02 Dec 06 - Riviera Maya

Cozumel
This is a diving haven. Pure and simple. Every third or fourth shop is a dive store, Phil was in Heaven, Karen was getting whiplash from shaking her head every time Phil walked into a dive shop. We did a couple of drift dives, including Karen´s deepest at 30m. We saw a couple of hawksbill turtles at an arms length feeding on some of the soft corals... oh, to have the underwater camera working again!!

Ever since Jacques Cousteau did a doco in the ´60s, tourism has grown massively...and when the cruise ships discovered it.... the week before we arrived, there was an 18,000 people in a day onslaught purely due to these ¨cruzeros¨. Not only that, we saw the QEII as it was coming in to the island for a day or two. Get off the main strip, literally a couple of streets back, and you´ll find the usual undercurrent of mexican life keeping this island humming under the veneer of the american facade.

Cancun
There are hotels here. Lots of hotels. Think of a Mexican Surfers Paradise, and you´ll be about 20% of the way there to the corniness, utter soullessness and depravity that surrounds this place. (Hence, we visited Isla Mujeres, see below). There is a nice beach, if you can get to it through the hotels. The only public access to the beach is a couple of kilometres apart, otherwise you have to act like you are a guest at the hotel, hide your non-existent ID bracelets, and walk purposefully through the lobby.

One piece of advice when dealing with souvenir sellers (tiburones) or officious hoteleros in Cancun was provided to us by a local restauranteur... say to them ¨Chinga su Madre!¨ (this is what you think it is... maybe the guy wanted to see us get beaten up?)

Isla Mujeres
About 15min off Cancun, is this little island which has a little of the american facade of Cancun, but no resorts and a life all it´s own... predominantly mexican. This is a backpackers hangout... primarily cause it´s cheaper than Cancun. We saw a local turtle farm which breeds and releases turtles back to the wild (good), this makes up for all the turtle shell souvenirs you find in Cancun. We also saw a water cage with about 3-4 nurse sharks which are periodically manhandled by tourists out of the water for photo opps (bad).