Week One of Mayan Adventure

I have my camera plugged unto the computer but can't seem to get the photos to transfer. I am in Valladolid now, about 2 hours east of Cancun. I spent the first week on the coast.

Cancun

Can't say I explored much. I wasn't impressed by the downtown and spent only one night in a paper-walled hotel where I could hear everyone's TV as well as mine. As soon as the TVs started turning off, the house music from a club a block away started shaking the hotel and continued to do so until 6am or so. I changed my plan of staying in Cancun for 2 nights and head right out to Isla Mujeres the next morning.

Isla Mujeres

A little touristy but it's hard not to like the tourqoise waters and fine sand beaches. The Euro-boobies weren't bad to look at either. I managed not to stare. I spent five nights on the island. I spent a couple days scuba diving and mostly relaxed the rest of the time. My first day of diving was a refresher course and a couple of easy dives. I was face to face with a barracuda at one point. It's the first time I've seen one open it's mouth. Now I see what's scary about them. They have teeth like inch-long spikes.

I walked around the island on Sunday. It's about a 10-mile walk. There is a little bit of Mayan ruins at the south end of the island. Walking back, I cut through a large town much bigger than the town on the north end where most of the tourists stay. I think this is where most of the workers and their families live. It's easy to forget you're on an island here. It's more like the Mexico I remember from my travels in the interior. It was dark when I got back to my hotel.

I did another day of diving on Monday, the 10th of Jan. It was some of the scariest waves I've been on when we got to the south point of the island on our small boat. I was the only diver with the divemaster, captain, and helper. The divemaster and I agreed to submerge right away instead of getting knocked around by the waves. It was a wicked drift dive, where you just let the current take you. We were moving very fast with the current until we went around the point where things calmed down a bit. We spotted three separate sea turtles. I huffed through my air pretty quickly because of some nervousness over the conditions. The dive lasted only 30 minutes. The second dive was on the calmer side of the island around a reef with caves. We did a couple cave swim throughs. I had never done that before. We weren't far from escape at any point, otherwise I wouldn't have done it. It was cool looking up at the CO2 pockets on the ceiling created by our exhalations. That dive was more relaxing. It lasted over 40 minutes. The dive master is Mexican and was doing a little fishing with his Mexican harpoon. It's a thin steel rod, sharpened on one end with an elastic strap on the other. He killed a lion fish. It's a beautiful fish but it doesn't belong in these waters. Some douchebag with an aquarium let some loose and now they are invading the Caribbean. They are venomous to the touch also. They come from Australia. He speared it repeatedly and I could hear it every time the spear passed through it. It was still moving when we left it to die. We saw lobsters and he asked, with signals, whether he should get one. I signaled "no". I still am just an observer and don't feel right hunting down there yet. Maybe I'll be feeding myself that way someday when I become a beach bum sometime in my 50s. I think I got some bruises trying to get my equipment off while get bounced off the boat by the waves.

Valladolid

I grabbed a bus out of Cancun yesterday and am now two hours to the west. The scenery is pretty non-existent in this part of Mexico. Shrek the Third dubbed in Spanish is the bus entertainment. I forgot how much I enjoy getting in touch with my music collection on my ipod while riding Mexican buses. We went through a torrential rainstorm and the bus was flinging water higher than the roof as we went through standing water. I found a nice room two blocks from the bus station, two blocks from the main square. Nice little city of about 50,000 people. Feels more like real Mexico now, right down to the familiar smells. I plan on staying here three nights, checking out Chitzen Itza tomorrow. It was cool and rainy today. Good day to get laundry done and do this blog.

I hope to be including photos next time.

Photos above are views of Isla Mujeres and one shot of Valladolid.