Cabo Dive

Shawn, John and I went diving in Cabo with some of the JARs we took classes with: Cecelia, Greg and Kay. Cabo is a cool place to dive because the bottom is only about 20 feet deep but then drops off thousands of feet. Looking down the slope is like looking into the night sky without stars. Not the best visibility this day, but the guy at Cabo Deep Blue treated us well and we had a great time.

Kay and I

The people you meet!

We meet a lot of cool people on the ship. Our show is pretty well received and it’s great to receive such awesome feedback. Two cruises ago, a guy came to our lecture and dropped some very nice compliments my way and said that he had taken some improv class with Robin Williams and John Ritter. I recognized him from somewhere, but I couldn’t remember where, and I didn’t want to bother him about it on his vacation.

Later on in the cruise, he comes up to me in the gym to tell me the improv teacher’s name, and I couldn’t resist anymore so I asked where I knew him from. “CHiPs,” he says. He played the goofy cop on the show. I told how much I dug that show as a kid. I wanted to be a cop, for God’s sake. Hilarious. What a nice guy, too. I met his wife, his daughter, all very cool.

Tonight, this very nice guy comes up talks about the show, how fun it is to travel, and he says: “Now I’m a little older than you guys, but long ago, I got a letter from a guy named Lyndon Johnson so I got to travel for a couple years. Have you heard of a guy called chay gwaveera?”

Yes, we replied.

“Well, he’s dead now. I can tell you, he is definitely dead. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”

Once that sank in, he followed by saying, “You know, today we walked around Acapulco and saw a lot of poverty. It’s a shame. And it’s a shame that the world can’t live together more peacefully.”

I couldn’t help but feel he was right. I mean, this guy had done his part, he’d killed Che Guavara.

Feliz Cumpleanos.

Every time we’re in Zihuatenejo, we go to the same restaurant for lunch, what we call “Monkey’s.” Monkey, or Chango, is our usual waiter, and it’s not our nickname. He got his moniker from climbing palm trees and grabbing coconuts at night. He calls his two kids Money 1 and Monkey 2. Every week, we go see him and have some lunch. “Porque no?” he’ll often say after you order. When he sees us coming up the path, he’ll hide behind a tree or a plant and try to scare us. It’s becoming a bit of a friendship.

Today when we came for lunch, he said he had something for us. He gave us all baby blue bags, the cover a little boy made out of foam pieces. Inside the bags was an assortment of Mexican candies and hot sauce packets. They were from Monkey 2’s birthday just a few days before, and the party Monkey had excitedly talked to us about the week before. I was really touched by the whole thing.