Searching for Elvis in Cozumel

By Ted Alan Stedman

updated 5:27 p.m. ET Oct. 30, 2006

The crashing Caribbean surf is serenading me with its rhythm; the humid ocean air immobilizes like a sodden straightjacket. Frivolous thoughts pour through my mind. Has it been a dozen, or maybe 15 times that I’ve found myself at this precise latitudinal coordinate, sitting on this exact barstool? Actually, it’s a new barstool and a new palapa, built in the aftermath of last year’s hurricanes that scoured Cozumel. Yet the familiarity is still here, and Señor Cuco is again holding court.

On this empty windward shore of Cozumel, he is the impresario of Coconuts Bar & Grill, popping Coronas and mixing heady concoctions for a couple dozen travelers like me who willingly succumb to the island’s rituals of surf, sun, sand and bar-bound celebrations of nothing and everything. The joint is hopping; Cuco is on his game and certainly too busy at this moment to entertain any inquiries about Coconuts’ star patron, whom I’ve come to see. Elvis, it seems, has left the building.

A traveler’s quest for spiritual awakening this is not — not even close. During my annual migrations here, there is no deeper purpose beyond satiating rudimentary urges for Cozumel’s tropical sunshine, paper-white sand beaches and tourmaline seas; no duty beyond sensational diving among kaleidoscopic colored fish and coral grottos, or watching liquid-crimson sunsets smothered by the horizon from some lazy, boozy, beach-bound cantina. But today? Today began with a measure of purpose — my self-appointed mission to learn of the whereabouts of Elvis.

This morning in San Miguel, on the island’s populated west side, I was apprehensive and clueless as to the fate of Cozumel’s remote east coast and its ramshackle outposts like Coconuts. The island took an incredible pounding during the infamous 2005 hurricane season. First Emily, then Wilma strafed the island. But Cozumel is in the business of escapism and bliss, strong motivators to regroup and rebuild. Just months later, after the community orchestrated a massive storm mop-up, I’ve found it’s mostly business as usual for plucky San Miguel and the resorts on Cozumel’s developed west side. Transplanted palms, road repairs, trucked-in sand to replenish eroded beaches and rebuilt buildings make any remaining blemishes seem minor to a visitor like myself.

For days I’ve been wooed silly by the island’s signature offerings, a formula that is quite simple here: In the windless mornings, while the sea is as placid as syrup, I savor the ambrosial diving at the Palancar Gardens, the wall diving at Santa Rosa, or at any of the other spectacular Cozumel dive sites. Come afternoons, I trade flippers for flip-flops and enjoy the amusing commotion of commerce among San Miguel’s maze of backstreets, where it’s perfectly acceptable — indeed, expected — to make sport of bargaining with merchants to the beat of boom-box mariachis. This usually leads to Pancho’s Backyard, where I appease my addiction for fresh chicken tacos in the shady courtyard, a welcome sanctuary from the street buzz. Invariably, as blazingly hot afternoons morph into more temperate evenings, I rendezvous with expats or trade traveler’s tales with strangers at some obscure cantina.

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