Out of Bounds...

I'll never forget the circumstances surrounding this picture. Julie and I were on our 10th anniversary cruise a couple weeks ago. I'm not a fan of beaches and sand. When I vacation, I love to see the people and places. Julie likes to sit on a beach and "veg out." Normally this works because I'll go shoot pictures or see the town while she hangs out in the sand.
Well, a man in his right mind does not leave his lady alone on a beach in the middle of Mexican jungles. This fact led to a mass chaos on our walk down the dusty roads of the city neighboring the cruise ship port of Costa Maya.
You can only imagine the beauty of the walled port if you've been there. There's a pristine swimming pool with a bar that you can swim to. There's an amazing beach lined with coral. And if one ventures outside of the secured port, there's an awesome little town for visitors to explore. The only problem was the heat. It was scorching and my wife is not a fan of the beating sun!
We took a cab into the little city and I spotted these cabins on the way in. I should have asked the cab driver to stop for pictures, but I let him drive 3 or 4 more blocks. That meant an extremely hot and dry walk back when we exited our cute yellow air-conditioned comfort zone. Julie had her eyes on her prize... the pristine azul beaches. After a little head butting on my part, I got my picture and she got her beach!
In the meantime, we saw some little children on their way to school. We were curious and thought the uniforms looked like those from Compassion Intl. through which we sponsor a child. We followed the kids just to find out that they weren't going to school, but on their way home. Several kids entered a single house, so we assumed that was the school. Well as they say, when I assume I'll make an ASS out of U and ME. I tried to ask the lady out front if we could take a peak inside the school room (which, remember, was a private residence) and she just smiled and shook her head not understanding a word I said, but hoping to oblige the stupid white folk for the US dollars they were bringing with them. I thought she was welcoming me in, so with my schoolboy backpack on and my D-300 in hand I tried to pass her just to find another lady blocking the doorway. I asked her if I could peak into the school room and she wasn't quite so welcoming. She body blocked me as I tried to stretch my neck over her shoulder like a curious ostrich looking for some lunch. I then realized that her intense efforts at keeping me out was a signal that we had not found a schoolhouse, but were trying to force our way into a private residence past the resistance of a protective mother of who knows how many!
How humiliating! Defeated and embarrassed at how offensive we white "rich" folks must have been, we headed to the beach where we belonged in the first place!
Moral of the story... Well, I'm not sure, but we should have kept our butt where we belonged.