I had just landed on a Mexicana de Aviación direct flight from Los Angeles. I was thirty years old, yet this was my first trip alone that did not involve going “home” to Cleveland or going back and forth from Cleveland to college. The night was much darker than in a U.S. city, and the humid heat told me I was in the tropics. As the taxi sped to the center of town, we passed houses where I saw families seated at dinner in the dim light.

We passed a huge Coca Cola bottling plant that I later learned was the largest employer in the city.

The taxi pulled up to the Hotel Mérida on Calle 60 and I checked in. As soon as I dropped off my luggage, I took a walk down to the Plaza Grande and stopped in at several of the shops. I had a delicious meal at the Restaurant Express of Cochinita Pibil with a Cervéza Carta Clara.

Returning to my room, I finally bedded down for the night; but I couldn’t sleep. Several times, I rose from bed and looked out at the street from my ninth floor room at the Optica Rejón and other shops across the street, and a very different kind of foot traffic than I ever experienced in the States. Several times, I would stare at a Maya pedestrian dressed in the typical whites; and, knowing he was being watched, he would look up at me directly. How did he do that?

Eventually, I was able to calm down and get to sleep. Nonetheless I was up early the next morning, eager to acquaint myself with the city before branching out and visiting the Maya ruins on my schedule. I showed up at a local travel agency called Turistica Yucateca which was run by a helpful woman who didn’t know a word of English. Somehow I managed to book two trips with her using the same guide (Manuel Quinónes Moréno) who drove his own car.

The first trip was to the ruins of Dzibilchaltun just north of Mérida. The second was to the ruins of Acanceh and Mayapán, On my own, I managed to get to Uxmal and Chichén Itzá.

I was in seventh heaven. Almost nothing in this life had given me as much pleasure as that first trip on my own. As much as I have enjoyed all my journeys, that one was always special to me. It was the start of my travels. And now, as I approach the age of eighty, I still have the travel bug.