Tourist towns can feel a bit like social experiments. The constant cycling in of new people leaves the distinct impression of a life in flux.
Hostel inhabiters, backpacking brigades, and globetrotting gurus wander through these microcosmic facades of entire nations with a wanton openness to everything. In moments, it all feels like a festival.
French Canadians intermingle with the Dutch, Spanish, Americans, Finns, and Irish alike in delightful defiance of language barriers. My lack of comprehension hardly holds me back. When the music is loud enough and alcohol is consumed enough, charades and laughter become our common dialect.
The towns are almost invariably brighter versions of the countries they represent. They wear vibrant faces to the come-and-go masses of camera-clad solo sojourners who drift their way between destinations.
Bacalar, Mexico is one such town. Fixed at the lower outskirts of the third-world-adjacent nation, it’s a town that’s cultivated a feeling of safety that can’t always be found within the country.
The armed military men stationed at certain corners are a somewhat jarring presence for many foreigners. As an American, though, maybe I’m just too desensitized to the idea of mass murder machines in the hands of civilians to be truly perturbed by the sight. Some of my Canadian acquaintances have taken less well to the idea of semi-automatic weapons in the hands of camouflaged clubgoers.
Hostels house wandering alcoholics in search of thrills. The men and women behind the front desk command armadas of shuttles, sailboats, and water taxis with quick phone calls. Within minutes, taxi drivers show up to escort the drunken tourists to their chosen activities.
QR codes seem to get you everything in this town from Wi-Fi passwords to menus to instantaneous WhatsApp group initiations. We live in an increasingly digital world, and it’s often within these unfamiliar towns that its sting can most keenly be felt. Without dependable cellphone service, it’s easy to start feeling lost in a strange place. Google Maps and Google Translate are tools it’s challenging to live without when we’re not fluent in the language of the land.
Security cameras line the compound-like structure in which I’m staying. They embroider the cement ceilings in defined intervals. The surveillance gives guests both a feeling of security and the distinct impression of a temporary stay in an over-partied police state.
Outside of the hostel, questionably intentioned officers are never further from sight than passed-out party-goers from prior nights. I’ve been given my share of warnings about avoiding contact with the bribe-taking coppers at all costs.
Waking up Sunday morning, I emerge from the door to our Japanese-styled pods to find a man sleeping on the concrete outside the room. He doesn’t even have a pillow. He lies there snoring as rain spatters against the compound’s floor. The thick drops make diagonal voyages between the towering columns of the open-concept construction. They slowly accumulate into a rolling puddle along the rock-hard floor and rouse awake the thoroughly partied German. He groans a defeated groan.
“Are you okay?” I ask, concerned.
“Urgghawaza,” he musters in a dialect I haven’t yet heard in my time in the rapidly self-repopulating town. Travelers from around the world amidst widely varied excursions come through on conveyor belts and leave with burritos. The moistened man before me is wearing what appears to be the remnants of a greasy taco smeared indelicately around the contours of his lips.
He rises from the wet concrete with another non-committal, linguistically-liminal grunt. With a labored stretch and agonized sigh, he wanders free into a misty, humid dawn.
An hour later finds me with a coffee in hand as rain cascades into the pool beside me. A million micro ripples dance along the surface of the chlorinated waters. I’m seated at a glossy wooden table beneath an awning awaiting hotcakes.
The overly inebriated stranger has ended up draped across a jelly bean-shaped pillow along the outskirts of the swimming pool. He looks visibly bothered by the relentless incursion of little droplets, but remains too paralyzed to do much more than meekly wince at the ominous clouds above.
After another few minutes, a few sips of caffeine, and another onslaught of pouring rain, the apparently roomless man is sent into a drunken lurch for cover. He ends up seated obliviously beside me. He sits on a chair as he see-saws between the waking world and memories of whatever drug-fueled pandemonium occurred the prior night.
The dogs here are nearly as nomadic as the people. In more impoverished towns of Latin America, they wander the streets in packs, malnourished. But here, they’re well-fed and happily entertained. The perennial cycling of travelers ensures their needs are tended to.
The trio of dogs grooving along the dance floor of the local club is a clear indicator of the canine’s respected role in this lakeside town. Some lie on the floor between scintillating splotches of neon as the drunken bargoers carefully dance their way around them. More enamored guests bestow pets and pats upon the tongue-drooping ball-chasers as they lie on their backs in unremitting bliss.
Life here is at once more open and intimate than I’m used to back home, and also more transient. It rarely feels like a guarantee that the friends I make today will linger into tomorrow. Every other person I meet lives their life to the tune of detailed itineraries. Even those with the most go-with-the-flow approaches rarely remain in single places for more than a few days.
We breathe in all we can from the new places we see and then move nonchalantly on to the next. Each new locale brings with it a new palette of people to befriend and forget. We allow strangers intimately into our lives for mere moments at a time.
Often, it’s the understanding of this finite time together that makes the interactions what they are. When there’s no guarantee of a future friendship, we’re loveably pigeonholed into living in the moment and being our unshackled selves. We confide information we might conceal from our friends back home.
Each town is an opportunity for first impressions and reinvention. Each new person is a possible friend, even if one you’ll never see again come the following day. While tourist towns aren’t always the best way to experience a new country, they can be among the best ways to meet like-minded travelers.
It’s true that culture feels less concrete when there’s a constant carousel of people coming and going. But oftentimes, it’s these fleeting connections we make that are among the most meaningful. In the absence of constancy, we wear our entire personalities on our sleeves. When the agendas of our tomorrows are malleable and uncertain, we’re more present in each moment.