The Germans-in-Distress I referred to yesterday were a pair of tourists who had managed to get themselves deposited on the beaches of La Barra where my sister and I were enjoying a relaxing day. We were at a beach-side restaurant having lunch, when a taxi-boat pulled up with the two Euros. "Look," I said, "Whiteys!" We watched in fascination as the two whiteys argued with their boat operator. And argued. And argued. Finally, Nadine decided to go over to see if she could lend assistance. She went and translated for the overwhelmed trekkers, and managed to sort things out more or less satisfactorily. Turns out they were at the wrong beach altogether, or something like that. In gratitude they came and joined us for a while, and we talked and looked at their copy of Lonely Planet. Later we allowed them to come with us in our hired boat, back to the mainland (La Barra is also part of the mainland, but I don't know how else to describe it), and we sent them on their way. And that was that. But the cool thing about the whole epoosode was that my sister had saved the day, using her Spanish skills and knowledge of the local way of life. I was pretty impressed by that- she had only lived in Mexico for a year, and already she was pretty much fluent, "one of them."
My own Spanish skills are somewhat lacking. On my first day there, when I was at the bus depot in Cancun waiting for my bus to Veracruz, I struck up a conversation with a local man, using sign language and diagrams and a little card my Dad gave me, containing some common phrases. My Dad swore by the little card, and as he successfully motorcycled the length of the Baja Peninsula using the card to get by, I believed him. So when my new friend asked me what I did, I looked at the card, found "I am a student" (which wasn't true, but it was easier than trying to describe my actual situation), skimmed across to the español equivalent, and proudly declared, "Yo es estupido!"
I don't know why the authors of that little card felt that "I am stupid" would be a handy phrase, but they stuck it in there. Lucky for me. I stopped using the card after that, and instead just answered everything with "Si." Which caused more than one person to think I was estupido, I'm sure.