My Journey With Health And Fitness – The Challenges Of Walking In The Dark

It is not really warm in Playa del Carmen right now. Yesterday I actually had to put on a hoodie! I had checked the weather for 6am this morning and it was below 20 C so thought hmm, maybe the long sleeved t-shirt would be a good idea. I can honestly say I am glad I opted to do that because with a bit of a breeze happening it was chilly. I have a feeling I will be in the same situation tomorrow.

As I have mentioned before, I am very conscious of making sure I am easily seen when walking in the dark at home. I try to do the same here by ensuring I am in light coloured clothing and of course always wearing my reflective vest. I do admit since I only walk around our complex and it is early in the morning that there is not a lot of traffic but I like to err on the side of caution. I’d like to say that I only walk in well lit areas but that is, quite frankly, challenge number 1. The maintenance in our complex is not exactly great as while there are a fair number of streetlights, many of them don’t work (it’s a dispute about who is responsible for replacing burnt out bulbs). There is no real way to avoid walking in the areas that are dark but fortunately since it is so early I can see and hear vehicles as they approach.

The next challenge kind of goes with the first one in that I walk on the street and not on the sidewalk (though not all the streets have sidewalks anyways). There are a couple of reasons for this. Firstly, the sidewalks are extremely uneven in places. Think about it, you add uneven pathways to lack of lighting and it is just a trip and fall in the making. Secondly, the upkeep on the trees along the sidewalks is also not so great so in numerous places the branches are quite low hanging and you combine that with the lack of lighting and I am pretty sure my face would be scratched up every day.

The real challenge, however, is the wildlife. Ok, at home I occasionally see a raccoon or more likely a bunny. I can always find a way to give raccoons a wide berth and the bunnies, well those aren’t too threatening (they are not exactly killer bunnies). Here there are several animals that I might encounter on my walks. I acknowledge I have never seen a monkey when it is still dark out (I assume they are sleeping) but I even this morning I saw 2 sereque (a large Mexican rodent). Fortunately sereques are pretty shy so they scurry away when they see you though I admit when it is dark out they often startle me. The other is the coatis which we call Mexican raccoons simply because they have striped tails. These suckers have the longest claws I have ever seen on an animal. They tend to run in very large packs and there is always an older male that is the lookout. The other day there was about 2 dozen of them swarming around me (ok, maybe 2 dozen is a bit of an exaggeration) and it scared the crap out of me as they refused to move. I eventually threw a handful of cat food at them (remember, I feed all the kitties along my route) which at least had them run after the food so that I could quickly walk away.

So yeah, there are challenges walking in the dark here. However, even those challenges are not stopping me from achieving my walking goals each day.