Has it really been four days since we last talked? We really must get better at updating this blog thingie. So much has happened — so much that we can’t seem to remember when it happened anymore. Did we lay on the beach in Xpu-Ha on Monday or was that when we took a walk through Puerto Morelos? What did we do yesterday?? What day is today? Is it still November? Did we miss Thanksgiving?
This is pretty much our state of mind right now, but for your sakes, we will try to reconstruct just what the heck we’ve been doing with all our time.
Sunday:
Woke up feeling lazy, but since it had been publicly documented that we were going snorkelling, we figured we better get to it. We found Tankah Bay, our trusty Civic made it down the dirt road and we found the cenote we had heard about. A guy with an “oh so offical” Manatee Cenote t-shirt informed us the cenote was privately owned and we would have to pay a $5 fee. We were pretty sure this was not true and decided not to fund the scheming, yet enterprising young man. (Yes, we know it’s only $5, but we’re unemployed!) So, we grabbed our snorkelling gear and checked out the ocean reef. We saw some fish, but the reef was mostly dead. We’re outta here!
We moved on to try our luck at Xpu-Ha, about 20 miles south of Playa del Carmen. It’s tricky to find the exit to the beach at Xpu-Ha. In fact, it’s difficult to find exits to get to the beach along most of the Mayan Riviera coast. Technically, all beaches in Mexico are open to the public. However, you can’t go through privately owned land to get to the public beach. With all inclusives swallowing up almost every piece of available land and installing security guards to keep non-guests out, getting to the beach can be challenging. But we found our exit, a single-lane dirt road with a small sign on the ground saying Xpu-Ha X-4. It’s easy to miss as the very large and very pink Copacabana resort is right next to it. Xpu-Ha was worth the search. Beautiful beach and an excellent lunch at Cafe del Mar (the best tofu dish Libby’s ever had).
Monday:
Woke up feeling lazy and decided to sleep in. But the cleaning lady wanted to clean so we got up off our butts and went to Puerto Morelos. Puerto Morelos is about 20 miles south of Cancun (half-way between Cancun and Playa del Carmen). We had heard it was hit pretty hard by the hurricane. We also heard that this laid-back town had the largest English language bookstore on the coast and had a good number of long-stay apartments for rent at reasonable rates. As our current place is only available for another 3 weeks, we thought we should investigate.
We took a leisurely 2 hour walk around town. Puerto Morelos was indeed laid-back, but a little too laid-back for our tastes. We saw very few people around, the bookstore was closed (although the sign said open), several restaurants were closed, and we heard they had been having problems with their electricity. We did see some beautiful beachfront homes however. After admiring the fronts of the homes, we walked along the beach to see the backs of the homes and check out their views — only to discover that many no longer had backs to their homes. They were gone — ravaged by the hurricane! Pictures are in our photo album under Puerto Morelos.
Tuesday:
Woke up feeling lazy. John read Fahrenheit 451. Libby read Ender’s Game.
Wednesday:
Woke up feeling lazy, but decided to shake things up a bit. John read Ender’s Game. Libby read Fahrenheit 451.
Oh yeah, we also went to go check out Tulum. Beautiful! Didn’t do anything but lay on the beach, but had a great time. We’ll go back to Tulum later to explore the ruins.
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Did each of you really read Ender’s Game in a day?!? You really don’t have anything to do!
Though it is a good book.