Merida

From Holbox, we took a 5am ferry to the mainland to catch a bus to Valladolid. We just had time to grab some pastries before our bus to Chitzen Itza left. Chichen Itza was once a thriving Mayan city and then for reasons unknown, was abandoned in around 900 AD - my guess is because it's so damned hot! The ruins there are impressive and extensive... here´s a good little summary of the site.

From Chitzen Itza we went to Merida, which is the capital of the State of Yucatan. It was a nice change from the beach, with it's buildings, culture and sand-free beds. One afternoon we went to the zoo (ostensibly to entertain Rhi's 4 year old Macallan, but we had just as much fun!). On the walk back to the hotel I got separated from the group; lost in my own little world of taking pictures of the colourful buildings (and hailing a cop car when I thought it was a cab). It was late afternoon, the streets were deserted and for a good 20 minutes, there wasn't a single car. Siesta is such a pragmatic, and civilised, thing.

From Saturday night to Sunday afternoon, the area around the central square is closed to traffic and there are live bands, food and souvenir stalls and a lot of local men looking to give travelling women a dancing lesson. On Sunday afternoon, the flag is lowered by an out of tune and, it's got to be said, a little lackadaisical, police brass band and traffic is rightly restored to the streets.

Whale sharks, manta rays, dolphins and flamingos

Oh yes, that's a whale shark right there - one of about 10 we saw today. WOW!

We left Holbox by boat at 6:30am to go to an area an hour and a half north of the island. This area is very rich in plankton from May to September every year, and during this period, over a hundred whale sharks come to feed and mate. According to the guide, Elvis, the whale sharks only became known to the general public 4 years ago when a diver from Playa came up and talked to local fishermen who mentioned huge 'domino' fish. The diver suddenly realized that they were talking about whale sharks: the spots on their skin looked like a domino's spots.

Each of us swam with a whale shark 3 times, each time for up to 5 minutes from it's head to tail. The smallest we saw today was about 8m, the largest about 10m long.

It' s an absolutely awe inspiring thing, to swim with such a huge fish, first seeing it's huge gaping mouth, then gazing into one of it's eyes and then watching bubbles come out of it's gills, then keeping pace for as long as you can as it glides along, feeding on plankton as it moves, then finally trying to avoid being side-swiped by it's enormous tail as it sweeps past you. Of course, you try to keep a respectable distance away, but you can't always tell which way such a huge thing will go and if it wants to, it can swim much faster than your feeble fins can take you. Having said that, they were very gracious and allowed us quite a lot of 'face time'. Bel took some underwater shots and a short video, which I'll get my hands on later, but we were also really lucky to have a chance for shots from the boat as some swam right alongside the boat and one right under the bow.

Another amazing sight today was a 2m manta ray (no pics unfortunately) that also came up right alongside the boat, and then later, one flew out of the water some distance away. The 2m one (from wing tip to wing tip) seemed gigantic as it breached the water not 4 feet away but the guide said they grow to 4m, an unimaginable size.

As we approached the northeren end of Holbox island, to stop at a bay to see flamingos, we saw a couple of dolphins in the distance: it's something that always makes you feel good.


Some of the colourful buildings in Holbox.

Goodbye, Mahahual

The last week on base was an intense and frenzied rush to finish the divemaster course, site monitoring and base clean up, and all of those things interrupted by stormy weather. The storms did, however, provide quite a bit of wind which successfully drove away the mosquitos but unfortunately not the sand flies.

Our last morning on base started at 6:30am as usual, and we had to pack, clean and scrub the dorm with bleach, all done as quickly as possible so that we could catch a 10:30am bus. We rushed to the bus stop on time, but that didn´t leave us any time to say goodbye to any of the friends we´d made in town as we´d hoped we would. We waited a frustrating 45 minutes (though I´ve waited an hour and a half for the same bus before), then Doug, who runs a bar just down the road from the base, turned up and told us that the bus company that runs that particular bus route wasn´t operating for a couple of weeks. We all piled our bags and ourselves into the back of the ute and drove up the road to the other bus station, getting stopped by the police along the way (making it the second time I´d been stopped with Doug (though this time we didn´t have to go to the police station, and nobody stayed in jail for the night - another story for another time). Anyway, this all worked out perfectly, because now we had 2 hours and could say goodbye to our friends Gustavo and Esperanza. We had a couple of michelada´s (a kind of bloody mary with beer - a surprisingly good combination and something I learned to love early on, along with lime with salt) and some food between us, and said our goodbye´s. Gustavo and Rhi were quite teary, which was very sweet and we went back down the road to the bus stop. I asked the bus driver to toot the horn on the way past Gustavo´s and as we were coming up to the restaurant, we found them standing outside waiting and waving, wearing sunglasses to hide (I like to think) the tears.

We arrived in Playa del Carmen on Monday and had 2 days of relaxation, final paperwork and then we said goodbye to half of the group. These goodbyes, though sad, weren´t as hard to say as we´d thought they might be (at least for those of us continuing on) but we´ll definitely miss them in the coming weeks.

The remaining 6 of us are now relaxing in Holbox and we´ve booked ourselves on a boat tomorrow to see whale sharks. We´ll hopefully see manta rays and dolphins too. Holbox is a relaxed, colourful and quiet island that seems like a great place to relax for a while. We only got here yesterday, so I haven´t seen much yet but each of us had the same first impression: "ÿeah, I could live here"!


Some pics from the previous week that I thought I'd posted about...


Another amazing meal at Gustavo's. Ostensibly, Nell and I went up to make tortillas but really it was more about eating. Enchiladas at left rear; mole chicken front; machaca at right; all with homemade corn tortillas. There are different types of machaca - this one is a breakfast dish with eggs, tomatoes and a little chili, but essentially it's slow cooked beef and quite dry but very tender and very tasty.

Making homemade tortillas with Esperanza.


Our final meal at Luna de Plata, our very friendly and very good Italian joint just up the road from us. They have wine, cold beer, spirits AND LIMONCELLO!!! Rhi and my favourite place to get away from the gang for a while and forget about the 3 beer limit on base. From left: Joel, Sophie, Nell, Bel, Mat.

Dolphins, turtles and tests

Today, one of the boat groups swam with a pod of 10 dolphins... wow! That reminded me of my swim with dolphins - I can't believe I forgot to mention it a couple of weeks ago! We had just finished a monitoring dive and were heading back to base, when a pod of 6 dolphins crested and started playing in the bow wave. Our boat is only about 4m long, so seeing them right there was just amazing. What made it even better was that the captain stopped the boat so we could jump in and swim with them! There were 2 adults with 2, um, babies (what do you call them - pups?) and 2 adolescents and they were pretty curious about us; swimming around and below us, checking us out. We spent 45 minutes with them, after which they figured out that we weren't as interesting as all that!

A group just came back from a turtle nesting project. They were about 4 hours north by road, and for 4 nights from 9pm till 4am, they relocated eggs that were laid too close to the sea and surveyed the turtle species (there were green, loggerhead and hawksbill) and the number of eggs laid, which is done by putting your hand right under the turtle as she's laying.

We've seen a lot of turtles in the water lately, which is great because for a period of about 3 weeks, we hadn't had one sighting. The other day on my photo specialty dive, one of the staff members videoed a turtle that was 3 feet from us. It doesn't matter how many times you see one; they are amazing.

The Dive Master training has been pretty tough, though I passed all my written exams. Now, I have some underwater skills left and the swimming stamina/speed tests which are a bit scary. I haven't swum 400m since high school, and i have to now do it in 11 minutes or under, without a mask or flippers. This may not sound difficult, but in the sea, where there are waves waiting to flood your every breath, it's 2 and a half minutes that I have to cut off my current time. I also have to shave 3 minutes from my 21 for the 800m snorkel (with fins). Anyway, we've been getting up at 6am for the last 3 days in an effort to get fit enough to pass. The next test is next week sometime.

If the swimming were not enough to deal with, the mosquitos now at this time are just scary. They swarm on you as soon as you step outside. The sea is only 10m from our dorm, but in that distance you'll gather at least 50 hungry mosquitos. Even when we kit up for diving and we have wet suits on, they still manage to bite through a 3mm and needless to say, any exposed skin is just covered. And this isn't even the worst it gets!

Not related to the Mexico experience at all, i have a request from Australia for a custom onebean cartoon for corporate use! I'm still finding out what the details are, but that could be exciting! Gabrielle, the lady who made the request said she came across it "just from surfing around" - it's amazing how these things happen.

Birthday Fun

Wow. What a birthday. To start the day, I had a fantastic dive at a really nice spot with beautiful coral. Then, I completed my training for Rescue Diver with underwater searches and 'unconscious diver rescue'. Later that day, one of my English students gave me a 1 ounce, solid, pure silver coin for my birthday (I wasn't allowed to refuse it: my Mexican buddy Joel said it was rude to refuse - what's a guy to do??), followed by a fantastic meal at Gustavo's. That's him in the photo with his wife Esperanza. She's promised to teach me how to make a mole sauce: I think Sunday might be the day! Thanks all for the birthday emails, and see you all end July!