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Published: March 5th 2009
Laura's kitties
total of 37 all with namesSaturday, February 28th, the fifth anniversary of my retirement. (Actually, I retired on Leap Year Day 2004.)
Before we left Cancun’ Mecoloco’s RV Park on the 25th, Furgie posed for pictures and we spent some time with Laura and her rescued kitties. Laura who will be 15 in two months began rescuing cats about two years ago. It was heart warming to watch her with her cats. As Laura seemed to speak no English I communicated with her mother. There are, I understand, thirty-seven at this time. They all have names. Only the chicas (girls) have had operations. The chicos (boys) don’t fight because they are all well loved and cared for. Laura mostly pays for her chica’s surgery by volunteering at a local veterinarian office. Female spaying only costs 150 pesos (about $11.00 dollars) here. Laura’s mom told me that they spend about 800 pesos a month for dry food at Sam’s Club plus they buy the kitties canned tuna. We did not discuss sanitation but there were no offensive odors. They get donations from the RV caravans that come thru. Naturally, as cat lovers, we gave them a generous donation too.
From Cancun, we only drove a
few miles south on the “Mayan Riviera” as it is called by tourism promoters and real estate developers. Locals, seeking to downplay the area contend the area should not be called a “Riviera” because it lacks the sophistication the name implies and they want to keep it that way.
There are a few mega resorts south of Cancun but needless to say, your humble bloggers did not stop at any of them. We stayed one night at a small RV park called Acamaya Reef. This was really the first time we have been over charged (525 pesos) and under served. The park is very narrow and very small. There were two big rigs shoe horned in there - one from Iowa and another from Quebec and a couple smaller rigs like ours. The park fronted on a lovely soft sand beach but the banos situation was intolerable - unisex restrooms with two toilets and three showers with the only privacy being curtains. Our less than charming hosts were French. Our landlady told us several times that her husband was an artiste. He had several of his paintings on display in the park office. Now, I don’t know anything about
art appreciation but these things were harsh and ugly. The property is up for sale. Our landlady said their children are grown and they want to travel and do other things, again because her husband is an artist, so for those of you who hope to follow in our footsteps Acamaya Reef RV park may or may not be there.
We walked a couple miles along the lovely beach to Puerto Morelos that evening, had a margarita in a palapa bar and walked home. The next morning we walked a couple miles along the beach in the other direction before packing up and moving on to a huge RV Park called Paa Mul just south of Playa del Carmen. We have no idea how many, but there are quite a few ex-patriots from Canada and the U.S. living here on the park grounds. They have brought in various types of mobile homes and trailers and sealed them in with tiled decking and built palapas (thatch roofs) over their spaces. They pay $500 dollars per month space rent. Canadians must go home every six months to maintain their national health insurance. Owners are not allowed to sublet as there is
a hotel on site and they cannot compete with the management. We talked to one owner who has been here for ten years and wants to sell out lock, stock and barrel for $137k U.S. Other properties are offered for less. There is a nice restaurant on site and last night the “locals” were having their weekly karaoke party there. We hung around for a while and listened to the music but felt out of place as everybody else was table hopping and visiting.
The RV Park is less than a half mile from the main highway. Yesterday, we walked up and caught a bus into Playa del Carmen (Playa to the locals) and spent the day walking around town, dodging the souvenir hawkers, snacking and sampling margaritas and cervezas here and there. At Blue Parrot Inn, which was at one time listed as one of the top ten beach bars in the world, we sat on swing seat bar stools and chatted with Dennis from Vermont who has gone from being a retired parole officer to being a bail bondsman. Dennis told us that the place had burned down on New Year’s Eve three years ago. The fire
was caused by the bars pyrotechnic show, which according to our guide book still occurs nightly, however, as old farts we are not out partying when that sort of entertainment happens. Maybe it was this fire that caused the bars fall from the top ten.
Today, we walked back up to the highway and again caught the bus into Playa to take the ferry to Cozumel where we again grazed and boozed in the island’s only town, San Miguel de Cozumel. Cozumel, Mexico’s largest populated island, is surrounded by white sand beaches and is one of the world’s top dive sites. The U.S. Air Force had troops stationed here during WWII to scout for Nazi submarines. Now that must have been tough duty! As Arnold would say, “I’ll be back”. I had quite a long conversation with a gal from Minnesota who had moved to Cozumel with her husband. She was working in a high-end jewelry store “selling jewelry and gem stones to cruise ship passengers who could buy the same things at home for about the same price.” Her husband manages a restaurant and they plan to stay here and one day, they hope to open their own
restaurant. We enjoyed humungous Mai Tais at Tiki Tok which names some of their signature drinks after Atlantic hurricanes i.e. Wilma packs a wallop. We were able to snag a table along the railing situated in a sand box over looking the waterfront.
Sunday, March 1st. We invited our camp ground neighbor Lex over for dinner. Lex is 33. He is from Holland but is very fluent in Spanish as he has spent much time in Spain. In fact, his Spanish/English skills are so good that he is earning a living here in the park teaching Spanish to gringos. His intent is to migrate to the United States and he is currently awaiting his green card. He flew from Spain to Mexico City, bought an RV which turned out to possibly be a collector’s item because he has heard there were only five of them made. It is a 1981 Ford truck with a camper on a super low and long one-ton chassis. Before Lex left Spain he fell in love with a collie looking dog he named Equis. He had her shipped here to the tune of $1600.00 dollars plus another $400 dollars for her Mexican importation. What
a guy! He is confident that her paperwork to enter the U.S. is in order.
Monday, March 2nd. We had planned to catch the ferry back to Cozumel for a snorkeling tour but got to talking with the dive shop owner here at the park. John started diving here in the ‘70s and has owned the dive shop for twenty plus years. John’s wife is a traveling nurse currently working as an ER charge nurse in Bakersfield, California. After talking to John for a while, we decided to skip the wimpy shit and do a real dive tomorrow. We snorkeled and sunned for the rest of the day.
Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009, is a day I will never forget. Today was the day we made our first scuba dives albeit Ray had a much more rewarding experience than I did. After a few minutes of instruction by our personal instructors on how to breathe with our air tanks, we went along with a group of mixed experience divers to a site called the school yard where we were able to see a portion of the Great Maya Barrier Reef, second only in length to the Great Barrier Reef
off the coast of Australia. The reef stretches from the Yucatan past Belize to Honduras. We saw sea turtles and a variety of fish, coral and underwater plants. Our personal instructors never left our sides but since Ray’s instructor had better prepared him, he was able to stay down for the entire time. I was unable to drain my mask so my instructor brought me up after about half an hour because she though I was distressed. Having water in one's mask is annoying but tolerable but you cannot talk under water.
After showering we caught the colectivo bus into Playa del Carmen for our last day out on the town in the so called Mayan Riviera. We enjoyed arracheras (steak fajitas) at budget friendly Super Carnes La Raza which is a combination butcher shop and restaurant recommended by our Let’s Go Mexico travel guide. On our way back to the bus stop we had a glass of wine in a cute, cozy, quaint and inexpensive German/French/Italian/Mexican restaurant on about Calle 4 between Avenidas 15 and 20. Lasagna was 75 pesos and wiener schnitzel was 85. We would have loved to have eaten there but we were too full
from lunch and alas we must move on south. We had only planned to stay at Paa Mul for four days but wound up staying six.
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LAURA
non-member comment
GRACIAS
HI ,I ONLY WANT TO SAID THANKS FOR HELP FEED MY CATS AND FOR TALK ABOUTH ME IN THESE PAGE WITH ALL MY LOVE AND MY CATS LOVE TOO LAURA .MECOLOCO ,CANCUN.