Monthly Archives: February 2014

Mexico

Random phone photos

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I have a few things on my phone for you. 🙂

5th Ave at night.

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Our cafe Tulum, protecting us from the rain.

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Cycling Tulum.

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My special promotional Corona.

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M’lady insisted we eat at McDonald’s one night.

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Looking for gifts for our cat sitters. 😀 (these are every where)

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Water spout off shore on our drive around Cozumel.

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Adrian and Rooster Scooters.

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We forgot to get photos of us driving, so here’s Miranda afterward. 🙂

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Best place to eat. Make sure your Spanish isn’t bad. Home of the bitchy waitress who refused to slow down her speech for a couple tourists who were trying their best. But at 120 pesos for two tasty meals and 2 drinks (around $10), we’ll accept some amount of abuse.

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Mexico

Happy birthday Miranda!

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We set our alarms for 8am since we could sleep in today. Woke up naturally around 7 anyway.

Got up and walked down to the unnaturally quiet 5th Ave for breakfast. We’ve been making breakfast most every day because it’s easy, relaxing and we don’t have to start our day by finding a place to eat (occasionally stressful), but today we wanted to out. We went to a bar/restaurant place called Pea Vela, mainly because it was one of the only places open. I had a tasty chicken/chorizo burrito and Miranda had…vinegar, egg and cheese soup with green peppers. It was a little potent, but better once you strained the liquid down and put it toast!

Our plan for the day was to go to Xcaret. There are 3 super “eco parks” in the area that dominate most of the business and advertising. They are so prominent that they have road signs on the highway that look like regular highway signs taking you to a town or city, and more frequently displayed too. Every tour agent in the town aggressively wants to sell you a trip here. We had to pick one and go, because it’s just so in your face.

Afterwards, I would categorize Xcaret as a zoo. A zoo with dolphins, sharks and manatees you can swim with. A zoo that’s blasted out part of the land underground to create a river you can snorkel in (not that there’s anything to see…not much life in a man made river). A zoo that has 5 buffet restaurants in it and a night show that makes the price of entry worth it. If you were really into it, you would need least two days too see the entire place. Holy crap.

We’re both glad that this place wasn’t the highlight of our trip though – it’s just to much, and being here makes your North American guilt flare up pretty bad. You know, if you have such a thing.

Hooooowever. We paid extra to swim with the dolphins. They have a number of optional extra activities and choose to do this one. Then we choose to upgrade to the dolphin “Primax” package for a special, for you only price of $30 USD. We upgraded mainly because the group size went from 12 to 4 (but there is a few other perks as well), definitely a worthwhile upgrade. They give you a 15 minute intro and then in Primax you have 45 minutes of playing with a few dolphins along with a dolphin trainer. I don’t know our guys name, but he was amazing and full of energy. I believed that he loved his job, particularly since he put all that energy in, and we were no where near our wallets to tip. 🙂 (which is commonly expected every where you go here).

We had already decided beforehand to pay any price for the photos of this event. You aren’t allowed to bring your own camera in, but they have a few guys taking pictures and video. We hadn’t expected to be asked to (almost) buy our experience again for those photos. Ouch. Obviously we don’t have their statistics, but it reminded us of the toll highway – half your prices and maybe you’ll get more than double the number of customers. Anyway, we bought the photos, averaging out to $3.50 per photo, and I’m not saying how many photos there are. They’re brilliant, they’re amazing and when you see them you will enjoy them, damn you! 🙂

This place has a few well thought out organizational systems in place. They have people with cameras all over and when they take your photo they also scan your wristband. At the end of the day, you can scan your band at nearby kiosks to see and buy all your photos for the day. They have buses after the night show to take you home, and because of the bands they know how many buses they’ll need to bring everyone home. Not their first rodeo, this place is very well orchestrated.

Today was our last full day in Playa. Tomorrow we gather our things and bus up to Cancun for a day of relaxing.

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Mexico

Back at it Thursday!

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Up early today, this time with an alarm so we didn’t miss our ferry. 645 local time. Ferry at 8. Don’t miss it, or our snorkel tour wouldn’t wait for us.

I like snorkeling on my own. It’s easy, relaxing and you can do it whenever you like in a place like this. You don’t need a tour to go snorkeling, just some inexpensive equipment and an idea of where to go. However, I like taking a tour as well. They serve drinks and food, often drive you places it would be difficult to get to yourself and provide a fun place to relax in between swims. We booked with Cozumel Watersports. The boat crew was fantastic – they had a very explanatory speech before the swim, good communication and helped out well with people who needed it. This area has a mandatory life jacket policy, which is irritating and understandable. I like swimming down to see things closer. They don’t want yahoos wrecking the coral. These guys have the same policy, but the jackets weren’t the foam type I’m used to, but were more like the inflatable jackets airlines use…And you didn’t have to blow them up! Got some fun photos from this trip, had a rather strong marguerita and some fresh guacamole on the ride back.

Their dock is at a beach bar, La Palapita DenMedio Beach Bar, so we stopped to enjoy some food and plan our afternoon. This place was really chill, and while again the food wasn’t blow me away amazing, I really liked it here. A nice place to put your feet up after a solid swim.

We had a mind to rent scooters and drive around the island. We mentioned this to our tour guy Fernando and he made a call. While we were eating, scooters were driven to the restaurant for us to rent…That’s pretty badass.

The entire trip around the island took about 3 hours at about 40 km/hr. Which is as fast as Miranda’s 50cc would go. My 250cc would go much faster, but there was no way I was going 100km/hr on a rattling Mexican scooter. We had a rain shower in the middle of our ride, which was hilarious! The island is 90% circled by a terrific bicycle path…Which is also used by scooters, a lot. This is wicked safe and separated from regular car traffic for the most part. 5% is coming into San Miguel on a 4 lane road with lots of space. That last 5% though is a little scary – driving through a Mexican town streets on a scooter. As Miranda put it – a 2 lane road with 4 lanes of traffic on it. If we did this again, I’d do it over the entire day as there are so many cool beaches and natural landmarks to see along this road that we drove by, including a lighthouse and another set of ruins.

We managed to navigate our way through town to find our guy Adrian of Rooster Scooters. He was super nice and the three of us drove 2 scooters back to the ferry.

I wrote a few blog updates as best I could (still on the phone, remember…) and we got home and all but passed out from a super long day in the sun.

Friday is Miranda’s birthday!

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Mexico

Tired Wednesday

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We slept in. We tried to sleep in, but ended up both wide awake at 7 am…

We’d decided to take this as a rest day since we’d been logging 12 to 16 thousand steps a day and were pretty tired.

So we sat around the condo for a while catching up on Facebook, news, and Candy Crush until we got bored and went to the beach. On the beach, we found a hotel/restaurant on the beach that would give us a lounge chair, a few daiquiri and guacamole. We read and played Agricola. And drank. Until a storm came in.

What you need to know about Caribbean storms – horrible. They come in quickly, drown the snot out of you for about 10 minutes and then leave just as quickly. So weird. We left and went back home after our long day.

At home, we planned our night, and looked at the next few days. And discovered that we’d made a mistake with our hotel, a very expensive and difficult mistake.

When we planned our trip, we’d decided to stay in Cancun for our last night so we’d be closer to the airport in the morning. Apparently, we’d accidentally booked the hotel for November 24th, 2013 – the day the booking had been made. So we call to check out the situation. We’d been marked as no shows and nothing else had been done about it, except charge us. And they had no availability for the time we actually needed. So spent the next hour frantically looking for a hotel. We succeeded, but it’s still brutal.

After that, I TripAdvisored a good restaurant. We’d been to a number of hole in the walls, random places, etc, but hadn’t yet eaten a meal that I was super impressed with. We went to La Casa delicious Aqua on 5th Ave – the home of the sea. The food was delicious. And I’m not happy that the best food I’ve had here is in a high class expensive restaurant. Miranda maintains that her best meal is at the place near our home, but my meal there wasn’t the best. We’re going back, to check.

Tomorrow, we go to Cozumel. Later!

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Mexico

A little Tuesday morning drive

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Tuesday morning we woke up at 5 am to take the 3 hour drive to Chichen Itza. Our plan was to rent a car and leave super early, both to avoid any heavy traffic and crowds at the ruins.

We rented a car from America Car Rental, and the irony is not lost on us. We drove our car home and parked it outside over night for the early morning.

Turns out that McDonald’s is not open at 530. 🙁

The Mexican highways are well built, but the speed limits are fucked. You’ll get sent down to 40 km/hr for no reason, a limited changed from 60 to 80 and back to 60 within the same sight line and…40 on the highway…So…fucked. And we’ve been warned to follow the limits exactly, lest we get pulled over by a cop for speeding.

Once we got past Tulum and onto the highway north speed limit sorted itself out and stayed a decent 90.

Valladolid is a city in the middle of the state it’s filled with narrow roads one way streets. There is a toll road that avoids it, but we decided to go through. Awkward, but we made it.

We arrived at Chichen Itza around 930, and walked around until about 1115. Photos to come. Lunch in the restaurant there was alright. My pibil tacos were a little dry, but tasty enough. Miranda had a pizza that was good.

We left and drove the short distance to Ik Kil, a nearby cenote. It was 70 pesos to enter and you could really spend all afternoon here if you were inclined. The cenote was largely cemented up, with a tunnel and stone stairs leading to the bottom. A little more manicured than Dos Ojos, a lot less than the “eco parks” here (which I’ll write about at some point). We stayed for a half hour and left – we just wanted see place take some photos.

Next we drove to Ek Balam, the site of another ruin. This place doesn’t get much advertising, and is much cheaper. EB was about 120 pesos versus 288 each at CI earlier. There are fewer ruins here, but you can climb on them, which is worth a lot in my books. The largest one is smaller than at CI, but still tall enough to see all of the nearby jungle.

We left there unfortunately early as we wanted to get back to Playa before dark sets in. We took the toll road back through Cancun and down to Playa and man was that a different experience! Two lanes, well marked and a consistent 110 km/hr the whole way to Cancun. Downside is a 258 peso toll, which is around $23…That’s an expensive road!

When we finally got back into Playa drop the car off, one of the monkeys at the car rental place almost tried to claim that we’d stolen or lost one of the car mats. Thankfully, the boss appeared out of nowhere from across the street and made the problem go away!

Leftover pasta for dinner and relaxing after a long day! Again, no photos until i get home, I think. Later!

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Mexico

A case of the Mondays

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We woke up early Monday, hoping to get to Tulum before any crowds. Made a quick breakfast of eggs and toast and dashed out the door to catch another colectivo down the coast.

This time we took it all the way from it’s start to finish, in the center of Tulum. The ruins are about a 2 minute bike ride from the center of town, as we discovered.

But first…rain. When we woke up it was sunny and bright in Playa. As we drove, clouds appeared. Then they got dark. Then they started spitting on us. Then they just opened up into an amazing downpour. Once in Tulum we found a cafe and sat and used the Wi-Fi while eating a baked good and drinking our caffeinated drinks until the rain stopped.

When you look up Tulum, biking is a thing. There are a ton of bike shops in town and it’s super easy to get a few bikes for the day. Just be sure to bring id to leave for the rental.

At this point, it was ridiculous out. Hot (Canada style) 28C weather, plus a ton of rain equals humidity of horror. Still not as bad as Cin’s wedding (where there was no wind), but pretty bad.

We cycled to Tulum ruinas, where we learned that “cycle Tulum” actually just means cycle TO the ruins. Once inside you had to walk. Which was ok by me, as I wanted to take a bunch of photos and cycling isn’t really good for stopping and being slow.

As we bought our tickets, we decided to get a tour guide. I remember in Guatemala that the tour guide was amazing and totally worth the price, and hoped we’d have a similar experience. We got a friendly Mexican lady who’s English was very good, but clearly was entirely related to her job – I had to help her with a few words as we talked and walked. That’s fine – communication is a two way street no matter the language.

This place is gorgeous! Clearly taken good care of, the ruins are roped off, with manicured dirt paths lined with wood, and freshly cut grass. The sky was blue, the grass was green, the ocean was turquoise and the ruins were a motley of greys. Just a really picturesque place.

After taking us though most of the place, our guide left us once we reached the top of the ruins – rather abruptly, but we were glad to have the time to wander and take more careful photos.

The rest is fairly boring. We had lunch at the “Coffee Bar+Restaurant”, which was edible but not delicious. After we ordered, our waitress brought me two Corona’s, saying it was a promotion. Well, alright. 🙂 I didn’t finish both, but made a good effort.

We wandered, booked Miranda’s birthday event and then cycled back to Tulum. I’m writing this on my phone on the bus back – strangely it seems that the bus is exactly as expensive as the colectivo…40 pesos each. We have lots of space between us and ac.

I think I’m going to post photos separately, when I get back, so i can do some processing on them. Sorry!

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Mexico

Dos Ojos photos!

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Miranda was trying to get a photo that was split between above and below water. She got these cool photos instead, as the camera must only be able to focus in one area at once.

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Trying to catch a little fish.

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They have hammocks set up near the vendors. We took advantage of them.

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A few photos of the Second Ojo.

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A cool hole in the ceiling.

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More underwater selfie!

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Mexico

Akumal and Dos Ojos, take two.

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After our trip to Akumal the other day, we decided had to go back. We rented fins and went swimming to find turtles, and unlike in Hawaii, we found them pretty quickly!

Despite our scouting trip, we still missed something somewhat useful – the map of the bay. There are specific areas for snorkeling, and the best turtle areas are marked on it. As we swam back into shore we spoke with a man who hadn’t seen any. Miranda ran into him a little later and he said he’d kept going and seen a whole bunch. To bad we didn’t keep going, but we were done with Akumal by that point.

A quick lunch and then off to DO. We took a taxi there, and were surprised to learn that he’d take us all the way in – the cenote is about 3 km along a dirt road.

This place is still stunning, even when you can’t go all the way under. 🙂 Photos will be coming in a day. 🙂

That night decided to make dinner at home and relax. Really nice, just a simple meat pasta, but it was lovely to be able to do that sort of thing. That’s why we get a condo on vacation, for exactly that.

Mexico

Saturday diving

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I’d looked up a diving company weeks before we left and booked my day of diving.

Also, on a whim I decided to take a nitrox course, because why not. Erik at Beyond Diving in Playa was a fantastic guy to work with on this. He encouraged my questions and answered most of them with patience. I’m now nitrox certified for scuba, which I hope will come in handy. This experience also taught me how better to plan my own dives if I know where we’re going before hand – a necessity for nitrox diving.

I woke up early and caught a cab to his dive shop 40 blocks up the street. It was me, Erik and another instructor from Colorado diving that day, and everyone was super friendly and excited about the day. We drove down to The Pit first.

The Pit is a 130 foot dive with a hydrogen sulfide layer at about 110, and a fresh/salt water layer at 60. We got everything ready and headed in.

As soon as we got to 60 feet though,I noticed my camera housing was filling with water. The lens port had chime undone, despite me checking it 5 times. I was pissed, but I tried to move on. I asked Erik if I could put it back up at the top so I didn’t have to carry it. Minutes later, angry and with no camera we descended.

The fresh/salt layer was the first interesting part. It’s like someone put a fairly sharp Photoshop blur over your mask. You pass through it quickly and continue descending.

At 110ish, you find the HS. In photos, it’s like a bright sea green cloud. You drop through it and come out the other side and look up at the cloud you just passed through. Unfortunately, in our case the cloud had descended a bit further and when we got to 130 we were still in it a bit. (Only a bit – I couldn’t see Erik 5 feet front of me as we posed through it). So no looking up. 🙂

We started slowly circling up and around the giant cavern. It really is just a giant hole in the ground…Which I find fascinating!

40 minutes of diving later we surfaced near some French free divers. I grabbed my camera and they commiserated with me about my loss. I’d probably be more angry if this hadn’t been the third piece of electronics I’d busted in the last 365, or the third piece busted while doing diving related things. At some point you just have to laugh…(and then reevaluate yourself…)

We drove next to Dos Ojos, slightly more touristy because snorkeling there is very interesting still.

Right now, this is my favorite place on this coast. It’s totally chill. People are there and some have things for sale, but it isn’t crowded and no one was in my face. Add on the amazing natural surroundings, and it’s just fantastic!

Dos Ojos is two cenotes connected by a series of underwater caves. It’s stunning, and currently my favorite dive ever. If you dive, I recommend it highly. I won’t say much more, and will leave it to the photos to help me out.

We did two dives there and then left to get food. Erik took us to a little taco shop who’s name escapes me, but it was a tasty meal after a long day.

We drove back to his shop and I took my nitrox test. 76%…C+ is ok my books…We went over my mistakes and clarified them. Unfortunately, that was the end of a long day and i just wanted to go lie down, when instead i had to take an exam and I made several easy mistakes.

Photos to follow in a few minutes!

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