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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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Walking along the main street in San Miguel is an exercise in avoidance. You avoid the sellers standing at the door of each shop and the timeshare salespeople asking if you are looking for something to do. You avoid running into all of the other walker-bys, many from the cruise ships. You avoid being hit by the small cars and scooters racing along the streets at uneven intervals. On occasion you avoid perhaps a dog or a bad smell from the sewer or fish market.
The Cozumelian retail economy depends on three important types of merchandise: trinkets, t-shirts, and jewelry. Walking down the main street along the ocean, you’d think that Cozumel is a major midpoint for mines of silver, emeralds, diamonds and tanzanite. And they’re all “at 20% off”!
No one can say that my family doesn’t stick with something when they like it, so for our second breakfast on the isle of Cozumel, we ate again at Palmera’s, though this time we were not joined by any neighborhood dogs. Feeling tropical, I ordered the “Caribbean Omelet” – an omelet with ham and pineapple.
When Mom and Shawn had last been to Cozumel (shh, don’t tell anybody, but they *were* the cruise ship people at one time), they had gone on a helmet dive and wanted to do so again, so the lot of us took a Suburban taxi to Chankanaab Park. It should be noted that spelling in Cozumel seems to be very much up to the speller, as official signs and maps for Chankanaab have spelled it both as I have as well as without the double-a. Of course, this is also the island where a store sold “sweathers” for $20 and “ice creame” for $3.
The beach at Chankanaab consists mainly of a manmade sand lagoon, which was perfect for Nate and Sebbie to swim in without Misty worrying about a wave pulling them out to sea. Near the beach is a pen when visitors can swim with dolphins for $75 or watch a sea lion show for $5 each. Mom, Shawn, Misty and I opted to bypass the water mammal adventures in lieu of the helmet dive.
Let me take a moment to explain what a helmet dive is exactly. You know how in the old cartoons, they would show divers as people in big metal suits with a round helmet attached to an air hose? Where someone would either inevitably either step on the hose, cutting off the air, or else turn the air up too high causing the suit to inflate before hilarity ensued? A helmet dive is kind of like that, except without the full suit and updated for our modern times.
A group of seven of us went one by one down a ladder into the water, and as we got down to about chest-deep, they put a 70-pound helmet (which felt lighter underwater due to buoyancy) on our shoulders, attached to a floating air pump. Being under the water with the helmet was somewhat akin to being inside a bubble, as air pressure kept the air in the helmet which was open on the bottom with water up to chin level. Before going down they warn you not to bend over as the air would come out, so you walk along the bottom holding onto a rope to keep steady as the currents push you back and forth.
About 20 feet along the rope, they have you let go and take each others hands forming a human chain of people who look like they’re training for a space mission but wearing their swimsuits. We walked along the bottom near a reef, where divers would get things like a coral shrimp and a sea cucumber to pass around the group. As undersea biology doesn’t appeal to everybody, the helmet dive crew quickly move on to performing an undersea magic show, making a live cowry disappear and reappear as a cowry shell with a bit of aquatic slight of hand. They then lead a dance routine, having the people already desperately clinging to their sense of balance do the hokey-pokey and the chicken dance.
Following the helmet dive, we experienced a Mexican miracle…we were offered something for free (tips not included). Mario, a short young man who worked for the helmet dive place, offered to take us out snorkeling, which Shawn, Keith and I took him up on, along with a man known only to us as Senor Steve. Wearing our mask, snorkel and fins, we swam out above the reef for about 30 minutes, seeing a small barracuda, a large parrot fish, and many many types of fish whose names I don’t know despite their being very colorful and likely available at your local salt water aquarium store (such as Fish Plus in Indianola, tell Cindy and Shawn that Jason sent you).
All in all the snorkeling went well with nobody drowning or being stung by anything, though Senor Steve had some early problems and Keith’s mask kept leaking. All of this was just a prelude to the scuba diving we planned for the next day, so following Chankanaab we went to Papa Hog's (translation: father pig's) to schedule a shipwreck dive for Shawn, a diving course for Keith and I, and a reef dive for the three of us.
Tired from the water adventures, we ate dinner at Guido’s which, contrary to what you might think from the name, served Italian food. Good, but a bit pricey at $5 extra to put shrimp on fettuccine alfredo and garlic bread at $3 each. The evening then ended with coconut ice cream (a staple of Mexican ice cream flavors) and a stop at Zermat, the local bakery with the funny name and oh so low prices.
I have slept better (and more) in Cozumel than I have in some time. Maybe it’s the air conditioned cool air along with the hum that accompanies for white noise. Perhaps it’s the firm beds. Possibly it’s the general lack of electromagnetic waves from not carrying a cell phone or using the Internet. Or maybe it’s whatever in the air gives way to a “Mexican minute”, the slow way of life down south, and traditional siestas.
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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