Caribbean cruise, Post 3: Cozumel

On Day 4, Wednesday, our second port of call was the island of Cozumel, Mexico.

Long-time blog readers may recall that Ben and I once spent 9 days there, scuba diving with two other couples (see blog entries starting here). Thus, in advance of our cruise, I had arranged to meet up with Felipe, my dive instructor from 3 years ago, and go on two dives with him while in port! (Ben would look after Finley while I dove, and two days later it would be his turn to dive in Honduras. Diving with a little one in tow takes some forethought, but we managed it!)

Once we disembarked in Cozumel, we took a taxi to the marina and, after a while, Felipe showed up. He seemed to have forgotten who I was and what we had organised via email the week before, but luckily he was flexible and it worked out anyway!

After Felipe and his employees had the tanks and dive gear organised, the other divers and I (along with Ben and Finley) piled into Felipe's boat captain Fernando's boat (the same boat and captain as 3 years ago), and motored to a beach a few minutes away.

While the more experienced divers went out on the boat with another Dive Master, the newbies and I sat through Felipe's theory/safety talk for about an hour. (Since it had been over 2 years since I'd last dived, on our Kwaj trip, I wanted a refresher before (ha) diving in.) After the talk, we geared up, entered the water, did some practice exercises, and set off on an easy dive.

I can't remember many specifics about what I saw during the dive, since it's already 2.5 months ago and I didn't write any notes afterwards. I do remember being entertained by wriggling my outstretched fingers towards all the Christmas tree worms I saw, and watching them instantly tuck their Christmas tree-shaped "crowns" out of sight!

I'm afraid I don't have any underwater photos to show you either. I know my limits thanks to an amusing incident on our Kwaj trip: I am NOT capable of operating a camera whilst maintaining my buoyancy, breathing, and balance under water!

After the first dive, we spent some time back on the beach before heading out to do a drift dive along Paradise Reef. I remember enjoying this dive and seeing a lot of interesting fish and coral... but again, the specifics elude me. (Blogging these recent holidays a few months late is a real eye-opener regarding how sieve-like my memory has become!!) Oh, but I saw one of the coolest sights I've ever seen underwater: I watched a large fish completely change its colour and pattern right before my eyes!

By the time we eventually reached the surface, Ben (waiting in the boat) was getting quite worried, as the time we needed to be back on the Conquest was fast approaching.

We hadn't realised until just before the second dive that "ship's time" was two hours different to "local time", so we had a lot less time than Felipe had been assuming. It was 1pm local time, 3pm ship's time, we were about to do a 1 hour dive (followed by boating back to the marina, taking off my dive gear, paying Felipe, driving back to the port, getting through the tourist zone, and making it up the gangway)... and we needed to be back on board at 5pm ship's time! This discrepancy may also explain why Felipe was "late" to our prearranged marina meeting that morning... although if we HAD arrived 2 hours later, I think he and the others would have been long gone in the boat!

Anyway, we made it back with a few minutes to spare, and the food at dinner that night tasted extra delicious after a day spent on the water!

To be continued...

Cozumel dive trip, Post 6: Playa del Carmen and Tulum ruins

Saturday, April 30th, was our last full day in Mexico. As our designated sightseeing day, we wanted to go across to the mainland to explore the ritzy resort town of Playa del Carmen and its surrounds. Throughout the week, I had been reading my Lonely Planet guide to formulate a plan of attack!

We ended up having a lazy morning, having decided the previous night to head across to the mainland around noon in order to miss some of the day's hottest hours. We lingered over our continental breakfast in the CDM restaurant with Peter and Marissa, and afterwards chatted some more in our room before eventually saying farewell (they were flying home that day).

We were so happy to have been able to enjoy this vacation in the company of Ken, Liesl, Peter and Marissa... thanks guys! It was fantastic!

We then caught a taxi to the San Miguel ferry terminal, and just made it onto the noon ferry to Playa del Carmen. It cost 140 pesos each (about $12) and took 45 minutes, sitting in air-conditioned comfort. When we reached the mainland, this was the panoramic view from the jetty... the big white resort is where Carmen and Phil (from the previous blog entry) were staying!

We spent a little while wandering around the posh shopping area before heading back a few streets to catch a collectivo. Playa del Carmen is known as an upmarket resort town, and is particularly popular with Europeans. Tourism apparently took off there due to people passing through on their way to Cozumel! (The latter became famous in the 1960s, when Jacques Cousteau called it one of the best places to scuba dive in the world.)

A collectivo is a type of public transport in Mexico - a minivan that leaves when it's full rather than according to a timetable. It cost us 35 pesos (less than $3) each. Our destination was the ruins at Tulum... we'd settled on this location since it is a more reasonable distance from Playa than the famous Chichen Itza, which I would've loved to have seen if it wasn't 5 hours away!

After a ride of about 45 minutes, I fortunately saw a sign to the Tulum ruins flash by (and heard the driver call out "ruinas!"), so off we hopped. It was about 2:30pm by this time, and extremely hot.

It seems that most tourists pay a couple of dollars to ride a "train" the 800m from the highway to the ruins, but we set off on foot. Following are some of the sights along the road. As soon as Ben had snapped a photo of the guys up the pole (who were playing music with what sounded like flutes or recorders), a guy with a donations tin emerged from his hiding place in a tree's shadow to wordlessly demand payment for the privilege of taking a photo. Sneaky!

The Tulum ruins were once a thriving port city, and were at their height between the 13th and 15th centuries. The ruins are stunningly situated on top of 12m-high cliffs on the east coast of the Yucatán Peninsula, looking down over white sand beaches and the bright blue water of the Caribbean Sea. Large iguanas are everywhere, exuding a confident air of proprietorship. Despite the stifling heat (which even had me thinking fondly of Vancouver weather for the only time on the trip), it was well worth a visit!

Here are some of the many photos we took of the ruins, their lizard inhabitants, and the beaches below...

















As you can see, these ruins were rather more impressive than El Cedral!!

After an hour or two at the ruins, we walked the 800m back to the highway to catch a collectivo back to Playa. As we neared the road, a man came over to us with small samples of something held out on small spoons. We were so used to automatically saying "no, gracias" to salespeople that it wasn't until he had already gone back to his stall that we registered it was coconut ice cream he was selling. Si, por favor, si si!! I cannot describe how delicious this stuff is!



Back in Playa del Carmen an hour later, we spent a while looking through some clothing and souvenir shops. I thought a few of our readers might be entertained by these authentic souvenirs I found...


As it approached dinner time, we went to the Playa Car Palace Resort to surprise Carmen and Phil. They'd told us to come and visit them if we came to the mainland, but I don't think they believed we would! After chatting for a while in the lobby - we weren't allowed up to their room since it was an all-inclusive - we set off on a 15 minute walk along the main tourist avenue to find a restaurant called Blue Lobster, which had been recommended to Carmen and Phil by a number of their friends.

There were some pretty sights here and there amongst the restaurants and souvenir shops along the bustling pedestrian mall. The coconut shell lanterns were in an Italian-themed side alley... beautiful!



Our dinner at Blue Lobster (which Carmen and Phil kindly insisted on treating us to) was simply superb. It was definitely my favourite meal of the trip!

My bacon-wrapped shrimp...


Ben's eye fillet...


Carmen and her lobster...



Here are some more pretty coconut shell lanterns we saw during our walk back to their resort and the ferry dock...


Phil and Carmen waited on the dock until they had waved us onto the 10pm ferry back to Cozumel. We'd had a wonderful day on the mainland!

The next morning - Sunday, May 1st - we headed to the airport for our flight home. And that brings me to the end of our Mexican adventure! We hope you enjoyed it too!

Click here to see lots more photos from our Cozumel trip.

Cozumel dive trip, Post 5: Night dive and dinner plans

Thursday, May 28th, was the day Ken and Liesl flew home. After waving Peter and Marissa off on their last day of diving, I went into town with Ken and Liesl to look for souvenirs, while Ben stayed behind and worked on his assignment in the hotel lobby.

Contrasted souvenir shopping options...

The rest of the day was very relaxing... we farewelled Ken and Liesl, had our traditional sope and ice cream lunch with Peter and Marissa, wrote postcards, and lazed around until it was time for our night dive. We were back with Felipe for this dive, and Greg from BC (whom we'd met on the weekend) joined us too.

This was the beautiful sunset we saw as we waited on the boat at Paradise Reef for it to get dark enough to start our dive...

Then, as darkness quickly fell, it was time to descend to the murky depths of the reef... to witness a whole different world to what we'd seen so far in the daylight! Here are a few of the sights - photography aided by flashlight beams and the camera's flash:

An orange crab...

A sea cucumber...


Sleepy fish...

Spotted moray eel...

To give you an idea of how dark it was down there, here are a couple of shots taken without the flash. The first photo is of me, and the second is of Felipe...

This turned out to be our longest dive of the trip - 58 minutes - and we turned our flashlights off a few times to experience the enveloping darkness and see the bioluminescence. The latter is a mesmerising display of tiny green-glowing particles, visible in the water when there's movement. It was like little green fireflies darting away from our hands when we swished them through the water. Very pretty, and awesome to see!

I found that I spent much of this dive feeling somewhat disoriented - most likely due to receiving fewer subconscious cues than I am used to receiving from my senses regarding my position relative to everyone and everything else. For example, I knew where someone was if I could see their flashlight - but if I got turned about, it was hard to know where they were until I was directly facing them again. And you don't really want to go for long without knowing where your dive buddies are when you're 40 feet deep and it's pitch dark!

I also felt like I just couldn't see as well as I wanted to, or thought I should be able to, so maybe I am just overly dependent on light and sight! Suffice to say, I couldn't quite identify with all the raving the others had done about their night dive a few days earlier... but I was still happy to have experienced a night dive, and wouldn't have wanted to miss it!

The next morning - Friday, April 29th - we woke at the lovely hour of 4:45am to watch the royal wedding from the comfort of our bed. It was worth missing some sleep for!

Friday was another lazy day, with Ben working on his assignment, me reading my book, and Peter and Marissa doing some snorkelling.

At 4:30pm, we all took a taxi into town to meet up with an American couple from Virginia: Phil and Carmen. They were holidaying at Playa del Carmen - which is on the mainland, a 30 minute ferry ride from Cozumel - and had done a tour of Cozumel that day, so P&M had arranged to meet them for dinner. We found them at the Cozumel Palace Resort (a sister resort to theirs on the mainland), asked the staff for some dining recommendations, and then set off on foot to Restaurant La Choza.

It was a very nice restaurant, and we enjoyed getting to know Carmen and Phil a little while tucking in to our delicious meals and being serenaded by a trio of guitarists playing 'La Bamba'!

This is the avocado pie Ben and I shared for dessert. It had a smooth texture and still tasted like avocado, but it was surprisingly good!

P&M gave us a taste of their coconut ice cream (which had actual pieces of shredded coconut in it), and that was pretty much the most amazing thing ever. We were sorry we hadn't discovered it earlier so that we could have been eating it all week. I've even been trying to find it back in Canada!

A few poses after leaving the restaurant...

Back on the esplanade, we watched another beautiful sunset.

After Carmen and Phil left to catch their ferry to the mainland, the four of us walked to the Mega supermarket, bought some $2 pure vanilla extract as Ben's and my only real Mexican souvenir, and took a taxi the rest of the way back to Casa del Mar.

The next day, Saturday, would be the last full day of our trip (and the day P&M flew home). It was a good thing we'd had a couple of easy days, because we had big plans for Saturday!

To be continued...

Click here to see lots more photos from our Cozumel trip.