Cozumel Day 3 - Snorkeling
I’ve never snorkled. There’s a few reasons for this. 1) I’m not a huge beach guy, so my vacations don’t usually take me to places where snorkling is available. 2) When I do go to locations where snorkling is available, getting up at some ungodly hour to pay some shady individual some absurd number of pesos to take me on a boat and shove me in the water so I can look at coral isn’t my idea of relaxing and 3) I’m not hugely into any trips that involve me getting up at 7 am when I’m ostensibly on vacation.
Little known fact about TDL: his perfect vacation involves the following: Get up between 8:30 and 9:00 am, have a huge greasy breakfast, spend about 4 hours under an umbrella on a beach not too far from a waiter who will notice when my drink is empty, go in to lunch, spend another couple hours re-performing step 2, nap, shower, dinner, drinking. Repeat. I don’t like sitting near pools (I can do that here) and I don’t like sitting out in the blazing sun and sweating. Gimme a beach chair under an umbrella and I’m a happy guy.
That said: I’m perfectly willing to go snorkling when it’s 1) at 11 am, 2) has open bar, and 3) free. The bride and groom, as a thank you for everyone who traveled out of the country for their wedding forwent (is that a word) the traditional after-wedding brunch for a snorkling cruise.
Sunday, November 18th 2007
9:00 am: Lovely, included breakfast. Same stuff as yesterday but I opt for pancakes and scrambled eggs with sausage and cheddar. Open Breakfast is possibly the greatest thing ever.
10:30 am: After a tough mid-morning of retiring to my room to drink coffee and read on my balcony, we head out to grab a cab to the ferry pier.
10:55 am: I am thrilled to see our new boat has two things to float on. I desperately hope this will not lead to another episode of ferry from hell.
11:15 am: We are staying close to the shore, which is good. We get a speech before another episode of iPod DJ begins. The beer of choice for this trip is Bohemia and the guide informs us they have 48 cases on board……. for 32 people. In addition there are Margaritas, soda, and water. He lets us know that they usually don’t open the bar until after the snorkeling, but then he remembers we’re in Mexico and there are no laws or safety regulations.
11:20 am: As we go along the shoreline of Cozumel, it strikes me again how little of this part of Mexico is undeveloped. When we went to Cancun a few years back, we went to visit the ruins at Chichen Itza. It was about an hour bus ride out the island and the highway we were on was literally cut through the middle of a jungle. There was nothing else but this road. Going along the shore-line of Cozumel it’s basically resort followed by vast amounts of scrubland followed by a couple of houses, followed by scrubland, followed by a resort. I mean look at it.
12:00 pm: Four beers deep, we get to the first snorkeling location. I get myself a mask, lifejacket, and snorkel and take my shirt off, unleashing the pasty awesome.
12:30 pm: I go in the water and put the mask on. There’s fish and rocks. I’m somewhat unmoved. One cool thing, there are fish kind of swimming around near the group near the surface. I stare one down and swims away. That’s right, lil bitch.
12:45 pm: Back on the boat.
1:30 pm: We get to the second location. Pretty much the same as the first location. I do, however, remember that I put no sunscreen on my back. It’s going to get ugly.
2:00 pm: We’re back on the boat heading toward a random beach bar that’s apparently associated with the guys who run the boat.
3:00 pm: They run the boat basically up the beach and everyone gets off. We have about an hour to get lunch, more beer, and then use the amenities at the private beach.
3:30 pm: I find a hammock.
4:15 pm: back on the boat.
5:00 pm: And back to the mainland with no major injuries. My travel group makes plans to go back home, shower up, and head back into town for dinner. At this point, we are all ungodly sick of the hotel menu.
5:05 pm: I interpret shower as “nap.”
7:00 pm: Ms. L and I go downstairs to the bar. There are already a couple of folks there watching the Sunday Night Football Game.
7:45 pm: The Patriots score a third touchdown five seconds into the 2nd quarter. I inform one of Ms. L’s Bills fan co-workers that holding the Pats to only 2 TDs in the first quarter was kinda like a moral victory.
8:15 pm: We head out to dinner. When we get out of the cab, I realize that I still haven’t gotten any cash.
8:30 pm: Ms. L and I head into the town. There is some kind of festival going on. I’m not really sure what they’re celebrating but we are one of like 10 tourists walking around the festival. There’s music and random dancing going on. There’s also random food carts around the festival. It occurs to me that I really don’t need a sit-down dinner. I would be more than happy to wander around this festival and sample random carts of goodness, but Ms. L is not as adventurous. Instead, we turn into “white people looking for a bank” which, really, could have been the start of a good horror movie.
8:45 pm: I find an HSBC. I have a moment where it starts conversing with me in Spanish. Being from New York City, I call this “Tuesday.” I ask for pesos and get yelled at with “what are you going to do with those?” I dunno… I”m in Mexico. Spend them?
8:50 pm: We walk back through the festival around the other way. I’ve marked about 12 carts that I would much rather go to than to a sit down dinner. You have to remember: I eat out of random food carts about 3 days a week… whether it be lamb and chicken over rice, a burger, steak, dirty water dogs, or pizza. If you had to ask me what the perfect way to sample the local fare would be, I’d answer you that it’d be going around to a bunch of taco carts and chowing down.
9:00 pm: Sadly, we go back to the restaurant: Pancho’s Backyard. The building was built in the 1600s and the steak was delicious. I also finished off two frozen margaritas and only one was necessary. I should have gotten Mahi-Mahi but chickened out. The inside of the restaurant was beautiful, including a small indoor pond complete with waterfalls and fish.
10:30 pm: We head back to the hotel. We then get into an argument with other traveling companions about when to head back to Cancun tomorrow. They want to take a 8 am Ferry of Doom. I’d prefer to take an 11 am Ferry of Doom. We settle on meeting the two 7 am-ers in Cancun around noon.
Tomorrow: To Cancun we go.