Day 322: Cozumel, Mexico

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Our second stop on the cruise was to the wonderful Mexican island of Cozumel, just off the Yucatan Peninsula. We got off the ship at the international port and were soon on a bus heading to the nearby attraction of ‘Discover Mexico’. This ‘park’ is really quite nifty - we arrived and then watched a 15minute video on the highlights of Mexico, which is pretty cool, if not more-or-less propaganda! Then we headed out into the main park area where there is dozens of scale models of all the main attractions in Mexico - from the awesome Aztec and Mayan Step Pyramids to the famous buildings in Mexico City! It was a really cool attraction (I admit I thought it sounded cheesy - but in reality it was great!) we even got photos of Sheepy looking like a huge monster, terrorizing the streets of Mexico city…. magic!

After wandering around the models for a while (feeling like giants!) we felt the call of the real attraction of Mexico and headed to a genuine Tequila Hacienda to sample the local wares  The hacienda was really cool, they showed us how Tequila is made from the blue agave plant and the entire process from plant to finished product. Then of course we sampled! I tried 11 varieties of the famous ‘Mexican love potion’ and Kristi tried 9!! Some were really, really rough, while others were just lovely. There were even flavoured Tequilas: almond, coffee, margharita mix, cream of tequila, etc, which were quite awesome too! The best thing was that we could try as much as we wanted - Bunny had 4 shots of the ‘Margarita Mix’ and was strangely sleepy during our drive back to town!! We would have loved to bring some home but did not think the glass bottles would survive the next month in South America 

Next stop was the town of San Miguel for a look at the Museum and the Mayan history and of course the more recent past including the arrival of the Spanish. The Museum was quite small, but quite cool overall - certainly informative!

We then wandered down the main street in town, which was parallel to the ocean, and checked out the shops and markets. I managed to try 5 new Mexican beers (!) and buy some Corona paraphernalia, while Kristi bought some jewellery from one of the many silver stores in town. Eventually we headed back to the ship terminal and explored the shops there before returning all too soon to the ship and leaving Mexico behind. Although on the plus side we had already decided before this day that our next trip will probably be to Central America.

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