Shittin' in High Cotton

Presently I am in Tulum, Mexico, where I have been for the last week ago. It's a beautiful area, with white sand beaches and warm, impossibly blue Carribbean waters. While only two hours south of Cancun, Tulum's proximity to the resort-giantess has surprisingly not had much of an impact. Well, there are no Mcdonalds here anyway. Apparently the place gets very busy later on in the winter, but right now the only tourists walking around are of the sturdier breed who prefer a backpack over a suitcase.

Anyway, just because they are a backpacker doesn't mean they cannot be cute and undeserving of my (often pitiful) efforts to impress. On the first day at the beach I noticed simultaneously two things, first that there were a number of palm trees with great looking coconuts hanging from there fronds merely feet away, and second that a number of the attractive girls sharing the beach with me all wanted to drink coconut milk and eat coconut meat on the beach. I slowly put the two together and realized what I had to do. If I had a superman cape I would have donned it, and maybe announced that I, Joel Hedges, was there to save the day. I, of course, decided to climb. However, after a manly huddle, myself and the other dudes on the beach decided that the best coconuts just so happened to be on the tallest tree, probably ten meters high as the coconut drops. Fueled by more than one cerveza, I began my ascension by being flung onto the tree by Mark, fellow beachgoer and admitted Tennessee redneck. Too many greasy Mexican tacos meant I no longer have the slender figure I one had, and I made it halfway up the tree. Nevertheless, I sensed the watchful eyes of pretty women and could feel adrenaline in my veins, and I climbed up. I made it, looked down, and swore loudly, partly because I wanted to embellish the extremeness and danger of my feat, and partly because I really was pretty damn scared. I managed to twist off a couple of coconuts and began my descent. I slid down (ouch!) about halfway on the sandpaper like bark before jumping the rest of the way into the warm sand, victorious and definitely deserved of everyone's eternal praise. It was a majestic feat.

The adrenaline returning to normal levels, I became suddenly aware of the large scrapes that now covered my arms and the silver-dollar sized chunk of skin now missing from the bottom of my left foot. "Nah, it doesn't hurt," I assured the inquisitors (a big lie) trying one last time to impress. Nobody heard, however, and they were too enveloped in eating their coconuts to notice me hobbling off to the water to wash out my wounds.

There is more to this story, which touches even more on my own foolishness so I think I will become even more brief. I went back to the hostel and cleaned my wounds myself for the next two days with the first aid kit Scotty and I bought at the Army surplus store in Claremont, CA. Unknowingly, I cleaned the wound on my foot multiple times with a chloride wipe and then applied fresh bandages, which in reality cleaned the wound nicely but at the same time gave me a rather serious and painful chemical burn to boot. I am no doctor, but now that I look back at it I probably could have interpreted the directions on the back of the packet just fine, had I bothered to read them. Now, one week later, I am still hobbling around and beginning antibiotics for the cellulitis that is now beginning to spread around the edges.

I will never touch another coconut tree again in my life, but I will jump at the chance to return to Tulum.