Mexico - Mayan Riviera

16 July 2010

And then my friend Louisa arrived....

I went to pick her up from Cancun airport in the pouring rain (not a great start to her hols) and took her back to the hostel for rooftop cocktails and food (the rain had abated by that point).

Chichen Itza

The next day we went on a great tour, first to Chichen Itza, a Mayan site and apparently one of the new "great wonders of the world" though I suspect it was chosen more for its proximity to Cancun airport as it wasn't the best of the Mayan sites we ended up seeing.  Nevertheless, it was pretty impressive, with a massive (reconstructed) temple and a huge (reconstructed) ball court.

Me & Lou in a cenote

From there we were driven off to a cenote which is a sinkhole in the limestone rock that is full of freshwater.  It was pretty impressive and the water was crystal clear and quite cool.

Ek Balam

And there to Ek Balam (Black Jaguar), another Mayan site, but this one much, much cooler than Chichen Itza because it's only recently been opened up, is mostly unexcavated, and is totally un-reconstructed (such bad archaeology).  It was a series of buildings round a main square, surrounded by jungle and a series of small hills which were the un-excavated temples.  We climbed a couple of the temples and the views of the jungle all around were amazing.


After a busy day we thought we'd treat ourselves to a day at the beach. Cancun town is actually quite nice, but there is a stretch of offshore beach which is known at the hotel zone and is basically hell on earth - all fancy american hotels, expensive malls and chain restaurants.  We (me, Lou and our new American friend Scott) took ourselves down to the Hilton and confidently walked through the lobby, past the restaurant and pool and out onto "their" stretch of beach.  It was all going so well until the winds picked up and the rain came pouring down!  So we spent the rest of the day at the aquarium and eating in terrible american chain restaurants!

The following day Lou and I got the ferry over to a lovely wee island called Isla Mujeres (Women's island) off the coast of Cancun.  We had a lovely day just chilling on the beach, enjoying the luxury of having cold beer and nice food brought to us.

Bull sharks in a boat at the dock

The next day was one of the best days of my trip.  We were up early with a bunch of other people from our hostel (Scott, Joe & Nisha and Matt, the german bodybuilder) and were picked up and taken to the docks to pick our boat which took us on a whale shark hunt!!  It took us a couple of hours in pretty heavy seas to get out there but we found a massive pod of whale sharks, each up to 45 ft long.

Whale Shark

It was really amazing.  And we were lucky enough to get in the water with them (snorkelling, life jacket on so we couldn't dive beneath them) which was fantastic.  We would be dropped in the water beside one and watch it swim past only to turn around and see another massive mouth heading towards us.  They feed on plankton & fish eggs and are therefore completely harmless, but quite a sight.

Hopefully the video below plays properly so you can see what they look like.

The day was rounded off with a bit of larking around in waist deep warm water, drinking beer and eating prawn ceviche.

We then moved onto the island of Cozumel (bumping into Geordie Rachel & German Matt on the ferry) and had a couple of days of diving which were pretty nice.  Two of the dives were drift dives on top of a reef, but the current was so strong we were whizzing by at such a pace it was hard to see things and even harder to stop and take a proper look.  We did see lots of fish and a turtle though so that was good. On the second dive Lou and I were doing our safety stop at 5m and I looked over and noticed a torch being flashed at us, turns out it was our group miles away as we'd drifted off.  There was quite a comedy moment where we realised there was no way we'd be able to swim back to them, but we were able to swim to the line our divemaster had sent up so that worked out ok in the end!  The other two dives were much more rewarding with really cool coral formations (see photo left) and some cool swim throughs (swimming through tunnels in the reef) in which was saw barracuda just hanging out in the water like missiles and a crab so large the legs looked like a human ribcage.  The water is about 30C here which means we're diving in our bikinis which is fantastic (I HATE wetsuits!).

Me (L) and Lou at about 18m

After all this diving we decided we really should do some more, but diving with a difference.  Cenotes are sinkholes in the limestone bedrock which have filled up with freshwater.  During the last ice age the caverns and caves were dry(ish) and so lots of stalacmites and stalactites were formed.  These have since flooded, creating some amazing diving.  We went (sadly suited up in not one, but 2 wetsuits each) with a local nutter (albeit very professional nutter) called Gerardo to a place called Dos Ojos.  The diving was absolutely amazing; the water is fresh and visibility is about 200m - it's so clear that it feels like you're flying or in space when you're diving.  And you're diving through the caves and round the formations and it's just amazing.  When your bubbles get stuck on the roof of a fully flooded cave they look like puddles of oil.  Gerardo told us when we came up to the surface in the middle of one dive that there were crocs in the water, but that they only liked blondes. During the next section of dive he had us all line up on the edge of this huge boulder and then had us all look down at the same time, only for him to shine his light on a plastic croc eating a blonde barbie.  Oh, the hilarity!!