Here, lizard, lizard

So Cancun was TOTALLY fabulous. As you can imagine. White sandy beaches. Turquoise and jade green water. Marvelous food.

Well. When you eat HERE, all your food tastes good.

Oceanside restaurant a Zoetry Paraiso de la Bonita, Riveria Maya


And when you wake up to a view like this?

View from a suite at Fiesta Americana Grand Coral Beach, Punta Cancun


Every morning is filled with endless joy.

And when you have your own PRIVATE POOL to swim in?

Plunge pool outside suite at Zoetry Paraiso de la Bonita, Riveria Maya


Please. Could life GET any better?

There was just one TINY problem. Actually. Not so tiny.

Lizards. Iguanas to be exact.

When we first arrived at our resort in Riviera Maya, my new best friend, Debbie, and I were strolling down the path to our rooms. Surrounded by lush jungle vegetation and huge, bright colored flowers. The twitter and caw of the jungle birds. The warm Caribbean sun bathed our faces and the purr of the surf filled the air and CRAP! What was that? Something just ran across the path in front of us. There may have been some profanities uttered. There may have been some dancing around. In fact. There may have been some actual shrieking.

It disappeared into the jungle. And we calmed down. One lizard. Not that big. How bad could this be? It would be FINE. Then I came out of the room to go to lunch and saw him.

As you can see, he was very arrogant. If he could have spoken, it would have been something like "Hey, beyotch. You EYEBALLING ME? Who LIVES HERE? I do. That's who. Don't you be EYEBALLING ME. Because you know what. I know HOW TO GET IN YOUR ROOM. And I can run ACROSS YOUR FEET when you get up at night to go to the bathroom".

Not that this ever happened. However. It was my worst nightmare. As you can see, I paused long enough to take his picture and I kept reassuring myself that he's not that big. There's probably not that many of them.

And then.

I was walking back to the room. And I saw him. He was not in a windowsill. Because he would not have FIT IN A WINDOWSILL. He was stretched across the sidewalk. Now, I am here to tell you that I do not have a picture of him. Because it is difficult to take a picture when you are frantically backing up, sweating and loudly screaming. But I managed to find a picture online just to give you an idea of how big he was.

He did not look at me. He did not need to look at me. Because he knew the power that was him. And he knew that I was backing up. And I would not bother him.

Then we were lolling out by the pool one morning. And really? I think "lolling" is a great word. Don't you? Everyone should loll on their vacations. So we were lolling in our lounge chairs and we heard a rustle in the grass and we turned around and we saw this.



That? Oh, that's an iguana TEARING INTO A BABY BIRD. Which luckily was already dead. I think. He whipped his head back and forth and gave us the evil eye the whole time he was gulping that thing down. And we all went EEEEEEWWWWWWWWW!!

The worst story I heard all week was when the person in charge of catering found out how skeeved I was by the iguanas and laughingly told us that they would not hurt you (theoretically, I knew this but it did not help) and shared a story about how she was meeting with a group in the oceanside restaurant and felt something scratch her leg (wait for it) and looked down and an iguana was walking by, brushing her leg. AAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!

You better believe I kept my eyes open in that restaurant the rest of the week. It did not keep me from eating. Not REMOTELY. But I kept my eyes open.

The very last morning after breakfast, I headed back to my room to finish packing and get ready to leave. On the path away from the restaurant sat a huge iguana, lazing in the sun. He filled the entire sidewalk. He glanced up at me knowingly and gave me a lazy, smart ass grin. OK. Maybe that was my imagination.

But I still found another route to my room.

Wouldn't you?