10. White women should never, ever wear their hair in corn rows.9. Nothing feels better at the end of a hot day than cold, clean sheets.
8. Yoga is best done outside, toward dusk, looking out at the Caribbean, with a cool breeze blowing and a large iguana or two hanging out nearby.
7. Pilates is a very intense workout, and far less fruity than its ridiculous name would suggest.
6. French women have next to no compunction about exposing their breasts to a brutal mid-day sun and their lungs to pack upon pack of cigarettes.
5. My daughter (and this is very recent) enjoys few things as much as sitting by herself absorbed in a book. I find this unbearably adorable. On this trip: Ramona the Pest and Mr. Popper's Penguins.
4. Mexican theme parks will not protect you from your own idiocy. It's up to you not to fall down precipitous stone stairs, tumble into the manatee tank, or curiously cross the small moat to angry spider monkey island. "Guard rails? ... We don't need no stinkin' guard rails!" [P.S. Spider monkeys are my new favorite animal, narrowly edging out the coati and the tapir, which I also got to see up close]3. After about day five, the Club Med experience begins to lose its capacity to relax, the way that socks, after a while, lose their elasticity and just sort of hang there on your ankles.
2. The Sheltering Sky is a novel best read in an impoverished country while being waited on hand and foot by natives whose language you don't speak.
1. The sight of a ten-foot crocodile gliding slowly in your direction across the surface of a still lagoon at twilight is pretty fucking awesome.
