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Mon 20th March 2006
After a month back in dreich old England
(minus an excellent weeks skiing in Austria) we started the second leg
of our Big Adventure..
We dragged my poor Dad out of
bed at the unearthly hour of 4am to take us to the airport, and had an
excellent flight (for the pittance we paid) with First Choice.
Tip – don’t bother upgrading to Premier class
when you can pay just £30 for extra legroom for the exact same benefits!
We arrived in Cancun to be met
by our friend Ben who we had met on our IDC course in Dahab, who’s
brother Luke just happened to be on the same flight as us. This meant
that we were chaperoned all the way to the island of Cozumel where he
shared a house with a French/Spanish couple, Miguel and Cecilia, who
were kind enough to let us stay in their house for a few days (Ben even
gave up his bed for us!).
Playa del Carmen and Cozumel
were like no other place we had ever been to. On one hand gorgeous white
beaches and turquoise seas, but full of cruise ships and therefore tacky
shops and bars and even tackier Sherman Tanks - they really were all the
size of tanks!
Luckily our hosts came up trumps
again and managed to get us a good deal on hiring a car, so we spent the
next couple of days exploring the yank free and absolutely gorgeous side
of the island in a VW bug convertible.
Cozumel is ranked as one of the
best dive destinations in the world and yet again Cecilia managed to
get us a cheap deal for dives on her boat, so we dived Paso del Cedro
and Las Palmas.
Paso del Cedro was a little
disappointing at first given the build up it had been given…that was
until we encountered my very first shark sighting – head on!
Las Palmas was another fantastic
wall dive with a strong drift current and Cecilia came up with the goods
as we managed to spot a number of turtles, a large shoal of Caribbean
trigger fish and a large spotted eagle ray who swam the last 10 mins of
the dive with us. We also managed to give ourselves a bit of a shock as
we hadn’t realised quite how much our air consumption had increased
since we have been away and managed to go into deco time for the first
time ever at 20 metres. (Normally our customer’s air consumption is the
deciding factor on dive times!)
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Cozumel East Side
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Cozumel East Side
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Dive Boat
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Barrel Sponge
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Sadie going down
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Nurse shark
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Sea Star
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Toirtle
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Spotted eagle ray
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MOT?
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Home delivery
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Sadies been here too long......
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Before.....
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....after....
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Oh dear....
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Cozumel sunset
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Competition for best caption?
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Miguel
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Miguel's feet
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How many people can u fit in a VDub?
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After a fun packed couple of days we decided that it
was time to move on so got the bus down the coast to Tulum which was a
world apart from Playa and Cozumel. We are staying in Rancho de
Tranquilo (aka Rancho Relaxo) in a traditional Cabana run by an ageing
hippy Daniel. We spent today on the pristine long white beach drinking
margaritas and snacking on cerviche de camarones practising our pigeon
Spanish before getting the free bus back into town for some traditional
Mexican stew’s and the obligatory rum ;-) and would you believe it……it’s
pissing it down with rain!! Some things never change for us
J
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Tulum beach
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Updating travelogue
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Rancho Tranquilo
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Tulum Mayan ruins
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Hammock swinging
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(Traveller’s Notes: on arrival at
Cancun, you can get a bus directly from the airport down to Playa del
Carmen – cost approx M$80 per person one way and takes about 90 minutes.
The ferry terminal in Playa is a short 5 minute walk from the bus
terminal directly across the main square next to the beach. Ferry ride
is M$110 one way and takes 40 minutes. Getting south from Playa is easy,
again about 90 minutes and M$62. Rancho Tranquillo has a range of rooms,
normal and larger cabanas, plus private rooms. Large cabana is M$275 per
night and has two double beds.)
Saturday 25th
March
Went diving in the Cenotes today. Dos Ojos and the Bat Cave. We went
with Xilabla dive centre at the north end of the town. The dive sites
were approx 45 minutes away and truly stunning. The Cenotes are
freshwater underground rivers running through a complex of caves and
fissures running through the soft limestone bed rock. What makes these
places stunning is that the caves were once above ground and are
therefore full of stalagmites and stalactites. The water visibility is
almost infinite with only the dark and rock formations halting your
view. While natural light is never too far away and journey into the
darkness and the shadows cast by the diver torches is amazing. When you
combine that with crystal clear visibility the diving sensation is
almost like be able to fly through these ancient waterways. These dives
must rank in the top 5 of everything that we’re done so far. Loads of
photos available to try and do the sites justice but you really gotta be
there to experience the full impact.
(Travellers notes: 2 dives
package USD110 each, with a 10% discount from being a Rancho guest or
having your own equipment – but not both!)
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Dos Ojos
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Master Mariner Steve
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Donnie Darko
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Bat Cave
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Monster from the deep?
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Tuesday 28th March
Back in Tulum for a final night before heading south out of Mexico and
onto Belize. We’ve just come back from spending a couple of days in
Chichen Itza, the epicentre of the Mayan empire. Whilst the ruins have
undergone a relatively high degree of reconstruction over the years, it remains clear that this site is truly stunning. The highlight is the
central Castillo, a 9 platform pyramidal that dominates the landscape.
The structure is closely linked with the ancient Mayan calendar and is
surrounded by a number of other Temples and platforms suggesting that
the Chichen site was a gathering place for worshipping the ancient gods
and for of course sacrifice. The ball court is the largest found to date
from the Mayan period and runs some 140 meters. The ball game involved
two teams competing to get a hard rubber ball through two very high
hoops using only their elbows, knees and feet! This particular
construction almost has the same aura as the Coliseum of ancient Rome
where here also, history records that the losing team’s captain is then
sacrificed to the gods by decapitation by the winning team!
Luckily we were in Chichen Itza just
after the spring Equinox, 21st March, when the place gets packed with shoulder to shoulder on lookers all watching
the shadow cast
by the setting western sun which projects a snake like pattern onto the Northern
steps joining the stone snakes head at the bottom of the steps to the
rattlesnake like-tail right at the top. While we were there only a week
later a slightly less accurate shadow is cast, giving us the comfort
that the crowds and hype of either of the equinoxes aren’t worth the
hassle.
We did Chichen over 2 days, with
day one starting at about 13:00. It wasn't too busy at that time with a
only a few tour buses in from Cancun and Playa. It was also Sunday. I
guess we covered about half the site on the first day, and post 16:00 it
got very quiet allowing us to take photos of the Castillo without any
people or large shermans in view. Day 2 we got there about 10:30 and
left around 1. On exit the car park was full of tour buses and the site
had started to get incredibly busy. It’s definitely worth seeing this place but get
there early or very late to see it at its best.
It is a pity that so
much of the Mayan history remains a mystery and much of what you are
able to read can be speculation at best, but nevertheless you can’t help
but make connections between the Mayans and the ancient Egyptians and to
wonder why two significant civilisations, half a world apart, but with
their roots in the two millennia BC both came upon the idea of building
pyramidal structures of such scale.
PS did you know that the Mayan
calendar runs in 5,200 year cycles. The end of the current cycle is on
the 21st December 2012, at which point the world as we know
it apparently ends!
(Traveller’s
Notes: Bus to Chichen Itza takes just under 3 hours and costs M$99
single. We opted for a Pasado in Piste, the town next to Chichen and
about 25 minutes walk from the ruins. The Pasado was M$200 for the
night. Entry to the ruins is M$95 which also allows entry into the very
average sound and light show at night. If you want English translation,
headsets are available for rent for a further M$25.)
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El Castillo
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Sacrificial Cenote
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Platform of Eagles and Jaguars
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Fresco: Eagle Eating Human Hearts
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Temple of the Skulls
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The Ball Court
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Fresco of Losing Team's Captain Decapitation!
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Temple of the Bearded Man
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Temple of the Jaguars
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Temple of the Warriors
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Wall of the Thousand Columns
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The Observatory
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The Steam Baths
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The Nunnery
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