“Please push the button…”  Green.  “Thank you.”

Successfully using my limited Spanish (and the phrase list in the back of
the guidebook) to find the bus station across from the airport (bus ticket =
$4, taxi fare = $38).

When she realized we didn’t understand much Spanish, the woman at the 100%
Mexicana restaurant reading the menu to us very slowly, her finger pointing
to every word.

Amazing mole.

Checking into a hotel that cost $13 a night.

Eating chicken covered in a sauce of tomatoes, green olives, capers, and
almonds, which all amazingly balanced each other out…then biting into the
pepper resting atop it all, only to come to the painful conclusion two
seconds later that it was an habenaria.

Neal Negro cervesa.

Huevos rancheros.

Mexican Coke.

Bandwagon.

The view from the top of a Mayan pyramid across the impossibly flat Yucatan.

Popcorn topped with…picante sauce?

Hard-boiled egg enchiladas and sausage that tasted great but looked like
shit.

Huevos rancheros.

Stumbling into a procession of white-dressed mothers and daughters carrying
banners, following a couple of men shooting off homemade fireworks as they
walked and followed by a ragtag band playing.

Standing up and announcing, “This is just a shuttle bus to the real bus,” to
the relief of a gaggle of tourists.

A room with A/C and a clean bathroom floor at last!

Our waiter placing some green sauce on our table, glancing us in the eye,
and pronouncing, “Picante.”

Habenaria sauce – seventy cents a bottle.

Amazingly smooth tequila.

Guacamole that actually tasted good.

Watching a tower of waiters pour flaming liquid from one pitcher to another
to another before finally missing a glass and catching the tablecloth on
fire.

Paying a taxi driver the same amount to get to the airport as a bus ticket
costs.