American Traveler Faces Mexican Visa Hat-Dance Fiasco, Lives to Tell About It

Mexico City, Mexico- In a turning stun of events, former Funny Farm CEO and world-reknown philanothropist Winston Hall spent an afternoon in the Mexico City airport in an unmitigated travel disaster. Hall, who inadvertently entered the country without the proper visa, was required by law to obtain one before leaving the country. According to Hall, the seemingly simple process was complicated by the fact the he was "you know, in Mexico."

According to Hall, the trouble began shortly after his flight from Cancun arrived in Mexico City. According to official reports, Hall inquired in crude but legible spanish, where to go. After receving el correr (the run around) Hall finally ended up in a bland, slightly depressing Office Number 78 deep in the catacombs of the airport.

"So I finally found this God-forsaken office, and when I did, the guy didn't understand how I possibly made it into the country with out a visa. I didn't have the heart to tell him it was the fact that his country was 20 years behind the rest of north america so I just relegated myself to the fact that it was entirely my fault. At this point, he disappeared into the back," Hall said.

That's when the trip got interesting. According to Hall, the man then asked Hall to find a copy maching and make copies of the paperwork.

"I thought it kind of silly, you know being that he was in an actual office, with things like computers and office supplies, that he would send me trapsing through the Mexico City airport to find a copy machine, for crying out loud, and not to mention an ATM to pay for the copies, but what do I know?" Hall said. "After a brief thirty minute search I found the copy machine and walked back all the way to Office Number 78 no problem."

After some delay, Hall finally received the all-important stamp which was sitting in a small wooden drawer one foot from the desk.

"The way the lady kind of non-chalantly reached in the drawer and stamped my visa made me a little sick to my stomach. It seemed like such an easy thing to do in the first place," Hall said.

After a 10 minute wind sprint to the opposite side of the terminal, Hall safely made it on his plane where he returned to the United States unscathed.

"It makes me nervous now, thinking about how I was mere steps away from torture chambers and crude thirdworld interrogation techniques...I mean, you know, I've heard things," Hall said.

According to the Mexico Immigration Office, Hall was not out of the norm. "Hall is no different, this stuff happens all the time. We just like to scare them a little," an anonymous official told The Whimsical World, speaking of Americans who accidentally do not obtain visas.

Hall is now recovering from his ordeal in an undisclosed location.

That's the story of my life...

A Day of Adventure in the Jungle

Puerto Morelos, Quintana Roo, Mexico- This world we live in is very small indeed. I discovered that my new friend Cynthia Castle not only knew about Waring but had actually been to the Comfort Little Theater which they hold across the street from my house in Waring Hall every year. Not only that, but I sat by Cynthia on the plane down unknowingly and ran into her again at a small store here in P.M. the other day. What does that mean? It means she and I had amazinlgy crossed paths three times in this world, once when she was in Waring at the same time as me, once on a plane from Austin, and once in a small Caribbean fishing village 30 km from the airport.

Bizarre.

At any rate, we are now friends and Cynthia took me and Jonathan on quite the adventure yesterday. Buried in the jungle on the Mayan peninsula are many many freshwater sinkholes, the result of underwater caves that collapsed. They are called cenotes. This particular cenote, located down a bumpy jungle road about 10 km from P.M., was largely unvisited except for one or two rowdy groups of tourists who stayed for twenty minutes each and then left.

The cenote, if you can use your imagination, is like a boy hood dream. Limestone walls surround the ice cold water on all sides and rise 10 to twenty five feet above the waters surface. The only ways in are by a ladder, a zipline, or simply jumping. It takes some nerve to jump, because it is so high. One of the jumps is 25 feet, which I of course tried, and in the process got water in and up every possible combination of places. (My left ear is still ringing today.) But how breathless and amazing it was, truly. It takes courage to jump into openness and plunge into the water, but ultimately I guess it is a metaphor for life. Sometimes you jump, sometimes it hurts, but looking back it is most certainly worth it.

I even applied my new free diving skills by retreiving a mat that had fallen from high above on the jumping platform. It was at about 15-18 feet depth and I proudly resurrected the lost mat and returned it to its proper place.

Examining the day, I can appreciate the days of Hemingway. After swimming all day, mostly just the three of us, we snacked on goat cheese, crackers and fresh fruits. Tastes, simple tastes, are exquisite when contrasted by an elaborate Swiss Family scene. Sometimes, we would sit and listen to the breeze as it whipped through the jungle canopy, leaving the sanctuary of the cenote undisturbed. Sometimes, we would drift into the caves that drew underneath the limestone walls. You could drift under them and peer out into the daylight from within the cave.

Places like where we were dont exist. Even after being there, I think I believe this.

When the day had passed, and my pulse had grown accustom to hearing nothing and seeing no one and feeling the laziness of the day, we gathered up and returned to the Colonia for the second half of our adventure.

I got to attend a backstreet Mexican political meeting in a the taxi cab drivers union building. It actually wasnt an adventure. It was intolerably boring. BUT, having the journalism background that I do, I went and learned. Basically, the town is in danger in the next twenty years of being swallowed by the tide of consumerism coming down the beach and the good folks of P.M. are worried about it, which is what the meeting was all about.

With all that said and done, we returned to Cynthias house and ate a dinner of rice and beans, which again tasted wonderful.

A hot shower and a drink at La Gioconda topped off the evening. Sadly not, though, my thoughts turn toward home. As it turns out, I somehow managed to miss the place where I was supposed to get a visa in Mexico City. (No one bothered to tell me I was supposed to do this.) So according to my friend Javier I am technically an illegal alien here. But this are minor details which I will concern myself with at the appropriate time.

And as a completely irrelevant side note, I learned recently from my good friend Kelton in Waring that the good folks who adopted Willamina (remember her?!!) named her new baby goat...you guessed it...Winston. So now I have a goat n named after me running around in the Texas Hill Country.

Este es la historia de me vida...

Working on my (Yuca)tan just because I can(cun)

Puerto Morelos, Quintana Roo, Mexico- Sadly, I have passed the halfway point of my time in the Mayan Riviera. So far, it has been a very worldly experience. I have gotten to know many of the people who consider themselves locals. This town is nicely separated from all the tourist trap resorts up the beach in Cancun. It had been interesting to say the least, to see the socio economic flow from outside of that spectrum. In fact, the Hotel Zone, which 99.5 % of the Americans who ¨go to Cancun¨ stay at is, from the actual city of Cancun a distant place, more than 3 km from the actual city. Approching the city, you can see the Hotel Zone way off in the distance. It is a place most Cancun residents simply never have a need to go to.

Several funny experiences. The other night, while visiting a downtown festival in Cancun´s El Centro, my party got caught up in a police raid and we found ourselves surrounded by police trucks and motor bikes screaming into megaphones with sirens blaring and M16´s stretched across their backs. Luckily, they were simply passing through and the dust settled leaving us all laughing...not sure as to what the hell just happened.

I have also recently discovered free diving, that is diving with only goggles and snorkel up to a depth of 20 feet. The best place to do this is below the pier here in P.M. because of the number of fish who congregate around the fishermen´s bait. The task of course is to retrieve things off the ocean floor. So far I have unearthed a sandal, some pvc pipe and a beer bottle.

Today, we are headed to a cenote, a freshwater cave, with my new friend Cynthia Castle. The jungles around this area are full of freshwater caves with clear water. Most of the best caves are not known to tourists but are open to the public. Cynthia, a relolcated cajun who now lives here, has kindly shown us around and taken us to many places we would not know about otherwise. She has a blog you should check out. Most intersting of course is the four months she spent living on the Baja of California in a palapa. (www.cynthiacastle.blogspot.com)

I will probably free dive today and take some pictures as well. If I ever find my camera chord I will upload some pictures onto the blog.

For the most part, every day is a new twist. Yesterday a squall blew in and blew billows of sand down the street tumbling trashcans and anything not ¨tide¨down. It nearly blew me off my rented bicycle. And truly, it does make you wonder what a Category 4 hurricane must be like.

And lastly, one sad/hilarous note. Jonathan and I set about in our most architectural state of mind to construct a post-modern sandcastle. We got halfway done on Wednesdayu night only to discover that on Thursday mornings they grate the beach with a tractor...dammit.

Este es la historia de me vida...

How to Stretch a Peso in Puerto Morelos, Mexico

Puerto Morelos, Quintana Roo, Mexico - Hola! Many of you who know me know I am always up a for a trip. And truthfully, those of you who know me also know I never really have enough pesos to travel. But, even more truthfully, if I only traveled when I had money I would still be twiddling my thumbs sitting in the Bee House Creek (my boyhood home) wondering what the world looked like.

Anyway, that brings me to Puerto Morelos. If you are a dollar(peso) conscious person, Puerto Morelos is the place for you. Its located halfway between Cancun and Playa Del Carmen, right on the beach. Puerto Morelos is spanish for "no gringos." Ha ha. But seriously. My best friend Jonathan decided to stay here for a month several weeks ago so I tagged along. For only $900 dollars (9000 pesos) you can rent a small house for an entire month 50 meters from the beach.

The first night we arrived we met the woman who owned the house at her bar called La Gioconda. This in itself required some faith. The cab driver took a left turn off the main road and drove off into the darkness to Puerto Morelos. Luckily, we found the woman just fine, named Florencia, from Argentina. Her sister took us to the house which we jokinly call Lapa Lapa (la palapa).

We awoke to find a small fishing village and really nothing more. Becuase Puerto Morelos is so far from Cancun and Playa del Carmen (25 Km for both) very few tourists make it this far. Because of that, the town has maintained its fishing culture. Every morning, in the predawn light, the fishermen, all tanned from years of fishing gather their nets and ropes and buckets and head off into the Caribbean dawn to fish. In the evening, they return. It is a simple ebb and flow that is easy to tap into. People don´t tend tot wear watches here.

The beaches are pristine, and for the most part during the week, completely void of people. Sundays, usually are the busiest days because the working class people have that day off only, and they swarm the beaches.

We have made many friends here already. This is a small town, and much like Waring, it is not hard to meet people. Florencia has many friends, including Javier who is one very gay Mexican. But, Javier knows everyone, and thus has become a great outlet for meeting people and seeing places that tourtists don´t. Last night, for example, Javier explained how tourists pay $25 dollars for a cab ride to Cancun when the locals take the bus...for $1.60. So, he took us to El Centro do Cancun which is basically the real Cancun. There, on a calle called Yaxchilam we dined at a resaurant called Los Arcos. I have become accustomed to being the only white person so at this point it doesn´t bother me at all. Which is good because following dinner we went to a Cuban night club...with actual Cubans. And a live band. And no white people.

But somewhere in the midst of all this, a person can become worldly if they aren´t careful. You start to think in spanish here and there and learn to count pesos and change quickly. You forget you are in a foreign country, while never forgetting that you are in the company of new friends.

I have also learned to live cheaply. There is small tienda around the corner from Lapa Lapa where you can buy three meals worth of food for two people for ten dollars. Add to that a Coke and one hour on the computer a person can get by for about seven dollars a day here...right on the beach right on the Caribbean. Or as our friend Al put it: "I live in a Corona commercial."

Being here has also opened my senses to the possiblity of a good meal. We cook beause, as I mentioned, it is much cheaper. Usually some form of eggs or potatoes, with lime and tomato and tostadas, with coffee or Coke. In the United States, it is fried or greasy or whatnot. But believe me, there is something about eating a meal on a veranda of the palapa, with the lined shadows from of the porch casting across a plate with avocado and freshly sliced tomato. Not to mention the Caribbean breeze that sofly lifts the sweat off your brow. It is a moment hard to recreate at a Wendy´s or Taco Bell, truly.

I am only here for ten days. Tomorrow my trip will be half over. If you ever desired to go somewhere far from the tourist trap, this is it. You must be willing to be flexible and be adventurous. Just to get here, we had to change flights in Mexico City and sit there for four hours. But it was all well worth it.

This afternoon´s agenda in Puerto Morelos: Eat, swim, dance. Swim. Eat some more.

Este es la historia de mi vida...

'He's Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack!' Hall Emerges from First Film Unscathed, Hungry

San Angelo, TX - At this point, I'm not sure if anyone still actually reads The Whimsical World. It fell completely by the wayside during the last three months because of time working on the feature film Mad Money in Shreveport, Louisiana. The following is short list of the coolest things that happened to me in the last three months.

- I got to help Ted Danson move when his apartment flooded late one night. He turned out to be a terribly nice guy. This was the setup for the surreal scene the next day where Ted Danson walked up to me on set and actually greeted me by name. Bizarre.

- Stood ten feet from Tom Cruise. Now, this might sound silly because I didn't actually meet him, but when I walked by him in the production office, I nearly laughed out loud. Why? Because there are three things in life I thought I would never do:

1. Walk on the moon.
2. Be President.
3. Stand ten feet from Tom Cruise.

- Shake Katie Holmes hand. Why does this matter? Because I know of approximately 1.5 trillion photographers who would hold their own mothers ransom to get that close to her. hee hee.

- See the film making process. Absolutely intriguing. I had no idea how big a logistical feat it is to actually film one movie. Imagine a circus, but a circus that is filming a movie. Yes yes, that's it pretty much.

- Being an extra. I got to play two roles in a feature film also filming in Shreveport. It was a 1930s period piece called The Pardon. I was an extra, which basically means you don't matter at all, and were a giant meteor to land on your head, the director would be more upset about the fact that she would have to find another extra. The neatest part of this experience though was seeing how it works on the other side of the camera. Lights, lights, and more lights!!

- Experiencing 65-70 hour work weeks. One word: YUCK.

- Getting my name in the credits. How do I know this? Because I placed the final credits in the wrap binder that goes back to California. Unless someone very mean removes my name from the list, I will be able to go to a theater and see my name in the credits right between the garbage man and the director's dog Hoover.

Now that I have more free time, I hope to publish some blogs more often. I am actually sitting in my underwear drinking a Dr. Pepper, so life seems to be getting back to normal. Until next time...

That's the story of my life...