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.