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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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As anyone who knows me can tell you, I am NOT a morning person. I laugh in the face of morning before slapping my snooze bar and leaping back into bed, and under many circumstances I will somehow manage to sleep for 10 to 12 hours given the chance (though I pay for the overabundance of sleep with a wooziness and headache the following day in most cases). For some reason, though, this wasn't a problem in Cozumel, as I managed to wake myself up around 7:30 or 8:00 am each day without the aid of an alarm. On our last day, I woke up at 6:30 much to my own disappointment, as who would want to get up at 6:30 on vacation of their own choosing? Ok, who under 40 that is?
So I got up and finished my packing, putting my fragile purchases in bags wrapped in dirty clothes to protect them from the oh-so-delicate baggage handlers. We then got dressed and went to breakfast at El Museo, a restaurant on the second-story balcony of the Cozumel museum overlooking the ocean. There I got a ham, cheese and pineapple omelet, a tropical taste combination quickly rising up in the ranks of my opinion, much like the "Hawaiiowan" sausage and pineapple pizza. We were going to look around the museum itself, but the workers shooed us out as we didn't have tickets which turned out to be $5 each despite only having a handful of exhibits (though I suppose that exaggerated pricing is traditional Cozumelian and thus fits in their museum).
I had a number of things that I wanted to buy prior to our catching the last ferry that could possibly get us to mainland in time to reach our flight, the first of which was a bottle of tequila. A few blocks from our villa was a liquor store which was recommended by a sheet of local recommended stores left by the villa management company – a reputable source if I have heard one! Going up to the counter, Shawn and I asked the worker what tequila he'd recommend. Grabbing a large amber bottle off of the shelf, he proudly declared that this, indeed, was the very type of tequila that he himself drank every weekend, for the price of only $45 US.
While I'm sure that tequila would have been quite good, I have never had tequila. None, even through this trip, my third time in Mexico. So I don't think I would have appreciated the $45 tequila anyway (and besides, I was several hundred dollars into spending money for this trip already and still had other stuff to buy). So I ended up buying a bottle of Jose Cuervo Especial – that's right, I went to Mexico and bought a bottle of tequila I could probably pick up at an Iowan liquor store. I also bought a small bottle of Gusano Rojo (translation: greasy royal) which had a large, presumably and hopefully dead, worm floating in it as a souvenir.
With breakfast over and our Cozumel time running out, we had to meet with Pedro to settle up our rental agreement and villa inspection (hoping he didn't catch on to our secret use of the laundry facilities), pay for and return the rental cars, get our stuff rounded up and to the pier for the ferry to Playa Del Carmen. We found the rental car agency, oddly enough in the same building as Fat Tuesdays (a fairly well known bar chain). Ahh, daiquiris and rental cars, always a good combination. We then took all of our bags to the pier where I guarded them with a watchful eye while Keith went to get the second load. Finally, I took off upon Keith's return to do a bit of last minute shopping around downtown before leaving.
The best way to get money in Cozumel is through the friendly local ATM, where the Wells Fargo Debit/Check Card will pay in pesos rather than dollars. At the time we were there, one peso equaled roughly 10 cents, so the quick and dirty math was to divide prices by 10 to approximate in dollars. Wanting to find a carved turtle of a design seen the day before at a ridiculously high price, I quickly went through ten or so shops in the area of town where bargaining was more likely. I finally found one with the exact design on its back I was seeking, negotiated the cost down by about 30%, and headed back to the pier.
By this time, it was about 10:55 and the boat was to leave at 11 am. Misty, Keith and the kids were already onboard and Mom and Shawn were waiting for me. Then, right as we got to the boat, they stopped letting people on. The next boat didn't leave until 1 pm, which meant we wouldn't be to the airport until 3 pm *at best*, and our flight left at 3:30. So we were a bit worried. I was about to try slipping the ticket taker 200 pesos to let us on, but lucky for us, it turned out that they had just temporarily stopped boarding to let an injured man strapped to a stretcher onboard.
Our last trip across the water from Cozumel also had the distinction as being the most unpleasant. For starters, there was this awful stench throughout the cabin, like a mixture of sulfur and other unnamed badness. Riding for 45 minutes in this reek would have been bad enough, but it was accompanied by five foot waves buffeting the boat back and forth, making many of the passengers very seasick, young Sebastian among them and Misty very nearly. Situations like that make me very happy that I have never been prone to motion sickness.
Upon reaching Playa, we disembarked as quickly as possible, happy to be off of the boat and that little bit further into our return trip. I found it somewhat odd that the man on the stretcher, who was laid at the front of the cabin, was not removed first, so everyone on the boat ended up having to walk by or past him. Perhaps we should consider it another example to file in the "Mexico life moving at a slower pace" file.
Around docks, bus stops and the like, there are often guys riding these inverse-tricycle looking contraptions, designed with two wheels in the front on opposite sides of a large storage area for the purpose of transporting bags for tourists for a modest fee. We hired two of these to take our bags to the bus station, where we had determined would be a good place to keep an eye on our stuff as some of us wasted some spare time in the city prior to renting a taxi to the airport. Shawn was excited about the prospect of being at the bus station again, as a newsstand there sold these little lunchmeat sandwiches he had discovered on our trip to Tulum and found scrumptious. Something about the idea of a lunchmeat sandwich from a bus stop would make me wary enough; something about the idea of one from a Mexican bus stop made me all the more so.
Instead, I opted for that oh-so-Mexican of restaurants, McDonalds, as Misty and Keith were taking the kids there. I had originally intended to get lunch at the oh-so-Mexican Dominos pizza next door, but they were out of lunch-size pizzas. They were out of small pizzas, even. In fact, according to the guy behind the counter, all they had left were large pizzas, so McDonalds it was. There I got an "hamburguesa con queso" rather than the "McPollo, Jr.", the "McBurrito", "McNifica", or even the mysterious-sounding "nueva McPechuga!" It's telling of the McDonalds process that from one country to another, their food can taste the exact same, and no, I don't want to think of the implications of that.
I made one last pass at Mexican shopping in Playa, which cemented the idea that I had already bought everything I wanted on the trip. Besides, jamming something extra into one of my suitcases would have been difficult at this point, and I really didn't feel a compelling need for a Tokemon t-shirt or a ceramic plate of my own. So for a final tally of what I purchased on this trip:
• A Papa Hogs t-shirt to commemorate my dive
• An iguana carved out of onyx
• A turtle carved out of black coral
• A cat carved out of black stone for someone else
• A bottle of Jose Cuervo Especial
• A small bottle of Gusano Rojo complete with a dead worm of some sort
• A couple shot glasses for the above-mentioned tequila
These, along with a bag of assorted pieces of brain coral and shells found on the beaches and about 220 pictures (love the digital camera) made quite a few souvenirs from my week-long trip.
After finding a union-approved taxi to take us to the Cancun airport, going through ticketing and check-in went very quickly. Passing through security did as well, except for one exception – my three year old nephew, Nate. Mom had given the boys these little suitcases embroidered with their name and a dinosaur for Christmas to take as carry-on bags, and for some reason Nate's bag set off whatever it is that makes security have to thoroughly check a bag. Digging through his little books and toys, they didn't find a bomb or narcotics, though Nate did take the opportunity to sneak a sucker out of his bag while they looked.
Misty and Keith's flight left ten minutes before ours, so it was at the airport that we went our separate ways. The Cancun airport is interesting in that in some places it is very nice, like where they have shopping and restaurants near the terminal, yet in others it is very run-down, specifically where you wait for the plane, with incomplete ceilings and rows of hard plastic chairs.
There were two things about the flight back that I really enjoyed. One was the view upon takeoff where we circled over the reef at a relatively low altitude and then right along the main strip of Cancun resorts. The second was that ATA had real American Diet Coke, not that false "Coke Light" stuff.
For some reason, several of the people on our flight from Chicago to Cancun were also on our return trip, including this woman who on both flights managed to sit right in front of me and lay her seat back as far as possible, making it impossible for me to use my laptop as well as glaring at me every time I moved around even a little. Also on our flight was what appeared to be some sort of commune of hippy twenty-somethings returning from an extended stay in Mexico with a fortyish-looking guy, perhaps their leader or guru or keeper of the stash. I was curious to see if customs would grab them, but they appeared to make it through unfettered.
Having a couple of hours to spare in Chicago again, I immediately pulled out my cell phone to check my voicemail after a week of having this feeling of something missing at my hip. After a week gone I had two messages, one of which was left mere minutes after boarding the plane in Chicago originally to leave for Cancun, much to my amusement. Cell phone radiation once more returning to my system, we grabbed dinner at Harry Cary's and then boarded our flight to Des Moines along with a whopping five other passengers. Around midnight, we returned to good ol' bitter cold Iowa.
Much was the same as how we left it. My cat was alive. My pipes had frozen but Dad had thawed them before I got back. No insurrections had occurred at work among our users. I had hundreds of email messages but 80% were spam. Taking a week off away from the day-to-day to visit a wholly exotic, beautiful and relaxing area was well worth it – a vacation for the mind, body and spirit.
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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