He sat in the shade on a plastic stool in the morning on Calle 2, which is where the white vans called colectivos gather passengers heading to Akumal or Tulum or Cancun or other destinations up and down the Caribbean cost of Mexico.
He had a small wooden table beside him on the sidewalk. ON the table he’d arranged half-litre clear plastic bottles containing colourful liquid: naranja (orange), zanohoria (carrot); a green one which was chia, nopal (cactus), pineapple and orange; beet and grapefruit, which cost 15 pesos each. He also had aguas (waters): jamaica and oat water, for 10 pesos.
I bought a green juice and sat down on one of the two big blue coolers with plastic lids, which contained the juice on ice, and watched the morning in Mexico stream past — the glorious mixture of diesel fumes and smoke from tacos al pastor.
The gentleman’s name was Wilbert Guemes Saenz. He is 74 years old, with turquoise-green eyes and a red and craggy face crowned by a bulbous nose.
His first language is Maya.
Out of school Wilbert joined the army. After he served eight years, one day his detachment came by jeep to Playa del Carmen.
“At the time there were only 13 houses along the beach and a little church,” he said. “They were just building a road to here.”
I had just walked down Quinta Avenida, the pedestrian-only tourist street in Playa del Carmen, in the dawn when it is empty, past a riot of global tourist kitsch: Señor Frog’s official store, McCarthy’s Irish Store, Zingara swim wear, and Solaris “the ultimate sunglass selection.” Between that strip and the beach stand a line of huge hotels. I struggled to picture the hamlet in the jungle that greeted Wilbert in 1978. I thought back to my own first visit to the Yucatan, in 1983, when all you could find to eat on sleepy Isla Mujeres was conch.
“Only reason we were able to reach the place at all was that we drove jeeps, which could go anywhere,” Wilbert said. “Most people got around with horses and donkeys.” He liked Plya, and decided to stay.
“I started off fishing,” Wilbert said. “I learned how to pick up a lobster. You have to pick it up by its antennae, otherwise it curls, and the scales cut your hands.” He showed me the long-healed cuts on his big strong hands.
Wilbert left the fishery to drive a cab, after some people moved to the place. “Then I got in a terrible accident.” He lifted his left pant leg to show me a scar on his knee. “I messed up my back. I couldn’t move for six months. I can’t work much anymore. So I sell juice.”
Each morning he picks up the juice from a neighbour family in Villas del Sol, eigh kilometres east of downtown Playa. He loads the juice and ice in the coolers and loads those in a two-wheeled trailer, which he had a friend custom-weld for him, which he hooks to a ball welded to the back of his Italika motorcycle. He buzzes downtown, and sells his juice.
As we sat, early-morning Mexicans streamed by; some bought juice, some just waved and said hi.
Wilbert said his grandfather’s father had been a Spaniard.
“My grandfather only spoke Mayan,” he said. “People would look at this tall guy with blue eyes, and they couldn’t believe it.”
Wilbert’s been married three times. He had eight children with his first wife, one with No. 2, and one with No. 3. Now he is not married.
He bought a little house and lives with his youngest, Joselyn, who is 24, and who has a law degree and works in international relations.
I expressed surprise that he’d fathered a child at age 50. He looked me up and down.
“Fifty is young,” he said. “I’m 54,” I replied.
“I bet you could have two women in one day,” he said. “One in the evening, and a second one for the night.”
That’s how they do it in Playa del Carmen.