Villa Blanca Beach Club

When I hear the words “Beach Vacation,” I picture myself roasting on a not-quite-large-enough towel—soggy on one side, sandy on the other—until the sun chases me off in search of shade and a cold drink.

Turns out, the Villa Blanca Beach Club offered so much more than that: sprawling thatched palapas with cushioned seating situated between a great restaurant and the beach, with waitstaff offering cold drinks and warm food.

Villa Blanca reminded me of my high school art teacher’s beach club in Long Branch, New Jersey. Idle hours swimming, my skin turned mahogany, that salt water smell mixed with board wax and French fry grease, hanging out with my friends, Crosby, Stills, and Nash pouring from the speakers, and after-dark arthouse movies projected onto a screen set up in the sand.

Tiger-patterned cats with white feet patrolled the club in search of dropped fish tidbits. I didn’t mess with them, especially the notch-eared Tom, lording it over his domain.

For me, the best moments of any day are dawn and dusk. Being a morning person, I wake with a fully charged battery—so full of energy I feel I could eat the world—and get myself outdoors to embrace a new, honey-dipped day. Twelve or so hours later, after the heated bluster subsides, I celebrate those amber tones again.

In 1998, while walking the streets of Tianjin, I made up this little poem:

Embrace the morning
Endure the day
Celebrate the evening
Cherish the night

If things that lit me up were currency, I would be richer than Elon Musk!

For the first hour after the sun emerges from the Atlantic, it is only beach walkers.

The whole day stretching ahead like a magic carpet.

Once the sun is up, maintenance crews arrive to push around the sargassum, a floating seaweedy algae currently in bloom.

Each day’s sargassum washes up against a darker, older layer. We’d find a cut in the algae berm and wade into clearer water to swim. Later, after a shower, I’d see a stray sprig on the bathroom floor and laugh.

The palapa situation was super cushy. It was real fine watching everyone relax. Such a busy world we’ve made for ourselves with precious little time for doing nothing.

One afternoon a carpenter bee circled our heads looking for a hole to drill or one that it had already drilled. Ceaseless circling. Honestly, they seem so clueless I want to point to the hole and shout, “It’s right here, silly!”

Annoyed, the usually unperturbable Maya, blurted, “It would be nice to be in a room without flying bugs!” “All right,” I said, standing up, and went after the bee, clapping my rubber sandals together loudly until it flew off to find another palapa to pester.

I loved the ritual of rinsing the sand from my feet before climbing the stairs to the penthouse.

Saltwater is baked into my childhood. It’s where I learned to swim and where I played with my brothers, cousins, and friends for most of my childhood and a fair bit of my adulthood. I revel in ocean water, and the presence of algae only makes me feel more connected to this beautiful, unscripted world. Were it too perfect, I might have felt out of place.