We brought home a small ceramic chacmool as a souvenir.

And the rest.

This next, and last, picture was taken, I think, on the road between Cancun and Mérida. It shows a Mexican peasant - a campesino - in traditional garb walking along the side of the highway. In the background, you can see a kid with a bicycle by a thatched-roof adobe house.

A word about the scanning, and post-processing. I used a very inexpensive Epson all-in-one device, scanning at 600 dpi (dots per inch) at the original size - in this case 4x6 inches. Using such an inexpensive device obviously limits the quality of the output, but the pictures weren't very high-quality to begin with, taken, I think, with ten-year-old Pentax SLR equipped with a 55mm lens. 

Once they were digitized, I ran them through a number of processes in Photoshop to correct colour, contrast, "sharpening" (increasing the contrast between the pixels on either side of a perimeter between light and dark areas, which gives the appearance of greater sharpness). Most also needed to be patched or touched up where the emulsion had chipped off the original prints, or they'd been scratched or stained. This latter process can be time consuming, even with the marvelous tools Photoshop provides.