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From Havana, I flew back to Mexico, (Cancun) and traveled onwards to Playa del Carmen, a town I had been before when I was traveling with my friend Jan in 2002. It's a very touristy place, but offers good accommodation, restaurants, nightlife and organized activities like diving, something I intended to do here. After 5 days of walking around Havana, a few days of chilling out were also welcome.
In this part of Mexico (the Yucatan peninsula), there are a lot of "cenotes", or wells, big holes in the ground, filled with water. And you can dive them! Interesting, and something I had not yet experienced, so I booked a morning trip to dive two cenotes. It's strange at first, because you jump into the water, surrounded by rocks and trees, whereas normally you just jump into a big ocean. The cenotes I dived, were actually huge underwater caves. The underwater visibity was stunning, about 50-60 metres, and you could see the sunrays coming through the trees into the water and all the way to the bottom of the underwater cave. While diving the cenotes, you experience a "halocline"; in the cenotes, fresh and salt water mix and the halocine
is an area where there is a large change in the amount of salt in the water over a small change in depth. This results in a blurred effect in the water, just like I would when taking my contacts out!
From Playa, I also took a day trip to the Tulum ruins. I always like to visit ruins as early as possible, so I avoid the heat of the day and most tourist groups. Unfortunately, when I arrived, the ruins were already flooded by tourists, which made it somehow less impressive. The setting on the ruins is still stunning though. The temple ruins are perched on top of cliffs dropping down into clear green waters with palm trees hanging over a small beach.
From Playa, I went to Chetumal, near the border with Belize for one night and checked out the local museum on Mayan culture, which was interesting, but that was about all the city had to offer. The next day I crossed into Belize and took a boat to Caye Caulker, a laid back backpacker island just off the Mesoamerican reef, the second largest coral reef in the world after the Great Barrier reef. You
guessed it, more diving to be done here! I met up with another Dutch guy on the boat crossing and we shared a nice room right on the beach. The next 4 days where mainly chilling out and some diving. On one dive, I went to a new depth record for me, 40 metres! That's also the depth limit for recreational diving. Aside from that, it wasn't a particularly great dive, but the other two were great, with amazing coral. We had lunch on Long cay island, an uninhabited gem of an island in the Caribbean.
From Caye Caulker, I traveled onwards to the Southern end of Belize, to a town called Punta Gorda. There's not much to do here but to take a boat ride to Guatemala, which I intended to do the next day and then travel onwards to Honduras.
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Jean Toupe
non-member comment
Belize
Tony, Your story brings back the good old memories! A laid back island and doing nothing. Did you met any cute girls around there? And.....have you met "Tha Nielzzzz"?