A bit of context here.

Just got here. It's 40°C outside, my clothes are sticky and in a few minutes of walking on the beach the lightest pants I owned were unconformable to wear, but I couldn't go in shorts to ask for a job, right?

I searched a small hotel/restaurant/bar right in front of the sea. Chose the biggest palapa (palm-tree roof structure) right in the center of the beach. Looked like a nice place. Oh well indeed it is called A Nice Place on the Beach.

Asked at the front desk/bar for the manager and they nodded towards a lonely man sitting peacefully at his usual plastic table with matching cheap chairs half buried in the sand. I came up to him. He was wearing shorts, light T-shirt with a psychedelic print on it. It read Zipolite A Nice Place on the Beach with a pelican smoking a joint. Streaks of gray hair were a good match to his nonchalant aura.

When I talked to him he went out of trance, noticed the cigarette still burning in his hand next to his morning cup of strong coffee, grown in his ranch a few hours from the beach.

"Good morning, I'm searching for a job, this looks like a nice place indeed"

He didn't laugh at my intended pun but rather scrutinized me head to toe. He was trying to guess if I was yet another stranded hippy junkie or a student from the local university. He didn't say a thing so I went on:

"I have a good level in English and I'm practicing a bit of French as well"

I tried to ignore the smell of cannabis coming from the table next to us as well as the naked man a few meters in front of us doing weird hyperelastic yoga-ish movements showing us his bare ass. Greg was completely oblivious to both: I would soon learn that this was just the usual morning routine for everybody.

Now he laughed. "You're in the right place, we have a lot of québécois every year... You know how to make cocktails? You'll learn. Come tomorrow at 7am we'll see."

He closed the conversation and resumed his careful contemplation of the breaking waves expecting me to just go.

I turned myself towards the bar again, some women in the kitchen were looking at me through a window in the clay cabin. They had eavesdropped the whole conversation amongst the thunderous waves. A drunk shirt-less mustached man with an old stained cap was also looking at me staggering next to the bar. I was the only person wearing long pants and shirt in the place. Probably in the whole beach.

My weirdest job ever started with the weirdest interview. Little did I knew this was just the tip of the iceberg.