A Short Nine Minutes

This one is much shorter.

On Wednesday, February 16, 2022, I walked along the beach in Akumal Bay to the touristy part of the town of Akumal to find an ATM. The next day, DW and I were planning an excursion to the Akumal Natura Rescue centre and we needed cash for our taxi and for a tour of the grounds.

Up to that point, I only had a handful of 20 and 50 peso notes, which we used to tip the maid, bartenders, and servers at the resort. I didn't have enough cash to pay for our excursion.

I found an ATM at the Oxxo convenience store, withdrew my funds, and made my way back to the beach. But before I could reach the shores of the bay dark clouds loomed over head and emptied themselves over the town.

I sought shelter under a small canopy, near an art shop and waited for the storm to let up. So far, on this trip, the weather had been great and any rain came and went within five to 15 minutes, and this storm, though with the heaviest rain I had seen on the Mayan Riviera, was no exception.

Within 10 minutes, the rain had let up enough for me to move to a better shelter without getting soaked. A minute or two later, it was just a light trickle. I decided to make my way back to our resort, where DW was sitting near the bar with a drink and her laptop.

While I was waiting for the rain to let up, I stood with my hands in my shorts pockets. In one pocket, I could feel the wad of cash that I had taken from the ATM; in the other, I had my Insta360 camera with its 4K lens module attached.

And it struck me: what if I recorded my walk back to the resort?

I didn't have a selfie stick nor the bracket for the video camera. I would just have to hold it in my hand. I pressed the play button, held the camera at waist height, and started walking.

When I found DW in the main lobby. I stopped recording. The length of the video was exactly nine minutes long.

In post processing, I decided to speed up the main part of the video to four times the speed. And this weekend, I decided to turn that footage into a two-and-a-half-minute YouTube video to share.

With the underwater video, the walk around the resort, the visit to the rescue centre, and this walk along Akumal Beach, I've used all of the footage that I recorded of our trip. And in doing so, I feel I can move on to other projects. I still have other projects that I've recorded but never edited or produced into worthwhile videos. Over the next few months, I'll turn my attention to them.

Stay tuned.