Travel Postcard: Costa Azul, Mexico

Two priceless memories in one.

You know how, when you go on a short vacation, you always hope you’ll have at least one brilliant, shining experience that you can bring back to share with your friends? When I spent a week in Costa Azul (the “Blue Coast”), in Mexico, I came back with two.

The trip was in the mid-80s with a women’s travel outfit, now sadly defunct, but they really knew how to have a good time. Every day, there were two or three choices of excursions, and if you wanted a quiet day on the beach, there was food on offer all day, and they’d bring it out to your beach chair.

One day, I signed up for a little boat ride out to an island where the blue-footed boobies lived, but what I didn’t know was you needed some kind of underwater shoes so you could walk on the sharp rocks of the island. I decided to stay on the boat, and the crew consoled me by telling me that I could get some decent fish pics if I swam ahead of the boat, then floated back in the light current. I took a number of forgettable photos of gorgeous fish that all looked blue when developed, until I ran out of underwater film. Then I just coasted, looking down awkwardly through my rented mask.

I guess, because I wasn’t moving, I looked nonthreatening, because suddenly I was surrounded by thousands of sardines. I twitched upright in surprise, and they moved away from me a bit, but that only meant I was in the quiet eye of a sardine hurricane that rotated around me in a tall column as high and low and wide as I could see.

Then the current brought us back to the boat, they split on either side of it and, and as quickly as they had come, they were gone. But for one exquisite moment, I was one with the sea.

A couple of days later, while enjoying some mango rum concoction on the beach just after sunset, I suddenly heard my friends gasping in excitement. I wandered over to where they were playing in the waves, and saw that the water was glowing electric blue whenever they moved! So this was why it was called Costa Azul!

I ran toward them, and my feet left blue footsteps behind me! When I stepped into the warm water and moved my hand through the waves, light trails followed. It was like painting with a neon wand. I’ve been fascinated with bioluminescence ever since.

Bonus memory: Chocolate brownies to die for. They were called “besos,” which means kisses. They had a warm, gooey middle like a lava cake, and I still crave them, decades later.