Mexico Day 4: Snorkeling and Sillyness

Cozumel is world-famous for its sea life. People fly here from all over to scuba dive and snorkel along Cozumel's amazing reefs. I thought it would be a shame not to see some of these reefs while we were there! I even considered taking scuba diving lessons at the U. of I., if you can believe it, but in the end I decided that was just too expensive.

I had read that the best reefs can only be accessed by boat, so most people recommended taking a snorkeling cruise with some boat company. I discovered that there was a company that would pick up snorkeling passengers from the pier at the El Cozumeleno hotel, which was very near to our Villa.

I tried to convince my family to go on this snorkeling trip, but most opted not to. In the end, I could only muster four of us--Matthew, me, Kevin, and my dad (who is crazy about snorkeling). I reserved our spots on the boat with a credit card in advance, but I was supposed to show up in person early and pay the balance in cash. In order to avoid having to go early in the morning, I decided to drop by Saturday afternoon since we had to walk down there to pick up a taxi anyways.

I didn't know where the dive shop was, so I marched into the hotel lobby and asked the lady at the front desk. They made kind a big fuss over it, but eventually showed me to the dive shop. I guess they don't like non-guests to come into the lobby. (El Cozumeleno is a VERY fancy all-inclusive resort.) I was supposed to have walked up from the beach rather than go through the lobby--oops! No one told me that! Michael and I learned what it felt like to be basically thrown out of a fancy, expensive hotel. I guess they could tell we didn't fit in with that crowd. ;)

Anyways, on Monday morning we headed down to the pier (and were careful to NOT go through the lobby, of course.) The boat picked us up, then traveled a ways down the island and picked up two more passengers and the dive master. I was excited to only have six people on the snorkeling tour--it was virtually a private tour! They took us to three separate locations. Sadly, I have no pictures at all--we don't have a waterproof camera, and decided not to risk ruining our normal cameras for the above-water shots, so we didn't bring one at all (the shots of Kevin in snorkeling gear were taken at the beach near the villa).

The sea was so, so clear--perfectly blue and green. We even saw a dolphin jump out of the water as we were riding along!

First we snorkeled around the "Little Sky", which is an area with tons of HUGE starfish and a few coral heads with colorful fish. It was pretty shallow, but had a strong current. I was totally enthralled, and only noticed we'd lost Dad when the dive master called for us to come up at the end. He had gotten a bit disoriented (he has bad eyesight, and had put a couple of old glasses lenses in his snorkel mask, but still couldn't see great) and lost the group (the current was pretty strong, like I said), so he had waved to the boat to come pick him up early. After that, Matthew told Dad he would make sure to stick with him so he didn't get lost.

Next we went to Palancar and Colombia reefs, which were both amazing. Besides the fascinating coral formations with purple sea fans and several types of coral, we son TONS of fish. Some of them would swim right up to you and along side of you. Matthew said a barracuda swam right in front of his face. We saw three different sea turtles, huge grouper fish, a nurse shark, and lots of other colorful fish. It was totally mesmerizing. We were snorkeling for like 2 or 3 hours total, but it went by really fast!

On the last dive, though, we had a bit of excitement when the boat pulled up. The current was very strong and pulling us into the boat. My dad ended up *under* the front of the boat for a moment--which was scary for him and for me! I saw him go under and reached out to grab him, but my swimming is really not good enough to pull up someone else, so soon I was under the surface too. I was fine, although I swallowed a lot of sea water. My dad couldn't get a good grip on the side of the boat and ended up drifting to the other side of the boat, with the current pulling him away. The captain had us hurry and get in and then turned the boat around to pick up Dad. He was tired and flustered by now, and ended up slipping and falling off the ladder as he was climbing up. Poor Dad! Unfortunately, he lost the lenses in his snorkel mask when that happened, which meant that was the last snorkeling he could do on this trip. (Which is kind of funny, incidentally, because a few years back my Dad was in Cancun and lost his glasses to the bottom of the ocean on a sailing trip. I guess it's just tradition now that every time my dad is in that area, he has to leave a glasses "offering" to the sea gods.) But he did make it back into the boat all in one piece, which we were very glad of! He said he really enjoyed the snorkeling, but next time would rather take a "tamer" tour on a bigger boat with steps instead of a ladder.

They took us to a pier and tied off while we ate some boxed lunches. They had fed us fruit and soft drinks in between each snorkeling dive, and by the time I finished lunch I desperately needed the bathroom. Seeing no alternative, and knowing I could not hold it for the hour long ride back to the other side of the island, I asked if I could get off the boat. Luckily, there was plenty of jungle foliage around to hide me from view!



When we got back to the Villa, we found the rest of the family eating lunch, and ready to head out for some swimming. We played around in the ocean for a bit, and managed to lose my brand new globe beach ball. The wind was really blowing, and despite Kevin's valiant attempts to catch up with it, the breeze took it right out to sea. Ah well--it was fun while it lasted. (Actually, when we got back from Mexico, my mom mailed me a brand NEW globe beach ball because she's so nice. Thanks Mom!)

We then did some more playing in the pool. We discovered that the pool had a strange type of entrance--steps, followed by a VERY steep ramp. Several people slipped on the steep floor the first time they entered and, fueled by lots of silliness and laughter, we decided to try "surfing" down the ramp as a group. My mom took some pictures of us when we asked, but I think she thought we were crazy. We also choreographed some fine synchronized swimming. For some reason, no one wanted to take pictures of that--maybe they were too intimidated by our amazing artistry.


Yes, we were all way too old for this kind of silliness, but it was so fun to just play with my siblings! We get a special kind of silly when we are all together.

Mexico day 3: Sunday in Cozumel

So, I left off in my last post just after having arrived at Villa Rosmar. This was a beautiful five bedroom house which was right on the beach up north of Cozumel's only town. It had two levels--on the main floor were the two sitting areas, the dining room, the kitchen, and one bedroom. In the very center was a little atrium.

On the second floor were four more bedrooms--enough for each couple to have their own room, except for me and Kevin, who shared a room with Matthew. (There were two queen beds in our room, though, so it was fine.) All but one of the rooms also had their own bathroom, plus there was a half bath on the ground floor.






Two rooms had balconies overlooking the ocean, one of which also had a really nice bed--the masterbedroom. My parents got the honor of having this room. (We would have given it to Matthew, but since he needed to share a room with us, we had to have one with two beds!)

We also had our own pool! Right between the ocean and the house. It was really perfect. The beach out front was gorgeous--white sand, blue green water, gentle waves.

After we got settled a bit, as I mentioned before, Heidi and Michael and I set out to buy some food at the grocery store. Michael and I walked down to a nearby hotel (about half a mile a way or something) where there were a line of taxis. I had to stop by the hotel anyway to get some payment squared away for a snorkeling trip we were doing on Monday (I'll tell more about that later), and then we took the taxi back to the villa to pick up Heidi, and off we went into town to find a grocery store.

It was a huge "Mega" brand store, a lot like a nicer version of Walmart. The best part was the bakery section...mmm....and the produce. Michael helped us pick out some traditional Mexican items like cajete (basically caramel syrup) and various yummy breads. The food was all upstairs, and you had to get a shopping cart from downstairs and ride with it up the escalator ramp. This was all well and good, but we got a little nervous once we had to take our loaded shopping cart back down the escalator--wouldn't it just roll down out of our control? But, we found to our relief that the wheel have a special groove thing that connects with some ridges on the escalator ramp, holding it in place.

Everyone eagerly ate the food when we arrived back. Then we had a little surprise "coronation" ceremony. The rest of us had decided that we wanted to do something to thank Matthew for footing the whole bill for this amazing trip. So, we decided to crown him "King of Rosmar". Heidi brought a crown, robe, and sceptor, and the rest of us brought him little gag gifts that were supposed to be related to his new title. Heidi gave him a funny flashing pen and a note pad to write his decrees with. My parents gave him a hand-held electric fan (since they couldn't find a lackey with a passport), and we gave him a set of plastic hands that clapped and made noise (since we might not always be around to give him the proper applause) plus some fake purple hair extensions to add to his majestic image. Michael and Margert gave him some cards from a game that he used to play as a kid...which were actually mostly already his, apparently (I guess Michael had had them at his house?) Matthew really hammed it up, and we had a lot of fun calling him "El Rey" for the rest of the week.

My family also surprised me by giving me a little angel sculpture by Willow Tree and a blow up globe beach ball--to thank me for planning the trip. I was in on the part for Matthew, but I had no idea they had anything up their sleeve for me--how nice of them! I had to laugh, too, because my presents were actually *real* ones, not like Matthew's gag gifts. Heidi offered to get him an angel scultpure too, but he said he was very happy with his regal gear.

Later that evening, our cook arrived. Matthew decided to hire a cook for the 6 days we were at the Villa. She cooked 2 meals a day for us--breakfast and either lunch or dinner. It was not cheap, but it was soooo nice to have basically a restaurant right there in the villa. She brought the food, cooked it, and cleaned up every night. The cooking was good stuff, too--very authentic Mexican (except not as spicey I suppose) and very tastey.

She was there quite late on Saturday night, because after cleaning up everything from the meal, she also prepared the following day's meals for us almost all the way, and left them in the fridge. Sunday is the cook's day off, and since we were only going to be there 6 days instead of 7 (but we still had to pay for the full week), I convinced the cook service manager to have the cook just leave the ingredients for Sunday's meals in the fridge and we'd cook them ourselves. We thought she'd just leave the raw ingredients, but she did all the preparation besides the actual cooking for us the night before.

The next day was Sunday, and we all slept in and lounged around until about noon or 12:30. We took a cab into town to the address I'd found for the local congregation for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We went to the 1:00 Sacrament Meeting, and got there just as they were starting. The congregation was fairly small, but boy did they sing with gusto! They sounded twice as loud as my local ward, with less than half the people--and no piano! (After the opening hymn, though, Michael went up to the Bishop and offered to have Margret accompany the rest of the singing on the piano--they did have a piano, just no one to play it. He accepted, and I think they enjoyed having the accompianiment. The chorister was a little hesitant, although she got used to it.) We noticed how, without a piano, the chorister actually has everyone watching and following her. Back home, it's always the pianist who is really in control.

Anyways, I didn't understand much of the meeting, it being in Spanish after all, but I DEFINITELY felt the Spirit. It was quite strong during the hymns, especially. We didn't stay for Sunday School since it was all in Spanish, but I'm really glad we made it to Sacrament Meeting.

The rest of the day we just relaxed and lounged around. After dinner, we had a blast playing some games. Margret had brought a game called "Boxers or Briefs?" which, despite its title, is NOT scandalous and is actually lots of fun. A little like Apples to Apples, only better. We were really cracking up hard playing that game. My brother-in-law Brian turned absolutely purple with laughter--I've never seen him laugh that hard! It was a great day of recovering from our adventures and being together as a family.

Mexico Day 2: Chichen Itza!

Saturday was our most adventurous day! A little warning before I get started: in my last post I promised they would be shorter in the future. Well, I'm already breaking my promise! This post is *not* short. Feel free to just look at the pics if you want.

We got up bright and early on Saturday morning in order to catch the first "colectivo" (which is kind of a shuttle van/shared taxi sort of thing) to Chichen Itza from Valladolid. I had read that they line up across from the bus station and the first ones leave at 7:15. When we got there, there was only one small colectivo (a car, not a van), but luckily, my brother Michael speaks Spanish fluently since he served his mission in Mexico, so he was able to talk to the driver and have him call up another colectivo--a large van this time. When he arrived, all 13 of us piled in. It was about a 40 minute drive to the ruin site, and unfortunately, the van did NOT have A/C (I had read that the colectivos generally do, but whatever.) Michael talked to the guy in Spanish as we drove and arranged to have him come pick us back up at about 11:30 or something like that, which was nice because we didn't have to worry about finding another colectivo to come back.

We wanted to be there right when C.I. opened because that way we could escape the intense heat and bigger crowds of mid-day. Because of the swine flu scare, though, there wasn't much in the way of crowds to worry about! But, we were VERY grateful that we came early because by the time we left around noon, it was EXTREMELY hot. The temperature was in the high nineties, with tons of humidity.

So when we arrived, there was almost nobody there. The first thing we did was load up on the sunscreen. My niece Anna found this extremely traumatic for some reason. Matthew took some pictures of this first excitement of the day, and then snapped a brilliant shot of Anna looking defeated and dejected, having been forced by her stone-hearted parents to go through the horrendous ordeal of putting on sunscreen despite her defiant stand.

We went through the line and bought our tickets, then walked down a little path leading to the ruins.

On the way, we saw our first iguana of the day (which was to be followed by many others--I guess they like basking on ancient architecture.) As we walked the end of the path, we caught our first view of "El Castillo," the iconic and behemothic temple that stands in the center of Chichen Itza.

I had seen lots of pictures of this temple before, but it more massive in person! We stood around just oggling for a while, taking it in.

Then Heidi showed us a trick she had heard from some friends who had been there before--if you stand in front of the temple and clap your hands, the echo comes back sounding like a bird cry. So of course we all had to try that (and it was true, by the way!)



Sadly, you are no longer allowed to climb to the top of El Castillo, so we had to be content to just observe it from the bottom.

But observe it we did! There is actually a huge amount of other ruins in Chichen Itza as well--several other temples, an ancient Mayan ball court, a sacred cenote (which is a pool created by an underground river and a collapsed cave), and lots of other stuff.



We also discovered that the Mayans must have invented tic-tac-toe, because we found some carvings of x's and o's in a grid. Looks like o's won this game!

We wandered around looking at it all, taking several breaks in the shade because of the heat. In fact, we didn't even see everything there was to see by the time we had to meet our colectivo again.

But, we were pretty much bushed by that time, so it was all for the best I suppose. If this trip had been just me and Kevin, I'm sure I would have stayed a bit longer and also gone to see some other nearby ruins (where you *could* still climb the pyramids), but this was a family trip and the point was not just to sight-see, so I contented myself with what we did see.

The Mayan people who lived at C.I. were obsessed with human sacrifice, and this is definitely reflected in the architecture.

We saw a stone statue of a soon-to-be sacrificial victim, and carvings of birds and snakes about to eat human hearts that had just been ripped from their bodies.

There was a huge wall of carved skulls, and some carvings showing warriors holding severed heads of their defeated enemies. In the sacred cenote, archaeologists found jewelry and gold and many, many skeletons of human sacrifices that had been thrown in the pool--many of which were children. Even the ball court was kind of tainted, because the loser (or possibly the winner--they're not sure) of the bounce-the-rubber-ball-through-the-hoop-without-your hands game were sacrificed to the gods too. Ugh! That was fairly creepy to think about. Mostly, I tried not to.

The ball court was quite impressive to see, though. Apparently, this is (one of?) the biggest Mayan ball courts ever found, and some archaeologists think it was probably not actually used for ball games--just for show, because it would have been too big to actually play in.




















When it was time, we piled back into the colectivo and headed back to Valladolid. We had to check out of the hotel by 1pm, so we started packing up. I noticed that we had made it back in time to catch the 1pm bus rather than the later one we were planning on, so we hurried up and checked out and headed straight to the bus station.

My mom and I had stopped at a bakery after we bought the bus tickets, and we bought a bunch of bread and these pizza-like things filled with cheese and ham, but with a layer of sugar dusted on the top. (The lady at the counter was VERY suprised when I told her "todos!"--all of them! I tried to explain that we were buying for our big family and were not just huge pigs, but I have no idea if she understood what I was trying to say in Spanish.) They looked a bit strange, but they were quite tasty! We ate them on the bus. The bus ride was pretty long--about 2.75 hours. The seats were very comfy, but the ride was pretty bumpy on these smaller back-roads.

We arrived at Playa del Carmen, which is where the ferry to Cozumel leaves from. To my dismay, the bus had taken us to the downtown bus station rather than the one right near the ferry docks, which is where I had thought it would go. So, we hailed three taxis and piled all our luggage in (a man on a tricycle thing tried to convince us to hire him to pedal the luggage over, but we managed to fit it all in the trunks.) We booked it on over to the ferry pier, and I asked if we were too late to buy tickets for the 4pm ferry. (The ferries were only running every 2 hours instead of hourly, due to decreased demand from the swine flu scare). She said, "It leaves in 4 minutes." I said, "okay, can we buy them?" She asked how many, and I said 13. She looked at me like I was crazy. I looked behind me and saw most of my family was still not there yet. "The rest are coming!" I said. She sold them to me, and I frantically motioned my family to hurry up, and we made it onto the ferry barely before they left. We had some trouble finding seats, and a lot of us had to sit by ourselves in random middle seats, but at least we made it!

We were running about 4 hours ahead of schedule at this point! I called the people we rented the villa from while I was on the ferry and explained that we were going to be early. He said we'd have to hail our own taxi since they couldn't be at the pier that fast, but that he would have someone there to let us in.

Once we got off the ferry and found our luggage (which was quite the fiasco--they really need to figure out a more orderly system for luggage collection, but I'll not go into that), we hailed a couple of big taxi vans and headed off to Villa Rosmar.

We were VERY happy to arrive and turn on the A/C and collapse on the couches. The place was beautiful, and we were all tired and starving. Unfortunately, we had scheduled our dinner to be cooked at 9pm that night since we thought we'd arrive so much later, so Michael, Heidi, and I took a cab to the grocery store to pick up some stuff to eat.

Since this post is already ridiculously long, I think I'll talk more about our Villa and the rest of Sat. evening on the next post. Suffice it to say, we made it through our day of adventure! It was pretty exhausting trying to orchestrate the activities for a group of 13--rather more stressful than I had imagined, I'm afraid. Luckily, the rest of the week was all about relaxing and just being together.