Cancun to Akumal

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Cancun to Akumal - Dec. 18

This a.m., we got up at a more or less reasonable time of 8:30 a.m. and headed back to the restaurant area at Aqua. This time, we went to the breakfast restaurant (they have three restaurants - one for each meal). One thing that we noticed was how incredibly empty the place seemed - there were people in the pools in the morning, but only a very few and just a few people on the beach. There was almost no one in the restaurant in the morning and no one in the hallways or on the elevators. More about this in a bit.

Breakfast was great - more overly attentive service and good food. I had grapefruit, some sort of fruit/veggie smoothie and an egg-white omelet with spinach and feta cheese. Clay had Machaca - and I have no idea what that has in it. Some sort of dead animal thing, I’m sure. We had a view of the ocean - Cancun is on the South Caribbean Sea, so now, in addition to having flown through 10 international airports, I’ve seen five seas/oceans.

After breakfast, we went back up to the room and I worked for a little while. At one point, we kept hearing loud, loud birds, and Clay mentioned that they were noisy seagulls. We both looked up and outside at that point and saw not seagulls, but two bright red and blue parrots, wheeling about, gliding and dipping down toward the pool area outside. One eventually landed on top of a palm tree and was making very non-parrot sounds - sounds that seemed more like they were coming from other birds.

We spent a few more minutes outside on the beach and then packed up to wait for our ride to Akumal. The trip to Akumal was about an hour and forty minutes. We probably could have navigated it ourselves in a rented car, but we were both concerned about driving in a foreign country without ever having visited it before. So we arranged for transportation instead and sat back to enjoy the trip. One strange incident - about midway to Akumal, I noticed guys in camouflage with large guns on the side of the road. No idea what that was about, but I was certainly glad we weren’t driving. The driver who took us to Akumal was very chatty - and we found out nearly his whole life story: he is from Mexico City, divorced, has a sixteen year old daughter from whom he’d been estranged for five years but who he’d since gotten to know, had lived in LA for three years, was a registered nurse in the states, and wants to move to Canada. We talked some about the economy - apparently Cancun should not have been so deserted this time of year, but because of the economic down turn in the US, there has been a significant ripple effect in this part of Mexico because of the loss of tourism. The hotel we stayed at is threatening lay-offs of staff if things don’t improve.

We got to Akumal and found our hotel easily. Akumal is a tiny place and the area where we are staying reminds me a lot of Majuro and where I used to live. We are staying in a bungalow style room - a stand alone tiny house. We are within walking distance of the beach, the dive shop, restaurants, etc. The beach here overlooks a small lagoon area that is very sheltered from the ocean and is good for snorkeling. We did head out into the water this afternoon after lunch, but it was getting late in the day (around 4:30) and was very, very windy - so the visibility was very poor. I saw a few very small fish, but of course, by the time I got brave enough to actually snorkel, the visibility was even worse. Clay saw several schools of little fish plus one big fish. Oh well - better luck tomorrow.

Lunch was awesome - fish tacos for me and chicken taquitos for Clay. The guacamole was amazing - very fresh as was the salsa. We are off to dinner here in a bit.

Back from dinner - another amazing meal. Clay had something with pork in it (eww!) and I had mahi mahi in a coconut curry sauce. We also had dinner company - a pretty black and white cat named Pancho. As with most trips, Clay found cats pretty soon after we’d arrived here. The first one was pretty skittish - it’s a pretty orange and white kitty. The second one (Pancho) we met outside the small grocery store near here and it was obvious that someone takes care of both of them - both are really healthy looking. Pancho, however, is very friendly. So we got some cat love outside the grocery store and then went to dinner. At dinner, the orange and white cat appeared, took one look at us and bolted inside the restaurant (the restaurant is very open on all sides - we were sitting outside on the deck that overlooks the beach). Then Pancho arrived. After I was done with my meal, he decided to be very friendly and jumped up in my lap, circled around and settled in for a snooze and some petting. The waiter came by and formally introduced us and then Pancho decided he needed a bath, so left my lap and sat by the deck railing. He eventually came back and got some love from Clay. We both needed cat love.

We’re back in our hotel room and tucked in for the night. This hotel doesn’t have a t.v., but we do have internet access, so we’ll make do with that for now.

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