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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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Thursday we split up, with Shawn, Keith and myself going to scuba while Mom, Misty and the kids renting a VW Bug and going off on their own. In Mexico, Volkswagen found a haven for their bugs and microvans, and Cozumel is no exception. Bugs, Jeeps and Geo Trackers roam the narrow streets, often full of tourists zipping to and fro among the taxis and mopeds.
Wanting something different, or maybe drawn by the allure of a two dollar breakfast in a sea of ten dollar meals, we went to La Casa Mission for breakfast. Once seated, we were surprised to find that their breakfast menu basically consisted of their lunch/dinner menu (enchiladas, quesadillas, and the like) along with eggs. Bacon? Nada. Potatos? Sorry. Orange juice? Only soda. I ordered a ham and cheese omelet which came with a salsa-type sauce on the side which I found to be a good combination.
I am not usually a big drinker of orange juice, but in Mexico it is hard to pass up as it is fresh squeezed (or else packaged in some magic way to taste exactly like fresh squeezed, though given the packaging I’ve seen to date, I’m guessing the former is more likely). Another drink oddity is the presence of Coca Cola Light rather than Diet Coke. It is packaged as having no calories, but it tastes suspiciously like regular Coke. In fact we did a blind non-scientific taste test of regular Coke versus Coke Light and they could not be differentiated between. Somewhere at Coca-Cola corporate headquarters, someone in charge of the Mexican market is maniacally laughing over their marketing coup. "Those fools – they are buying two different products of the same drink! Mwahaha!"
Anyway…so Shawn and Keith and I went to Papa Hogs for our scuba (translation: self contained underwater breathing apparatus) excursion. Papa Hogs is a relatively small dive shop in Cozumel that came highly recommended by a friend of Shawn’s. It is run by a guy named Mike, a Canadian expatriate who moved to Cozumel for the scenery and presumably the diving who has this look of grizzled perpetual relaxation about him. I suspect the name Papa Hogs comes from his two Harley Davidson motorcycles, but maybe he had an overweight father. I didn’t ask.
Keith and I took a “resort course” while Shawn dove a shipwreck. Having never dived before with the exception of using Shawn’s gear in their old pool, I expected some sort of multi-hour training course before hitting the open sea. Not in Mexico, buddy! Training consisted of Oscar, presumably a certified trainer who was admittedly very good at keeping us out of watery death’s clutches, sitting us on some lawn chairs and giving us some basic instructions for about fifteen to twenty minutes. This is your regulator, this is the air control. Tell me when you have 1000 psi of air. Keep breathing. Then we hit the water.
Diving from the water’s edge is tricky as the waves keep hitting you as you try to stand with the weight of your tank, get your fins on, not hit the boat docked nearby, and keep breathing (with the latter getting my top priority). Once in the water, we practiced breathing with the regulator, changing our buoyancy by taking deeper and shallower breaths, clearing our mask while underwater, and taking the regulator out and back into our mouths all while under the water. You see, if you’re down deep enough and were to have your mask or regulator come out, you *have* to be able to put them back on while under, as surfacing too fast will result in some unpleasantness called the bends where your blood basically boils in your veins.
After five or ten minutes of mastering these skills (with the possible exception of the buoyancy issue which I still have trouble with), we swam out for a ways near the shoreline reef, going down to about 30 feet. When diving, pressure is very noticeable, as it causes quite a bit of pain while you figure out the best way to adjust your inner ear pressure (options include holding your nose and breathing out, wiggling your jaw, and puncturing your ear drum with a sea urchin, though the latter is not recommended for beginners or those who like to hear). After that priorities include breathing, keeping your mask on, and keeping the level of air in your lungs right for buoyancy to keep you at the right level, and then looking around at the undersea flora and fauna.
Have you ever been to an aquarium center or one of those pet stores specializing in high-end saltwater setups? Diving is kind of like that, though with more water, regulating of breathing, and possibility of death, along with the coolness factor of what you see multiplied by several hundred.
Now being experienced pros, Keith and I joined back with Shawn after our initial dive for a dive out on Paradise Reef, this time requiring a boat ride to get to our dive destination rather than just walking into the water. To get from the boat to the water, you put on your gear, mask fins and all, and roll backwards off of the boats edge into the water, just like in the movies. This is surprisingly less disorienting than you’d think, as the tank breaks your fall into the water, the inflated gear keeps you afloat until you release the air, and you’re really focused more on the task of keeping alive (re: breathing) than any disorientation.
Paradise Reef goes 45 feet deep, which means a fair amount of pressure, so keeping equalized was of high importance to me, though I had an easier time of it on this second dive despite the greater depth. Maintaining buoyancy was also high on the list, with too much buoyancy carrying to the surface (meaning the threat of the pain of re-equalization when coming down again) and too little buoyancy keeping you at the very bottom of the reef and possibly on top of some sort of stinging creature.
On this dive we saw a large eel, several fish, and lots of coral. Much to Oscar the Instructor’s frustration, Shawn kept trying to get Keith and me to go over and look at this or that along the reef away from the rest of the group. After about 30 minutes under the water, we surfaced (slowly, remember the blood boiling thing) and crawled back onto the boat, our second excursion in the sea complete.
Once back on the surface and out of the water, breathing is no longer the issue, but that doesn’t mean that all is always well. The increased pressure combined with the greater amount of oxygen taken in by breathing too deeply through the regulator ended up giving me a massive headache. This, along with my ears not repressurizing completely even a couple days later, made for a sort of “diving hangover” feeling. Was it worth it? You bet.
For dinner we ate at La Veranda, a nicely decorated Caribbean restaurant a ways off of the main drag. Most of us ended up switching with someone else as what we ordered and received was not quite what was expected, though for the most part somebody had something that someone else was happy with. Getting our check was another matter.
Things tend to move at a different pace down in Mexico, especially in the restaurants. In the States, servers can seem almost anxious to get you up and out the door once your meal is done, so getting the check is rarely an ordeal. Turn over the table, get a new one in, increase the amount of likely tips in a given amount of time – that’s the game we Americans are used to. In Mexico, patience is the key to keeping from going crazy at a restaurant. The first half of the dining experience is quick; from being seated to ordering to food arriving, all happen within fifteen minutes or so. It’s settling up that takes the most time. Often times we would be sitting there, food eaten, plates even taken away, all the while waiting for the server to come back with the check. “La cuenta por favor.” Inevitably the check would arrive given enough time, but there would be times where the restaurant might have only a handful of other patrons that the check would still take 20 minutes or more to get. La Veranda gave us free Kahlua and Cream shots as we waited for the check, which you would think would actually have been more difficult to prepare than just getting the check itself.
In the Yucatan, finding lizards running around is not uncommon. Geckos crawl along the walls outside at night and iguanas sun themselves on the stone fences during the day. On Thursday evening, I made several tries at catching a gecko to show the kids up close, even going so far as to use a ladder to reach the higher ones. I managed to get one to jump onto Shawn, but it quickly jumped off and scurried out of reach into the prickly vegetation.
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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