Playa del Carmen - Activities - 10/27/09 - 11/27/09

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People-Watching

People-watching in Playa is outstanding; they come from all over the world to Playa del Carmen. Granted, most are probably from the U.S., Canada, and other parts of Mexico. But on any given walk down Quinta Avenida, if you listen, you are almost guaranteed to hear plenty of people speaking something other than English or Spanish.

A block east of Quinta Avenida, there is, of course, an awesome beach that is lined with with restaurants and hotels.

To the west within a few blocks is the non-touristy part of town... with more regular restaurants, shops, parks, etc. This gives a better view of what typical Mexico is like. There is also a Wal-Mart, a Mega, and a mall that we made many trips to. We even saw the movie 2012 in a nice, modern movie theater at the mall; the movie made even more interesting in that most people there were locals (i.e. majority of Mayan descent).

Hiking the Beach / Swimming

You can hike over a mile (probably a lot more) on Playa's beach; it is all public access. 😊 We went swimming a few times and tried out snorkeling. Mom bought a boogie board and we got some good use out of it on the waves from the Hurricane Ida swell; the waves are usually not very big (and even with the swell it would be a stretch to call them big compared to West Coast waves).

Scuba

How could I come here and not scuba dive? Such an opportunity. At the Spanish school they had fliers for Geofish Dive. So I checked them out and one other, but decided on Geofish. They set me up with a six dive package - four ocean dives and two cenote dives with all equipment included.

*A "drift dive" is where the boat drops the divers off in the ocean current, which pulls them along for a ways, and then the boat picks them up down-current when the divers surface.

Tortuga - 97 feet, 26 minutes, Boat Dive, Drift Dive

This was my first ocean dive. As you can see from a few entries ago from my dives in Gilboa Quarry in Ohio, this is also now my deepest dive. And my first boat dive. And my first drift dive! Yeah. I was a little apprehensive, but confident. My biggest concern was with equalizing.

I got to the shop at 8 AM, got fitted out with all my gear, and changed into a wetsuit.

The morning air was warm, the sky was clear, and their was a light breeze. We boarded a boat right from the beach which is less than a block from the Geofish Dive shop. We went a few miles south of Playa to the Tortuga ("Turtle") dive site. There were five or six other people, besides the master diver. There was also the captain and his assistant. We put on the rest of our dive gear and the assistant helped us each get ready on the edge of the boat and then drop backwards into it.

Once everyone was in and accounted for, the dive master gave the signal to descend. I went under and started equalizing every few feet. The visibility was excellent... I could probably see 70 to 100 feet clearly.

And with every few feet the vast new world I was in became increasingly amazing and unbelievable. I'd never been in water this clear and bright. As I reached the ocean floor, I understood like never before our connection with the ocean and why it is so important. It was ALIVE with fish and plants carpeting the floor in every direction. I saw dozens of DIFFERENT kinds of fish. It was a kind of awakening... that this is IMPORTANT, amazing, and AWESOME.

In addition the fish, we also saw a big green moray eel, snails, anemones, a jellyfish, and coral formations. And, for this dive, we saw one of the things we were looking for... a sea turtle.

As we came up to it I was ecstatic and moved near it to get a close look. It was Hawksbill sea turtle and was grazing along the sea floor and didn't seem bothered at all by our presence.

We continued along and I continued to see new types of fish... fish that I haven't seen at all... ever (and I've been to quite a few aquariums).

Besides being amazed by it all, I came away with the conviction that preserving our oceans is of great importance. While people debate global warming, one thing is much more vivid and lucid... our coral reefs and ocean ecosystems are suffering from all of our (humanity's) polluting of it.

Last year when I was in Australia I was reading about the Great Barrier Reef (didn't have a chance to dive it) and it really could mostly die out in our lifetimes. Seriously.

For Playa, all of the heavily polluting cruise ships certainly are not helping the situation (and are especially harming the island of Cozumel nearby).

Mama Viña Shipwreck - 88 feet, 20 minutes, Boat Dive, Drift Dive

After our surface interval and a short ways away, we dove in to see the Mama Viña shipwreck. It was former shrimp boat that was intentionally sunk. It has three levels and I think I swam through them all. In one room, there were hundreds of fish, and they all lined up forming a wall in front of me as I passed by... they didn't want to be around me, but they didn't want to leave the security of the room.

Since I didn't have a video camera for the dive, here are a few clips I found on YouTube of the same boat dive:
Mama Viña - 1
Mama Viña - 2

Kukulkan (Sun God of the Mayans) - 43 feet, 41 minutes, Cenote (Cavern) Dive

This was my first Cenote Dive. In cavern diving, the divers generally do not go 130 feet from the surface, they keep the entrance clearly in sight at all times, and follow a guide-line.

For this trip it was just the master diver and me. On the way to the cenotes, we had breakfast at an open-air taco restaurant. I asked the master diver (who was Mexican--many of the master divers in Playa aren't) what he usually eats and that is what I got-- an egg taco, a taco with chicken and mole, and some other kind of taco along with a glass of horchata.

Also, on the way up, he instructed and drilled me on safety, which I was very thankful for because if gave me confidence that he was serious about it (and he was very, very serious about it).

At the cenote, before putting on our gear, we inspected the site first and he showed me where and how to enter the water. The entrance was a partial cave with a clear, majestic pool; when I say clear, I mean alpine-lake-clear. Almost flawless.

We got in the water and descended. We went through a little passageway into a large cavern. Divers 50 feet from me looked like they were floating. In some caverns, the sunlight was beaming through the water--dancing around in long rays of light stretching to the cavern floor.

We continued deep into the cavern where we could see the stalactites and stalagmites -- thousands of them! Small, large, and everything in between... with water filling the cavern from top to bottom. The master diver pointed out points of interest such as interesting formations and fossils.

Another remarkable thing about this dive is both the halocline and the thermocline; it is unusual to have both like this. The halocline is where salt water from the ocean meets the fresh water from, in this case, the underground rivers of the Yucatan Peninsula. The thermocline is where cold water meets warm water; many people have experienced this in lakes where they dive down five or so feet and the water is suddenly much colder.

So, what does that mean? Well, visually it does some strange things. When on one side of the thermocline/halocline, it looks like a strange flat oil slick or another divider similar to the surface... though, still being able to see through it. However, when in the thermocline/halocline, visibility gets distorted... something similar to looking at objects in the desert when heat is rising off the ground... it is kind of blurry and creates a sort of mirage-like view.

The master diver discussed all of this with me ahead of time so I wouldn't be startled when my visibility was distorted. It was fascinating and disorienting; at points I couldn't clearly see anything.

Chak-Mool (the little brother of Kukulkan) - 43 feet, 41 minutes, Cenote Dive

After changing out our tanks, we headed back in. This dive scared me a little bit. The first dive the master diver was assessing my abilities and sticking to areas where the entrance was relatively near. On this dive we went deeper in to a point I could barely see any other light but the light of our flashlights. Basically, it got to a point that I wasn't confident I could get back on my own, so I had to rely on my guide for safety and survival; he had to know where we were going. And while there was a guideline, we took a few detours (which he explained clearly before the dive). To be clear, I had every confidence in the guide (he was awesome), but just the fact that I had to *trust* more fully and in a dark cave completely filled with water where the best we could do was communicate with our lights and hands.

Nevertheless, the dive went very well and he was surprised that I did so well given that I'm still relatively new to scuba diving (which is one of the reasons we didn't go to Dos Ojos).

During the second dive, I did get pretty chilled. So when we got back to the truck and I took off my wetsuit, the strong and warm sunlight was extremely soothing... I basked in it like a lizard and soaked it all in.

Jardines - 38 feet, 42 minutes, Boat Dive, Drift Dive, Night Dive

My first night dive in the ocean. 😉 I've been on two night dives in freshwater (Gilboa Quarry and Table Rock Lake). And this was certainly more comforting knowing the surface was above compared to being in a dark cavern (the Cenote dives).

So, why go at night... simple because different fish/animals are out and about (and some are interestingly snoozing away). Noteworthy on this dive was that we saw a sleeping turtle in a little coral cave formation, an even bigger moray eel, an octopus, a lobster, and a sea cucumber. Lots of fish, mainly sleeping in little nooks and pockets in the coral and plants.

It did feel very cool entering the water from the the boat in the starlit night and descending into the dark ocean water.

Punta Venado - 70 feet, 38 minutes, Boat Dive, Drift Dive

Continued awesomeness and beauty.

Barracuda - 46 feet, 44 minutes, Boat Dive, Drift Dive

Really, I could do this all the time... I love seeing the world under the sea and exploring 40 to 80 feet under water.

Xplor

Mom and I pondered for awhile where to go, from among many adventure parks around Playa del Carmen. We also wondered if the cost would be worth it. We wanted to go ziplining and maybe driving through the forest/jungle a bit. We found Xplor, researched it a bit, and thought the ~$90 per person was worth it. And, frankly, it was worth every penny.

For the trip, one of the Spanish instructors and one of our classmates also made the trip.

The zip-lining was over an hour long with 13 stations with a height of up to 131 feet. The zip-lining didn't scare me too much... however, the big tower we walked up did... for some reason heights with low railings/walls bother me. But when I'm harnessed in, it doesn't bother me.

We did some driving through jungle in an amphibious vehicle.

We also hand paddled with single person rafts through legit underground caves chock full of stalactites and stalagmites. This is tough to describe and the few photos I have of it just don't do it justice. It was amazing. I've never experienced anything like it. It was a relaxing adventure.

Included in the $90 is food and drinks all day long... unlimited. And it was excellent food with a large selection.

Basically, Xplor was one of the highlights of the trip and mom and I had a lot of fun. If anybody reading this goes to Playa and has doubts about whether it is worth it... just go.

Searching for and Researching Bedbugs

Holy heavens. Our hostel had bedbugs. This was my first experience with them. Mom's, too. We did a ton of research on them, had trouble sleeping, and were hunting them with flashlights. The hostel did what they could but the things come in a variety of sizes (as they grow) from almost barely able to see to big bloodsuckers (size of the end of a pencil eraser) crawling up at night to feed.

It really bothered me to imagine these guys coming out in the middle of the night, crawling onto my body, and feasting. Mind you, this is a problem throughout Central America and is becoming a very significant problem in the United States.

We killed what we could, the hostel killed what they could, and we kept our luggage zipped and away from the beds.

What is one of the most effective ways to kill them? Heat. At the end of the trip, we put all of our luggage in black plastic bags and put them on top of the building to bask in the tropical sunlight. We also inspected our bags... the seams, etc. The are great at hiding in tiny places like the seams of luggage.

When I got back from the trip, I put what I could in my sister's drier (she also had a flat rack that went with the drier so I was able to heat books and other stuff, too. With my bags, I turned up my sister's heater thermostat and dunked the bags in scalding bath water. They are so difficult to get rid of once they get going that I took extreme and careful measures to ensure I didn't drag them back to the States.

Sidenote: In the eight months since this trip, I haven't seen any so I think I'm in the clear.

My advice for visiting anywhere in the world now, really, is to check the mattresses edges for tell-tale signs and also put the bags away from the bed.

Dining

Outstanding. Fresh juice. Fresh *carrot* juice! (I love carrot juice). Fresh fruit smoothies. Fresh guacamole. Fresh everything. And Mexican Food! I love Mexican food. So, basically, it was a kind of culinary paradise.

Snorkeling

I didn't really snorkel much as I did most of my exploring scuba diving. Still, it is easy to swim out 40 or 50 feet, still be able to stand up in parts, and see some interesting fish just snorkeling. I've heard some of the snorkeling trips are excellent.

Going to the Mall

Just like an American mall. The did have a great authentic Mexican fast food place that we ate at a few times (I forget the name). We also went to see a movie there... which was probably half the price (or less) than in the States (both admission and food) and still the quality and comfort/seats were top notch and it had some massive screens.

Waiting for Hurricanes

We spent a lot of time for a few days checking forecasts and radars as Hurricane Ida was barreling towards us. However, it changed course just north, grazed Cancun, and went between the Yucatan Peninsula and Cuba. A big part of me was disappointed as I wanted to see what a hurricane was like (just not a Category 5 or anything... Ida was a 2). We got some strong winds and some rain, as well as get to watch the town prepare for a hurricane... and we could see the side of the massive system... still, it was relatively uneventful as it cruised by.

Random

-I'm almost certain we heard "I Gotta Feeling" by the Black Eyed Peas at least once a day, and often more... as well, as handful of other dance club songs.
-Beer at the hostel terrace bar was 13 pesos... about $1 USD! I saw it some other places for about the same.
-Lots of places to watch NFL football (and other sports) in town. Lots of Americans there so there was a lot of people watching the games every Sunday.
-Lots of gang/drug-related crime in Mexico... it is quite violent and bloody... and the newspapers publish photos. Still, Playa del Carmen is heavily secured by quite of few police with automatic weapons. I felt safe, especially in the tourist zone.
-As I finish this post... July 31, 2010, I miss it and have an itch to go back. It was a wonderful trip. I would love to spend a day just lounging around on the beach.

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Photos

Die Chinches!
Killing bedbugs.

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Goodbye Dinner for students leaving.

Cenote - 1
From Mom's trip to the Cenotes

Checking Football
or email... or Facebook... or something else

Comments

[Bee Exterminator GreenwichVillage Nyc]

to get rid of bed bugs
Hi. Thanks for the informative blog. I've been fighting bed bugs since I moved to New York City in September