The Mexican Lost and Found

We were droopy. Sunburned a bit from a sojourn to Sisal the day before. Still exuding a hint of cervezas from our pores from the night before that. My wife suggested something less than a plan. Take a nap, and then go to La Ermita barrio again on a whim.

A plan would have been deadly. It would have killed and stuffed our evening, and set it out to frighten off the crows of amusement. Whims are underrated. They’re alive. They hum. We only knew one destination in that part of town: Take us to the La Ermita Cantina, senor, and don’t spare the horses, or the hydrocarbons, or the electrons, or whatever.

The sun had retired for the evening. It still had enough oomph to spread a marmalade backdrop for the palms and the boxy houses on the horizon. It was Saturday night, and the street was jammed. We’d visited in the heat of the afternoon once, and the sidewalks had been deserted. The locals know better than to wander around without a mission during the open oven door of midday. Even with the sun fading fast, it was ninety.

It was… a cantina. No other word can describe hullabaloo like that. Barroom, nightspot, taproom, bucket of blood; a cantina is different than all other forms of local enclosed benders. It appeared that every single inhabitant of the La Ermita barrio was present and accounted for in there, and they had a three-drink head start. The manager met us at the door, wearing a shirt that exclaimed in Spanish that he could speak additional languages depending on how many drinks he had in him. There wasn’t an inch to spare in there, or a centimeter I should say, because they measure things in soccer in Mexico. He offered what he had: You can share a table.

It was that kind of place. We joined a couple already seated at a table for four, and were met with a buenas noches and no ill will. We’re American. This confused us a little. Being deposited at a half-filled table would have precipitated a one-star review on Yelp, or maybe a fistfight back home. Here it was just another Saturday night. There were people on every horizontal surface, and if they could have figured out how to hang people on the wall, I think they would have done it.

Here’s where the bosh comes in. If you read online reviews, and influencer crapola about Merida, Mexico, you’ll hear glowing encomiums for this cantina, urging all their readers to visit the place. They all have a very shallow bag of adjectives. Everything is amazing, whether it is or not, and this cantina is no exception.

Except that it is. I’m here to tell you that I was amazed. In the real sense of the word, not over a middling meal. The place dropped my jaw. It was packed and loud and lively, and it was real. A neighborhood meetup place, where everyone gathers at the end of the week without a schedule to shepherd them in. And no matter how many Instagramholes talk about the place, none of their followers go there. We were very obviously the only extranjeros in the place.

Ordering food was easy. I asked for a menu, which elicited a laugh. They had one thing on, and you could choose one of two different ways to get it. And it wasn’t, you know, amazing, but it was fine, and we chased it down the hatch with arctic beers and laughter. Then he brought la cuenta — the bill. Four beers, two plates of chicken. $260.00.

Don’t panic. Those are pesos. A peso is worth slightly less than a nickel now. Grammar school math says it was thirteen bucks. A bartender anywhere in Maine will charge you ten bucks just to glare at you before you order something. I’d say it was amazing, but I get hives using that word all the time.

We glided out into the night, and were hit right in the face with an unexplained fiesta. They’d set up shop in the square in front of the church, closed a few streets, and were partying down.

It was still ninety degrees at 9 PM. Nobody much minded, us included. After all, it’s a Barrio Magico. It’s ten degrees cooler than the afternoon, so you’re mesmerized into thinking it’s almost chilly.

Hot or not, they dance in La Ermita. The following video shows local kids. It was fun to see them walking down the street in their performance togs, and to see their parents buy them treats after they were done.

That music. I try to identify the various strains in it. The clear clarion call of the Spanish trumpet. The blattering roar of the French music hall saxophone. The twinges of oompah loompah background from the center of Europe. Mexico took them all in, and made them their own, and their children embrace them all, and  keep their traditions alive in the street before the church they were baptized in.

It struck me that Mexico is the continent’s lost and found, but nothing is lost, and everything is found. That includes my wife and me. We weren’t lost, but got found in La Ermita anyway.