Our Mexican Adventure

Sunday, September 16th marked Mexico’s Independence Day, the celebration of Mexican independence from Spanish rule. In some ways, Independence Day here in Playa del Carmen is very similar to Independence Day celebrations in the U.S. Families and friends gather for food, drinks and good times, stores and homes are decorated in the colors of the national flag, and a fireworks display enthralls crowds in the town square.

But instead of burgers and brats (sorry, I’m from the Midwest), Mexicans indulge in the traditional party food of pozole, a hominy and pork soup. They decorate their homes, cars and tiendas with Mexican flags and red, white and green ‘papel picado’, another Mexican tradition of decoratively cut paper banners.

The most interesting difference to me is the tradition of the grito (shout). The grito is a reenactment of the shout to fight for liberty made by Father Hidalgo in the wee hours of September 16th, 1810. Today, crowds gather in town squares all over Mexico on the evening of the 15th to participate in the reenactment. A government official shouts ‘Mexicanos, Viva Mexico!’ (Mexicans, Long Live Mexico!) to which the crowd responds ‘Viva!’. This is repeated several times, then the Mexican flag is waved, and then um …

Well, the truth is that John and I have somehow managed to miss this ceremony two years in a row now. This year, we were eating pozole at a bar just a block from all the action, when the ceremony began earlier than scheduled. We heard the shout, but missed the rest of the ceremony. We did run up to the roof of bar, and managed to see much of the fireworks display, which was even better this year than last!

The celebration in Playa was very much a party atmosphere. Revelers were shouting and using noisemakers, waving flags and banners. Vendors sold everything from Mexican flags to marquesitas (a tasty, crispy crepe filled with edam cheese) to ceramic frogs.

The next day a parade was held, which we missed. However, we were thrilled to accept an invitation to the house of a Mexican friend for an Independence Day party. Unfortunately, I had felt sick since waking that morning, and the aroma of the food which our friend, Ara, had so lovingly prepared for us, made my nausea unbearable.

So, I had to go back home to nibble on plain crackers and sip 7-Up, while John had a grand old time, eating home-cooked pozole and tinga de pollo (shredded chicken in chipotle sauce), attempting to understand and participate in Spanish conversations, drinking tequila, and singing along to Mexican music. Mexicans love to sing LOUDLY! John came home raving about his Mexican Independence Day.

¡Viva Mexico!

Watch a video of the fireworks display.
Watch a video of an auctioneer hawking ceramic bowl sets, frogs and angels.

This blog was in serious need of a new look. Ever since John changed the site to the Shaded Grey (sure sounds exciting, don’t it?) Wordpress theme, I’ve hated it! Maybe that’s why I’ve barely written anything for this blog since then. The conversation that ensued after his redesign was something like this.

Libby: “That’s really boring!”

John: “Well, if you don’t like, YOU can change it!”

Libby: “Fine, I will!”

And that I did … it only took me about a year.

The photo in the banner was taken by me in Playa del Carmen just south of Coco Bay. I spent an entire evening searching through endless photos of beaches, palm trees, people, cats, parties, food pics, family events, etc to find one I liked well enough for the banner. We have a tons of photos, all organized only by date. How do you find a picture of a Playa del Carmen beach when you need one? So, I finally downloaded some much needed photo organization software, Adobe Photoshop Album Starter Edition. It’s free! If you’re looking for a full-featured photo organizer and editor, you should go with Adobe Photoshop Elements.

You might notice that we’re now shamelessly plugging our In the Roo website all over this blog. It’s our baby, and although we still have a lot more work to do, we’re quite proud of it. In the Roo is a searchable and taggable directory of Playa del Carmen hotels, condos, restaurants, bars, stores, websites, you name it! Make sure you check out our interactive Google map. Street overlays are not yet available for this area, so John painstakingly built all the streets on our map. And all the cool features you see are the result of his brilliant programming skills!

As if all this self-promotion weren’t enough, now we’re promoting other companies and products as well with the new ads on this site. Yes, we’re sell-outs. But hey, everyone else is getting rich off the internet, why not us! Well, we can dream can’t we.

And finally, for you bookmarking fiends, I’ve also added icons for bookmarking our posts at several popular bookmarking sites.

I promise that the next post will have something to do with Mexico!

A few weeks ago, we celebrated my 35th birthday. For us adventurers, there is no better way to celebrate such an occasion than to load up our trusty Civic and go out exploring. It was time for a for a quick weekend road trip. We didn’t even let the fact that we hadn’t had an oil change in 7,500 miles get in our way! All this in the spirit of fun and adventure. Oh yeah… we also needed SOMETHING to write about on this “Adventure” blog which has been stagnant for so long.

About 3 hours north of Cancun, there is an island called Isla Holbox (IS-la HOL-bosh). This was to be our destination for the weekend. We headed out a little less prepared than usual for this trip – we’re a wee-bit out of practice! We got off to a late start, ended up taking a wrong turn that forced us to go 20 miles out of our way, and eventually had to drive in reverse on the highway shoulder for at least half a mile to reach a missed turn-off – which is not as unusual or unsafe as you might think, here in Mexico. Ha! What do I know? I’m practically Mexican when I drive these days!

Due to the late start, we had to spend our first night on the mainland in a town called Chiquila. We ate some awesome sopes de puerco (pork sopes – kind of like an open-faced taco) from a woman in little red Coca-Cola stand. 45 pesos ($4.25 US) for 4 sopes and 2 soft drinks. This turned out to be our only good dining experience of the weekend! We were dying for an ice cold cerveza , but finding a beer in this town on a Friday night was not gonna happen. There were no open bars and the only store in town did not sell beer.

Since we didn’t feel like crashing some sort of religious gathering, the only thing vaguely exciting in the town that Friday night, we headed back to our hotel. 200 pesos ($18) rented us a decent room with a ceiling fan. Unfortunately, even with the fan on high, we still could not get a comfortable night sleep, lying in our sweat-soaked sheets. The next morning, we had invigorating cold-water-only showers… in a shower with a fuse box and light switch! I may be wrong, but I think there was still room in the shower for a small TV, or possibly a toaster… maybe I should have filled out that comment card afterall.

Escaping the shower unscathed, we made our way over to Isla Holbox via the 9 Hermanos (9 brothers) ferry. The island is about 7 miles long and 1 mile wide, and has a population of about 1600. The streets are mostly sandy paths, and the main form of transportation is taxi golf carts. Here are some of the unique houses on island:

Isla Holbox is a small community, who’s main industry is fishing. During the past 5 years, tourist traffic has started to pick up as more and more people find out about the whale shark tours. The whale shark season typically runs from July-September, but we heard that people had already spotted some sharks. Being low season, we hoped to sneak onto Isla Holbox without reservations and find a decent hotel room for an affordable rate. Unfortunately, luck was not on our side, and we ended up finding that rooms were already running at high season prices around 700 pesos ($66) a night. To make matters worse, these were their mosquito-netting-over-the-beds rooms. Yikes! We eventually found a beautiful room at Casa Iguana overlooking the Gulf of Mexico for 800 pesos ($75) a night. A bit pricey — for us locals, anyway, but it was my birthday, so we splurged. At least we didn’t have to sleep under mosquito nets.

By the way, the mosquitos on Isla Holbox are rumored to be vicious. I was extremely worried because mosquitos appear to love me. It must be my sweet personality. Libby isn’t bothered for some reason. Hmmm…. Oddly enough, the mosquitos annoyed me less than some annoying critters called sand fleas. These little buggers hide in the sand, and attack you without mercy. The sunblock and bug spray combination left a nice sticky residue to collect bug samples all over my body. Yippee! Anyhow, because of those nasty creatures, our weekend beach time was limited to a grand total of 10 minutes. Thank goodness we have a nice beach (without fleas, thank you very much) only a few blocks away from home here in Playa del Carmen.

Back to the story… After we dropped off our luggage, we set out to book our tour. Our friend, Jason, from Fantasea Dive, had recommended a tour operator called Willy’s Whale Shark Tours. We heard Willy’s had some fun guides – some with mohawks and some with strange names like Elvis. Our guide, Juan, had neither. Nevertheless, he was a great guide, and he did his best to explain things in English for us gringos who still speak primarily English.

Our tour started bright and early the next morning. We headed Northeast for a little over an hour, to a point where the waters of the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea meet. From what we gather, the whale sharks come back each year to feed on the abundant plankton in the area, a phenomenon likely caused by the mixing of the two bodies of water.

Just as I started to doze off, the boat filled with excitment as one of the other tourists located our first whale shark. Everyone became very active. A few people climbed on top of the boat to get a good angle for picture taking, while others started preparing their flippers and snorkeling masks. Game on!

The whale sharks in this area are protected, and only two people and their guide can enter the water at a time. Libby and I anxiously awaited our turn to jump in and snorkel with these big fish. Yet, even then, the concept seemed a bit odd — jumping in the water next to a 45 foot long fish, a fish with the word SHARK in its name, and snorkeling along side of it, but that’s why we were there. Besides, we had heard that whale sharks are docile, and only feed on plankton and small fish since they have no teeth. Wrong! We’ve since learned that they do have teeth… up to 300 rows of them. However, they don’t really use them. Well, at least not on people. We hoped. As far as them being docile, that remains true. The biggest danger is swimming too close and getting hit by their powerful tails.

We were ready to go. Our first attempt didn’t go very well, as the whale shark quickly swam away from us. The second was a little better for me, as I decided to kick a little harder to keep up with the shark, in an attempt to take a few underwater shots. And, although most people are only guaranteed 2 attempts, we were lucky enough to go a third time. It was amazing. The whale shark slowly and gracefully raised and lowered its body, instead of swimming quickly away. This allowed us to swim along side the whale shark for close to 10 minutes. It was an amazing experience to be so close to such a large animal in it’s natural environment. I wonder if the whale shark even knew we were there, or whether it had just eaten too much to really care.

Back on board, we said goodbye to our new friends and headed back to Isla Holbox. As an unexpected bonus, halfway back to shore, we found ourselves surrounded by a group of 10-15 playful dolphins. They seemed to be in a hurry… maybe they headed out for their turn to swim with the sharks.

As the day winded down, we bought some cold beers and sat on our terrace overlooking the beach and the water. The spectacle that we saw was kind of surreal. People were cruising the beach in their golf carts, ATVs and motorcycles. Upon closer inspection, we realized that many of the motorcycle riders were approximately 7 years old. We even saw a 4 or 5 year old racing around on a gas powered mini ATV. I joked with Libby that Isla Holbox must be the training ground for Mexican drivers. They give their kids some type of unsafe vehicle and unleash them on the beach… if they survive for a year, they get their license. Aha! One mystery solved.

All in all, it was a fun adventure and a great way to spend my birthday.

Hasta luego!

Photos from our trip

Wikipedia Page on Whale Sharks

Book your tours here:
Fantasea Dive
Travel RM

Here in Playa del Carmen and the Riviera Maya, we are in serious need of a Best Buy, a MicroCenter, or a Circuit City for computer supplies. However, many little computer shops are popping up with random collections of supplies to feed the needs of the growing computer user population here.

USB thumb drives, web cameras, and wireless accessories are pretty standard gear at these shops. However, looking for specialty equipment is sometimes a challenge. Cat 5 cable and connectors are at one store, but the crimp tool I need is in a store across town (and they might need to have it shipped from their store in Cancun or Merida). It can be quite frustrating at times.

I had an interesting experience yesterday. I had a client with a fried video card in her business computer. She needed a new one ASAP. I went on a mission to find her a replacement. After visiting 4 different stores, I was only able to locate 1 compatible card. All the new AGP cards had prices marked, but the PCI card I needed did not. I asked how much, but the employee was not sure – he guessed it was around $90. Unfortunately, he had no way of verifying the price until the owner came in the next day. Say what?!

Great! I have a client who cannot do her job because her video card is dead and the only replacement card in town can’t be purchased because there was no price tag.

I spent a few minutes speaking horrendous Spanish, trying to explain that my client needed it right now. After I got that point across, he asked if I lived here. I assured him that I did and gave him my business card. He said I could come back tomorrow to pay for it. Wow!! Although I’m honest, and he was obviously very trusting, I felt much better convincing him to let me pay the $90 now and promising to return the next day to settle any differences.

Experiences like this are priceless. I can’t imagine something like this ever happening to me in a place like Chicago.

And, for the curious, there appears to be a markup between 20-30% on most computer equipment compared to U.S. prices. I’d imagine bigger chain stores with more inventory would be able to cut that down a bit and still make a nice profit. Hint, hint – Best Buy!

We’ve been meaning to capture some of the unique sights and sounds of our neighborhood here in Playa del Carmen for our blog readers. Some we love, some we tolerate (sights and sounds, not blog readers).

There’s the gas truck with its catchy jingle, the occasional barking dogs, the tomcat calling for a mate, the birds singing in the morning. And then there’s the agua guy. We love our agua guy. He’s one of the many reasons we love living in Mexico. We’d tell you all about him, but our friend and neighbor, Sherry, already has in her own blog.

So, please read Drinking the Water in Mexico and enjoy. And we promise … we’ll get back to blogging our own stories again real soon.