Tag: Cozumel

It is now actually Friday morning, around 11am Central Time. I’m writing this in the American Airlines lounge at DFW. Because flights into and out of Cozumel are so limited, in both directions we’ve had an overnight in a DFW hotel. In a way it made it more relaxing. We had a nice dinner last night at the hotel, breakfast in the lounge there this morning (traveling with Dan has its perks), a workout in the hotel gym, and now here with all the free drinks and snacks we could want. Not a bad deal. The best part? More electrical outlets than you can shake a stick at – eight just in this little corner we’re sitting in. No problem getting things charged up here.

Terminal A Admiral’s Club, DFW

But I digress. Yesterday was just another day in Mexico since there is no Thanksgiving there. We all got up sometime soon after 6am and took our time getting into the day. I finished the blog I was working on and got that posted for whatever day it was. Tuesday’s I think. Before we headed out for breakfast I took some shots of Jon’s place.

Downstairs is dining, living and kitchen area, in that order. This is the 2nd half of it after you enter.

And here’s the first half.

From the couch, you see the TV area and the open ceiling that looks up to the 2nd floor landing between the two bedrooms.

From the landing looking into the guest room.

Looking down from the same spot I was standing in the above picture.

Dan really enjoyed playing with Chai while we were there, but couldn’t get him to look at the camera….

…so Jon stepped in to assist.

The courtyard you walk into from the street. Nice and private. Also Jon’s scooter, his primary source of transportation when he doesn’t want to walk. This is definitely a scooter island.

Jon looking fabulous on one leg at his front door.

Looking down the street to the left from his front gate….

…and to the right.

Several of the main roads are boulevards that look just like this.

We went back to the market we’d gone to on Monday for breakfast to try out one of the other eateries.

See what I mean about scooters? These are all parked in front of this market.

This met Dan’s criteria for determining authenticity: the menu outside was NOT in English also, and there were no Gringos in the place. Jon’s observation that the help was plump (seen in the background) made it a winner.

And it was! I’m usually not one to take pictures of my food but I thought this was just pretty. Chicken enchiladas with mole. The white is pure cream. Californians take note: in 4 days I saw no black olives, nor any sour cream. That’s the way it oughta be.

Pink condos across the street from the market.

Dan had been saying for days he should get a haircut while here. So when we happened across this barber with the single chair – empty – and had time to kill, he figured why not. This guy who had chatted us up earlier as we were walking to breakfast ran into us again and talked to Jon and I while Dan got his haircut. She did a really nice job despite the language barrier – Jon helped translate. After we’d walked away Dan goes “Uh, I think she was a man.” We were like “Uh, yea, how long did it take you to figure that out?”

We ventured into a couple of farmacias looking for anti-itch cream for Dan – he got bit by something in the cenote – but ended up not getting anything. We made it back to Jon’s, finished packing, said our goodbyes to Jon and Chai and took a cab to the airport.

It’s a pretty small airport. This is the entire waiting area for all gates.

A seating area (that’s Dan right of center) around a food court where we killed some time. We weren’t that early, it went pretty fast. But this is pretty much the entire airport. We were at our hotel in Dallas (technically Irving) by about 5pm.

As Dan was going through the photos on his phone he came across this. If you look closely at that little blur in the air between the hut and the palm tree just left of center, that’s me parasailing on Monday. He could see me from where he’d stayed back on the beach.

FINAL THOUGHTS

For my first ever trip to Mexico, I have to admit several things surprised me.

1. Speed bumps, aka topes. They are everywhere, including where you wouldn’t expect them along freeways. Jon says the entire country is that way. It was just so odd. We got surprised by them a few times.

2. For all the jokes/cautions I got about “don’t drink the water” coming into this trip, while here it wasn’t that big of an issue, but it does have a way of lingering in the back of your mind when you learn that even the locals don’t drink the water. The closest I got to tap water was rinsing my toothbrush off. We never got sick so must’ve done OK. And we ate in some pretty local places, which is our tendency. Jon assured us even in family-owned hole in the wall places, which is our preference, they’re not going to risk getting their customers sick and are well prepared to deal with the water issues.

3. There’s definitely a difference between the resort areas – which is where most of the people I know who’ve come to Mexico on vacation, at least recently, go  – and the neighborhoods where folks live. I guess this is true in the USA too but the gap here seems more dramatic. That said, we were very glad to have stayed out of the tourist areas, because the whole point to us is to get a feel for what it would be like to live wherever we are.

4. Dogs. I can’t remember that last time I saw numbers of stray dogs roaming around. Maybe never, at least not this much. Flashbacks to childhood perhaps in the south side of San Antonio. But it’s so obvious here it was striking. And it was everywhere we went, not just Cozumel.

5. On this trip more than any other we’ve done, I was struck by the randomness of privilege. Especially when we were in Chemax, all I could think of was: these folks may have no idea how bad this is if it’s all they know, and certainly no idea or perhaps even means to get out of it. And the stray dog issue was rampant there, and they were sick and sad. It was very depressing. We are so blessed on so many levels and usually completely unaware of it until we encounter something like this.

6. Still, all of the locals we encountered everywhere were very friendly to us and seemed happy and content with their lot in life. Of course there’s no way to no if that’s true for sure. But even the guy who talked to Jon and I while Dan got his haircut had an interesting story about living in the states as an illegal for 10 years, following his mother – did well in high school and even got a sports scholarship to college – and that was when his problems began because the school needed his social security number to arrange for the rest of his financial aid. He ended up not being able to go there, and got deported after a random traffic accident in a parking lot with an off duty cop. Now to hear his side of it, it wasn’t his fault and the odds were all stacked against him. No way of knowing if that’s true or not – he certainly seemed the type who could get himself into trouble! – but what I really noticed about this guy is how happy and content he seemed despite his tale of woe. He didn’t see himself as a victim and had decided he was going to be happy no matter what. “Look at this beautiful place I live in! It could definitely be worse.”

By the time I had landed on Sunday, Dan and Jon had already talked about us coming back next year, and spending some time in Belize. So we will see how all that turns out!

As always, thanks for coming along for the ride.

After a really good night’s sleep for all of us, we headed down to breakfast at 7am.

We are at the very beginning of “high season” in this region – Jon says it really starts to pick up the weekend after Thanksgiving so we’re getting out just in time. So there weren’t a lot of people at the hotel. The weather was beautiful – high 70’s, no rain, relatively low humidity; very different from the day before which was very humid and mid-90’s. We were very grateful that all worked out!

The dining room was beautiful. The woman in black talking at the table behind us, Lucia, is the hotel manager. She stopped at our table and asked for our room numbers; based on that she asked “which one of you is Mr. Haas? Is that how you say it?” A lovely woman with beautiful green eyes and white hair – probably not Mayan native – she was extremely gracious and pleased that we were happy with our stay.

If you look closely, you can see a red bird perched on a ledge just left of center. The next two photos provide better shots.

The rooms were nice although we spent very little time in this, which isn’t all that unusual for us. Shower, sleep, go!

The view onto the balcony from the room Dan and I had. Jon’s room was down the hall and around the corner; his balcony was just on the other side of the left wall. In his room you actually entered from the balcony.

It’s a jungle out there!

I loved this room – the main lobby off the front entrance, with a grand staircase. That’s Dan in the middle fiddling with his phone.

Long outside hallway to the dining room.

After breakfast we walked over to the Chichen Itza entrance which was towards the back of the property. One of the reasons I picked this place to stay is it’s the only hotel in the area that backs up to the ruins, so when you’re ready to go you just walk on over. And, the price was actually beyond decent. Found it on Booking.com.

After we got our tickets and were walking in, we got asked if we wanted a tour guide. We initially said “no”, but as we started into the park we realized there wasn’t a lot of explanation provided with what you were seeing. Dan and I really enjoy the history behind stuff like this so we went back and got the guide. Meet Blario. The Yucatan is his home but he’s lived all over and speaks 6 languages. He was a tour guide for 27 years before he went to school to be an expert on the Mayans – a 3 year education required by the government – so he could give tours here. We were very glad to have him around. We learned a lot, he was very pleasant, funny, and patient with all of our questions. And he usually had an answer.

Blario is standing in front of our first sighting of the pyramid, from the south. This side is completely unrestored, pretty much as it was found in 1922, with the brush and stuff cleaned up. The picture below is one I took from this photo album he was carrying around – in fact on the page that’s open above I just noticed. This was how it looked when it was discovered.

It’s estimated this pyramid was built around 900 AD. There’s a smaller one inside built around 600 AD. You used to be able to walk up it but they shut that down on 07/07/2007 to help with preservation. Blario said people would complain that they couldn’t get a good picture on it because there were too many other people there! Well, duh.

Chicken Itza was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1988. It is considered the best representation of the Mayan culture and also one of the seven wonders of the modern world.

This is from the east. Notice the left side looks different from the right – the difference between “as found” on the left and “restored” on the right.

Part of the Temple of the Warriors, the sight of, among other things, human sacrifices to the sun god.

More Temple of the Warriors.

Part of a large area called “the market place”, and also something about 1000 columns. This is just a small slice.

These were once faces, but erosion has left only skulls. Each represents a warrior who died and is literally based on their actual face. The skull would be sculpted first because it’s easier to paint the face on top of it to make it more realistic.

The ball court. Other than the pyramid, this is probably where we spent the most time, and it was a fascinating story. I’ll try to do it justice.

Although we never got the name of the game, this ball game is like a cross between soccer and baseball; eventually we decided it was most like volleyball. The ball is bouncy, in size between a tennis and baseball. 6 players on each side carry a 2 foot thin stick in their left had, used as defense, and a 1 foot thick stick in their right, used as a bat. Umpires up on the high platform drop the ball onto the field and the teams have to keep it in the air, with the goal of getting it up on this lower platform – about 5 feet high and 5 feet wide – where the team’s captains are. Once the ball is with the captain, the captain can place it wherever he wants, with the goal of bouncing it and hitting it through the ring in the middle of the wall. In the photo above, you can best see the one on the right. The two photos below show the ring on the left.

This is also the platform where the captain’s play. If the captain gets the ball through the ring, the game is over. Games can last anywhere from 10 minutes to 20 days, with a max of 2 hours per day. Any time the ball drops to the ground, the dropping team gets negative points. If a captain never gets the ball through the ring, at the end of the 20th day, the team with the most negative points loses.

Here’s where it gets interesting. This game is played all year long by various teams in the region. At the close of the season, at end of harvest, umpires pick the best players from all of the teams to play in this championship of sorts. This group of umpires also determined which team would represent the underworld, and which would represent – I can’t remember his exact language now – but essentially good and evil. Now a different set of umpires would actually run the game, and they did NOT know who was who on the field in terms of good vs. evil.

This final game of the season was a great ritual with significant symbolism attached. If the winning team was “good”, it was considered a predictor that next year’s harvest would be good as well, and everyone celebrated. If the winning team was “evil”, it was considered a predictor that next year’s harvest would be bad – and the captain would be beheaded in sacrifice in order to appease the gods of the underworld, his blood soaked into the ground to make it richer.

For regular games throughout the year, people can climb the stairs in the back of the court and watch it from the top platform. For the final game after harvest, the top platform is reserved for umpires. The general public is not allowed to watch the game, in case there’s a beheading required at the end.

This culture believed snakes were good, there are LOTS of snakes represented in their iconography.

This is a snake that begins the captain’s platform.

This was essentially a planetarium.

The full building, with people in front for perspective.

This and the remaining shots were the first buildings discovered, and have not been restored at all.

This was a place of worship.

Blario could explain in great detail every meaning of every symbol in these building. I won’t even attempt :)

The planetarium from the front steps of the hotel.

Jon & Dan in front of the hotel as we were leaving.

Although we let here about Noon, there really wasn’t much to the rest of the day. We went to a little town called Chemax where the plan was to have lunch, and then go to another cenote after. This was a very small, poor town and not very developed. To say that there weren’t any restaurants we were comfortable eating at is an understatement. Lots of sad, stray dogs though. We did stop for water and snacks and pushed on to Tulum where we would have lunch instead. Tulum is a big tourist down at the bottom of the Mayan Riviera so there were lots of eating options.  By the time we decided on a place and ordered, it was already 3pm. Short version – we realized we just weren’t going to have time to do it all, so took our time eating and walked around Tulum some more after.

We headed back to Playa del Carmen to catch the ferry to Cozumel. We made it in time to get the 6pm ride. Playa is also very touristy and 5th Ave was lit up and vibrant as we walked from Alamo Rental Car to the ferry station. Lots of people, including guys with monkeys and other animals we couldn’t identify! to have you pay to take your pictures with them. We passed.

A northern storm was kicking up and the waves were very choppy, making for a very rocky ferry ride back home. It didn’t seem to bother Jon and Dan much but I was nauseous for a good 2 hours even after we got back to Jon’s. Kept it down though, and was able to eat a couple of tacos for dinner :) Jon rode on his scooter over to the place we’d gone to the other night and brought them back. Jon went to bed about 9pm, Dan went to bed around 11 I guess. I stayed up to do homework (working on a masters online with Golden Gate University if you don’t know that) and work on the blog.

And that was Wednesday!

Yesterday, Tuesday, felt like a really long day because by the time we got back to our hotel I was beat, pretty much went straight to bed and slept 8.5 hours, very rare for me. Hence, no blog update yesterday.

We got an early start again, leaving Jon’s place around 6:15am and walking to the Cozumel port area to catch the ferry, a little over a mile away. Destination: Playa Del Carmen.

The Disney cruise ship in front was in the process of turning around. There were about 5 cruise ships coming into the port at around 7am. That’s a bunch of tourists headed into Cozumel for the day.

Looking back on the port area from the ferry. Love the huge Mexican flag.

We sat on the 2nd level in the open air section of the back of the ferry. You can barely see me (just back of my head in the green shirt) and Jon (profile sitting in front of me) about the middle of the picture.

We were unprepared. Thanks, Dan!

All there was to look at in the 40 minute crossing.

Playa Del Carmen from the ferry.

Playa Del Carmen started out as a fishing village but once the ferries to Cozumel were put in, tourism became its major industry. Founded just in 1937, it’s now almost 150,000 people.

Sculpture at a park on the beach. The rings represent a ball game that we learned about at Chichen Itza later.

We rented a car at Playa and drove about 3 hours to our hotel, Mayaland. Yucatan is one of five Mexican states (along with 5 other countries) where the Mayan civilization lived from about 3000BC to 1500AD. There are many, many references to the Mayans in this area. As we were driving from Playa headed to Cancun before we turned into the mainland, we passed resort after resort. The Caribbean side of the Yucatan Peninsula is referred to as the Mayan Riviera.

For some reason I’ve been surprised to learn that much of Mexico – as least this part of it – is covered in jungle. I can’t say I’ve ever been in one before. It’s a very different experience – sights, sounds and overall feel – from being in a forest or merely woods. The Mayaland Hotel is essentially in a jungle, just cleared out enough for habitation.

A portion of the back yard of the hotel.

Looking back at the hotel from the back. Our rooms were on the 3rd floor.

That’s Dan on the 2nd floor outside hallway. The balcony to our room is just above him.

We checked in and dropped off our things, and headed to the town of Vallodolid for lunch. This town is known for its longanisa so Jon and I both had that, and it was excellent. We had a leisurely lunch and walked around town a bit.

When we were at the corner up by the church, we saw 3 army pickup trucks pass, all painted in green camouflage, with machine guns mounted on the cabs and soldiers standing behind them in the beds of the trucks. Just driving through town. Certainly not a sight you see every day. We thought it best not to take a picture.

That green building in the back is essentially a food court. We sought refuge there in the early evening – first just to get some coffee, but as we were sitting there a huge thunderstorm struck. It was a great place to watch the lighting over the park and the church and listen to the thunder and the heavy rain.

We headed back up the same road we’d come from to check out a cenote. (se-note) I had never heard of this before but Jon and Dan were very excited about the prospect, although neither of them had been either. We discovered over the next couple of days this area has a ton of them. Essentially a cenote is an underground cave that collects rain water, and are popular places to swim, and even snorkel and dive in. We went to one called X’keken. We had understood it would be lit, but it wasn’t – although we could see the lights at first, they just weren’t turned on. So we used the flashlights on our phones to make our way down. This first picture I took with the flash of my phone so that’s as good as it gets, but figured it would get the point across. It was a beautiful cavern with a hole in the top that let light in. There was a literal busload of teenage girls down there, too, so it was kinda crowded and loud what with all their screaming for the sake of screaming :) But we braved the water anyway – a little cold at first but you got used to it. There were lots of catfish in the water, and lots of bats flying around up top. The place smelled of bat guano.

At one point all of the girls left at once and suddenly it was just the 3 of us. Amazing. It was so quiet, and the water so peaceful, we couldn’t believe we had the whole thing to ourselves. It was an incredible experience. Then, out of nowhere the lights came on. One of the workers came down to start closing up. We asked why the lights were off in the first place but it was a confusing answer – we believe it was related to government budget cuts. It did allow us to get a better picture where you can clearly see you are in a cavern.

We went back to Vallavolid after this and that’s when we got caught in the storm. Eventually that let up and we went out for dinner. We had gone back to this place we first stopped at for lunch, but they only had the buffet going at the time, he told us the dinner menu took effect at 5pm and we should return after 5. We got there about 7 – they were closed already, at 6:30! We couldn’t believe it. Maybe they thought no one would go out in the rain? It was just very odd. But Dan talked to the hostess about where to go that tourists wouldn’t normally go, and she made a recommendation that we ended up really liking. We had a nice dinner (something, something, tortillas, chips, habanero sauce, something something) and got back to the hotel after 9pm.

Today was Chichen Itza. More about that tomorrow!

So technically this isn’t Day 1, more like Day 1.5. And it depends on who you ask. It’s Day 2 or 2.5 for Dan. We were both traveling last week – me to Ohio, Dan to North Carolina. I got home on Friday, left on Saturday to come in this direction. But since you can’t get same-day connections coming from the west, I spent the night in a DFW airport and got here yesterday, Sunday, about Noon. Same day connections from the east are not a problem; Dan went from RDU to Miami then here – just took a little over 3 hours in the air total, which is why it didn’t make sense for him to go home first. And why he got here on Saturday. Confused? Try being us for a month :) We do have interesting travel schedules. (The worst part was figuring out what to do with pNut when Dan’s last minute trip to NC came up, but that’s a whole other story. Thanks to Mary Lou, Jo and Laura for helping out!)

Yesterday seemed to go pretty fast. Dan and Jon had been walking around the island all morning. They walked to the airport to meet me; Dan was pretty tickled by this. “I’ve never walked to an airport before!” I was standing in front of the airport and was certainly surprised to see them, I was expecting a Jeep. We took a cab to Jon’s place, had a time getting there because of a bike event, lots of streets were closed off.

Jon has a very nice 2 bedroom condo. Will have to remember to get some pictures before we leave. We went out for lunch to a seafood place. We got to pick the fish we wanted to eat from an ice chest! Jon and I had grouper, Dan got snapper. The whole fish was fried, showed up on your plate completely intact, eyeballs and all. It was very good, very fresh.

We went to a little resort area after and played in the water a little bit. The water was very clean (although not according to Jon – guess it depends on what you’re used to) and cool but not cold. Very different from the northern Pacific that’s for sure. I’ll have to admit I didn’t realize that we were in the Caribbean. Not sure what I thought it was – the Gulf of Mexico probably, which would be true if we were on the other side of the Yucatan Peninsula. But this side is definitely in the Caribbean. And it’s beautiful.

First sighting of the Yucatan Peninsula from the plane.

Cancun! We won’t make it there this trip. I hear it’s very touristy, not really our scene anyway.

First sighting of Cozumel from the plane. Pretty pretty!

Amazing water. Yes that’s a runway in the background.

The temperature upon arrival. A nice balance to the 12 degrees I had in Columbus earlier in the week!

We had dinner last night at a local taco joint and it was excellent, then Mexican ice cream after for dessert. This morning we got up early to drive to the other side of the island so we could catch the sunrise at 6:01am.

There were only a few other people on the beach with the same intention; they’re behind Jon under those huts.

No one on the other side of the beach at all. We were near a restaurant that wasn’t open yet, but Dan found its swings, see far right and below.

 

We had breakfast here, a little eatery in an open market. I had the pozole. Dan and Jon both tried it; we all agreed it was probably the best we’ve ever had. Dan had a chicken and veggie stew with a little habanero on the side!, and Jon had what I’d describe as a breakfast tostada – eggs, beans, cheese on a flat crunchy corn tortilla.

The natives have a very distinct look about them: short bodies (Dan says he feels tall here!), round faces, sharp features, sometimes exaggerated – like really big eyes or really wide smiles. Almost caricatures. Jon says its the influence of the Mayan genetics; this side of Mexico looks very different from the western side which has more Spanish blood in them – taller, lighter skin, green eyes, etc.

After breakfast we came here for a lazy rest of the day. Were here from roughly 10am – 3pm. The water was beautiful, even Dan went in finally and did a little snorkeling. Neither of us are big beach people; one day was enough :) If Jon hadn’t moved here, I’m not sure it would have ever occurred to us to come.

The best part of that location was, being a resort that receives lots of visitors from cruise ships, it had ample things to do – including para-sailing, something I’d hoped to be able to do while here but hadn’t really done anything about it. We just lucked into it. We learned at the last minute Jon could go on the boat with me (Dan had stayed back on the beach thinking neither of them would be able to) so away we went, and he got some decent pictures.

This guy has been doing this for 20 years. He did not prepare me at all for what was about to happen, just started strapping things on me.

“Sit all the way down” he says. Shortly after this my ass begins to hang off the side of the boat and I ask “Is this really supposed to be happening?” Or something to that effect. He just laughs and flaps his arms like a bird. “Relax and fly!” he says.

And away I go….

Flying low…

…higher….

That you can’t see me gives you a clue how high up that is. I forgot to ask him how long the line was. But I was clearly higher than the 10 story buildings on the beach. We’re guessing about 200 feet.

It is very quiet up there. It got pretty windy and choppy at times but didn’t feel unsafe. Mostly it was peaceful, just sort of floating, and of course stunning views of the Sea and the island. Definitely recommend it.

The touch down at the end included a nice little dip.

Three dips in the water in fact. I enjoyed that more than I thought I would. And I was thankful for the life vest!

We took a drive around the island after that. This a bit farther down where we were this morning for sunrise, on the east side of the island. Waves are very choppy, beach very rocky. Very different from the resort side. Big areas of this are completely undeveloped. Across the highway from us is very thick jungle.

We stopped back in town for a two taco snack from a taco truck. And I don’t mean like you’re used to at home – I mean a literal pickup truck with a camper, some tupperware and a heating apparatus. It was good. Hot sauce was habanero again. I stayed away from it. Dan didn’t. And loved it while being in pain.

We came back to Jon’s to rest a bit. And we needed it. I think everyone took a micro nap. Headed out again about 7:30. Had dinner at another local joint. Jon learned his lesson after taking Dan to someplace sorta touristy on Saturday, and has sought out the authentic stuff from there on out. Jon got a quesadilla, and it was different still from those I had ordered at the last two places. Each of mine were different and clearly intended to be appetizers; this was a full on meal, easily 3-4x the size of what we’d seen so far. I got huaraches, Dan got chalupas. All good. (OK, so I’m fascinated that Google’s spell check recognized huaraches but not chalupa!)

It looks empty but it was pretty crowded by the time we left. We were the only gringos in the place, always a good sign.

On the wall behind us.

Dessert was at the same little ice cream chain we went to last night. A different location for me, but Jon and Dan came to this one Saturday night.

And that’s a wrap. It was a full day and we have an early start again tomorrow.