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Published: November 10th 2010
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Holy moly,it´s been a long time since I´ve updated this thang! OK, well here´s goes the mini update: left Japan in April, went to West Africa to visit Ana and check out villages for 5 weeks, arrived in New York in June, flew to Little Rock, picked up the car and drove to Alaska, got married on July 9th! Then, headed to Portland OR for 6 weeks, then left for our "real " honeymoon in Oct. Spent a week at a fancy resort in Cozumel Mexico, stuffing our faces and getting waited on hand and foot, then moved across the bay to Tulum, where we have been planted ever since. Whew!
We have been having a wonderful honeymoon. At first, the resort took some getting used to. I was a bit aprehensive before we got there but then ,,,,after walking into our HUGE room, complete with balcony and hammock, open tiled shower room, and room service free any time (actually everything was free all the time!) and the two pools and the tiny sailboat to take out for the day, and the snokeling gear and the two pools with 4 adult sized slides ....And man, ok for dinner
if you weren´t ¨sure want you wanted to eat, say trying to decide between the steak and the risotto, well, the waiter would just suggest ordering both. Hmm, let´s just say I wasn´t too sure I wanted to leave.
Then it was back to the reality of Julie and Alex travel which meant trying to get as close to the beach as possible without breaking our budget. What we settled on was a cute little shack with a sand floor, right on the beach, next the Mayan ruins. No electricity, no water in our cabin, but we can open the window and watch the sun come up in the morning. ( Due to no lights at night we´ve been going to bed very early, maybe around 9 or 10, after a crossword puzzle or two by candlelight). And the water is gorgeous, just unbeliveable. Bright blue water, bright white fine sand, shady coconut trees, geckos on the ceiling.. it´s a slice of paradise. If only we didn´t have to go into town for food! At night we have to light candles to see anything, which only adds to the mystique.
Our first morning, I woke
up starving! (Probably just used to a week of lazily rolling over to the phone and ordering room service). Come to find out, there is no food, no restaurant open until noon (or later, the fishermen were very unclear about when exactly things opened.) And the restaurants on the beach charge a crazy amount for basics i.e. 10 bucks for a egg sandwich. This is Mexico! That´s crazy talk!
So we hit the supermarket and stocked up on pb and j, tomatoes, avacadoes, and
laughing cow cheese for breakfast and lunch. Then for dinner we come into town for 80 peso tacos and the occaisonal cheap beer. Much better.
What is breaking our budget, though, is my new favorite hobby. Scuba diving. Guess it´s not all that new, just a few years in and only 18 or so dives logged. But man, is it expensive! We ended buying a 3 day dive package from Beach Divers in Playa Del Carmen, mostly because the max group size they permit is 5. Lucky us, it´s low season! We got to go diving with only us and the dive master! And no huge groups underwater either, at the dive sites we
were at, it was only us. This a rarity in popular dive sites. In Koh Tao at Chumphon Pinacle I can remember looking around and counting at least 30 other divers in the water, and trying to keep track of your divemaster can be a nightmare.
I saw the most enormous, gigantic, freakishly HUGE sea turtle at a dive site called (of course) Tortuga. We were just floating along, following the current and our DM, Julio, gave us the sign for a turtle up ahead (that´s a fist with your thumb and pinky extended to look like the front legs). I looked, expecting to see a regular sized turtle but instead saw this mountain of an animal, crusted with barnacles, muching down on some seagrass. The drift carried us closer, and I swam over it, and watched as Alex swam over it. The turtle was at least bigger than Alex, from head to knees and of course much wider. I watched it for as long as I could but the drift pulled me away.
Our plan is go diving in the Do Ojos cenote (fresh water spring-cave thing) tommorow. I´ve never done any cavern diving but
figure it can´t be any scarier than night diving, right? Julio says that there will be no point at which I won´t be able to surface if I panic or anything so it should be fine. Lots of natural light and stalamites and stalagtites. Very few fish, and we´ll be on a line. I´ll try to give a report soon!
Meet some awesome people here. If I can recomend befriending anyone here in Tulum, it´s Andy. He´s an American who has spent the last few years going to and from Seattle and Tulum . He´s a born connector, a tour guide, and just a generally great person to know, in addition to being friendly and sociable. He´s done his part to plug us into the social pipeline here. If you do have the pleasure of Andy´s company...ask him to tell you the story about how he lost (and found) his dog!
Sorry for no pictures, forgot to bring the memory card to the internet cafe. Love to all - Julie
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Janette Thornton
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Thanks for keeping in touch
Hello, you two! Thank you so much for starting up your blog. I love hearing about white beaches and bright water as I put on my gear to shovel snow. Love you both-be careful. Janette T.