Getting around Cozumel

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The island of Cozumel is not really that big, about 48 km (30 miles) long and 16 km (10 miles) wide. It's Mexico's largest carribean island.

Most of the population is in San Miguel as I've previously mentioned, then the rest appears to be spread out along the West Coast of the Island, the side closest to the Mainland. The main road runs right along the coast line, this is the road our condo is on and where we do most of our walking, it has a nice wide sidewalk. The interior of the Island is very dense jungle. Even here in our condo, the next lot over is empty and incredibly overgrown by jungle. It must have been quite a job at one point to carve through that for development.

There are more scooters and motorcycles than cars on the Island. It is common to see little kids or babies on scooters with their families. Next time we rent, we're thinking of getting a scooter, they look like fun. There are some roads just for scooters towards the beach district.

There are over 600 taxis on this small Island, they are everywhere. Every second or third car is a taxi. If you are walking down the street taxi's will roll by ad ask if you want a ride. The taxi driver's have a union and have set rates to get to and from popular spots, there are signs posted with these rates, for example it is $16 to go one way to the beach district from the main cruise ship terminal. We always ask the driver first how much it will cost to get where we want to go before we get in any taxi here. There are some public buses, but they only go to the old downtown San Miguel area, not anywhere along the tourist areas. Jim has suggested that we take a ride on these busses one day if we get bored. We are told that it was tried in the past to implement a public bus route along the tourist area but the taxi driver's union had voted against it.

Horse and buggies operate between the cruise ship landings to downtown for the tourists. We've also seen bicycles, atvs, dune buggies, a couple of different three wheeled vehicles - one called tuk tuks the other like a three wheeled go cart/ atv high bred and segways.

We don't believe insurance is required here as some of the vehicles on the road don't even have license plates.

It was the usual weather here today, hot, humid, sunny with a breeze and a couple of short passing showers. We walked downtown and looked in some of the stores, I found a couple of T shirts, picked up our daily groceries then sat by the pool and later watched the sunset as usual. Ian grilled some ahi tuna for dinner (regular not the smoked kind) which was delicious.

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