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Copyright |
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©2005 Jason Cross
All Rights Reserved
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 Sunday, February 9, 2003 |
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When vacationing, going out for breakfast is a pretty common occurrence for me, far from my norm of not eating breakfast at all (since breakfast would require less precious sleeping time in the morning). On Tuesday morning, we walked down to the town center of Cozumel’s one city, San Miguel, and found Palmera’s for breakfast. While eating French toast, bacon, and fresh-squeezed orange juice, we were visited by some wandering dogs one of which snuck under our table and set up shop next to Nate and Sebastian, wisely determining the two in our party most likely to drop some food.
San Miguel is an interesting town, full of small shops selling shirts, knickknacks, dive equipment, and lots of jewelry. All along the main street, people stand at the entrance to each store calling out for passers-by to come in. As Cozumel is a common stop for Caribbean cruise ships, the main street along the shore is full of tourists and taxi cabs, with shops advertising big discounts off of marked up merchandise for cruise passengers. To give an example of just how many cruise tourists come to Cozumel, on Wednesday there were 12 ships docked with 24,000 tourists in town from them.
After breakfast we went to San Francisco de Asis, a large Cozumel grocery store. We bought several boxes (yes, boxes) of juice and milk, some fruit, lime Sabritas chips, and some other odds and ends to snack on during our trip. On the way back I stopped at a cybercafe to check my email, which cost a whopping 10 pesos for up to an hour (roughly $1.00). To my chagrin, I could not get the keyboard to make an @, as the shift key made an accent instead. I finally copied and pasted one off of another site – though I resolved to figure the Mexican keyboard out at some point.
It being our first full day in Cozumel, we decided that going to the ocean was high on our to-do list, so we took a cab to Playa Azul (translation: Beach of Azul). Before leaving I applied a liberal amount of sunscreen as I tend to go from pale to sunburnt and then right back to pale. One thing that strikes me about Cozumel is how small the swimable beaches are – mainly because all of the beaches are man-made where people swim. Cozumel is naturally shored by sharp rocks and reef which are poor for swimming unless your feet are made of iron – which would present its own unique set of swimming challenges.
There appear to be two main beers in Cozumel – XX (pronounced Dos Equis, translation: two xs) and Sol. If the two beers were in a battle (much like the Pepsi/Coke Cola Wars of the 80s or maybe The Bud Bowl), Dos Equis would be the current leader if advertising were any clue. I have seen little of Corona by comparison, with the exception of on t-shirts at the tourist shops.
At Playa Azul we swam a little, looked for shells for the kids (mainly fragments washing through the sand – not exactly the conch shell the Sebbie was hoping for), and had Pina Coladas, the ever-present Dos Equis, and chips with guacamole. The water was warm (82 degrees according to a cab driver) and there are much fewer waves than in previous trips to the ocean, which I suspect was due to our being on an island on the far side away from the main Caribbean sea.
While on the beach I met a couple from Arizona but originally from Omaha who asked where we were from because they saw my CrossPaths “Voted Best in Des Moines 2000” t-shirt and wanted to spread Midwestern solidarity. They were in Cozumel on a day trip from Cancun and recommended taking the Atlantis tour submarine. We later found that the submarine is really difficult to take unless you are from a cruise ship or resort as they tend to pre-book most of the cruises.
For dinner we ate at La Mission (translation: The Mission), not to be confused with La Casa Mission the night before. La Mission is located about 1/2 block off of the main strip in San Miguel, which means it costs twice as much as the inland restaurants, playing off of the supply and demand principal with their having the supply of food and the cruise-ship passengers and ourselves having the demand. For dinner I had fajitas again, giving me a comparison between the two Cozumel “Mission” restaurants (winner: La Mission, but not twice the cost better). Then, on the way back to the villa, we found an out of the way local bakery which was the best deal so far, with 3 muffins, two breakfast rolls and a flan costing under $3 US.
Cozumel Con Queso Table of Contents:
Introduction
Day 1: The Journey to Our Mysterious Southern Neighbor
Day 2: The Ocean: Our Big, Wet and Salty Friend
Day 3: Under the Sea, or On Top of It Anyway
Day 4: To the Briny Deep
Day 5: Break On Through to the Other Side
Day 6: Ancient Cultures on the Mainland
Day 7: The Sun Beach
Day 8: The Return of the Wearied Travelers
Tons of Photos |
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