COZUMEL: 04.18.09-04.24.09

travel > cozumel

Before getting into the pics and stories from this trip, we would like to talk about one big lesson we learned on this trip: When traveling internationally - especially to Cozumel - AVOID sitting in the back of the plane. The front is the way to go. Not only is the ride a lot smoother, but you get in the front of the lines at immigration and customs. If we had known this flying in, it may have saved us as much as an hour at the Cozumel airport.

(Click the small pics below to view larger photos or for the slideshow)

Shortcuts:

Day 1: Arrival and exploring San Miguel, Tonita, Prima, plaza entertainment

Day 2: Rental car, Mayan ruins, east coast, Playa Corona, anniversary dinner @ Kinta

Day 3: Dzul Ha and East Side, Coconuts, Camillo's

Day 4: Shopping, Cozumel Museum, Especias

Day 5: Dzul Ha, Tonitas, Le Chef

Day 6: Last visit to Playa Corona, Montezuma's Revenge

Day 7: Finish packing, one last stroll through town, 9 hours of travel

Day 1 (Saturday):

Arrival! After spending 2 hours going through immigration and customs, we got to relax in the taxi-van waiting for the rest of the passengers to get onboard so we could hit the road.

Last passengers got on the taxi, and we're off! You can see the excitement on Jim's face.

A couple miles, 15 minutes, and $10 later we arrived at Mi Casa En Cozumel! It's a really cool 9-room hotel run by Memo. As it turned out, we arrived during a lull between heavy tourism seasons and had the hotel to ourselves for almost the entire stay!! We only saw the other guests for a grand total of about 15 seconds, not bad. We stayed in the Mora room, which you can see more of in the next few photos. The bench at the foot of the bed was surprisingly comfortable and wound up being one of our favorite seating areas.

The little balcony entrance to our room (four stories up) gave a commanding view of the surrounding neighborhood. We were even able to spot one of the roosters that woke us up at 4:30AM each morning.

The balcony offered a nice view of the water, about half the view was captured in this shot.

The other half of the room included a large closet, wardrobe & minifridge & tv (out of this shot), and a small table with chairs.

Opposite the entry balcony was another small balcony that faced southeast. The slats in the doors on each side of the room allowed for a fantastic natural breeze to blow through and keep things cool pretty much all day long. There was only one night during our stay that felt a bit muggy and stagnant.

There was a nice small bathroom off the room.

The shower, like much of the hotel, incorporated some of the local elements.

Once Jim got into the hammock it was really comfortable, but it felt a bit precarious for Pauline to get really relaxed in. It was right on the edge of the four-story balcony.

The common areas in the hotel featured some unique furniture, some of which was made locally and some of which came in from Brazil. This chair on the terrace also had two matching rocking chairs.

The open-air multi-level terrace was a nice place to relax in the hotel. In the distance in this shot you can make out handrails for a short bridge leading towards the front door of the hotel. Behind the bridge was a jacuzzi with a waterfall incorporated into the design. Although not true of the three tree-trunks in the foreground of the shot, the hotel was designed and built around many of the trees that were growing on the plot of land when the hotel was constructed.

Sealife, shells, etc were the dominant decoration.

A pretty cool rendering of the top floors of the hotel were used for this tiled sign at the main entrance to the hotel.

After we got checked in to the hotel and a bit unpacked, we walked around downtown San Miguel and made our way to lunch at Tonita. This was a small restaurant a bit outside of the normal tourist zone, frequented mostly by locals. The food was an awesome introduction for us to Cozumel dining. Fish tacos were unbelievably fresh, and the salsa had great complex flavors considering the simple ingredients. We vowed to come back and eat there again this trip.

Walking around downtown, it's quickly obvious what the preferred mode of transport is - scooters! It took a while for the shock to wear off after seeing a few families of 4, with a barely walking-age child standing in the front holding onto the handlebars, cruising through town on 1 scooter.

The downtown opens right onto the water on the west side of the island. This transport ship would be joined by enormous cruise ships Monday morning. But since no cruise ships come in to port on Sundays, they had all left by late Saturday afternoon.

The local kids were having a blast swimming right in the heart of downtown. The sign along the waterfront was one of many encouraging people to conserve the reefs and waterlife.

Walking further south out of the downtown area, Pauline noticed the Mexican flag waving in a light shore breeze, back-lit by the sun.

This gave us a chuckle.

A larger plaza than the one centrally located in downtown is near the Palacio Municipal. It features this large monument which I think I read somewhere is a tribute to cruise ships.

As we walked south out of downtown we came to an undeveloped area between two hotels. There were a couple groups of locals sitting down near the water relaxing and looking through the tide pools. We thought that was a great idea and decided to go down to the water for a bit too. You can see how rocky the shoreline is. It was like this for the better part of both coasts, very little sand that wasn't placed there by man.

Here are some of the kids that made the area look so appealing. You can see how close we are to downtown. On our way out we picked up a few rocks and pieces of tile that had been smoothed by the water.

After the late lunch at Tonita we weren't very hungry for dinner. We learned that we weren't alone; most of the local residents eat a large breakfast, late lunch, and at most a snack in the evening. We walked past Carlos'n Charlie's and Senor Frog's to see if there was going to be a good party, but it was pretty lame - tourists with ballon animals on their heads rockin' out to 80's tunes. We decided to walk through the tourist area downtown to see what was going on. We thought we saw a pretty good sized group having fun up on a balcony at a place called Prima, so we decided to go in. Turns out the staff just seated two big groups along the balcony, the place was pretty empty. Here's some advice - don't go to Mexico and get Italian food. The pizza was meh at best. Good thing we weren't hungry. One highlight though was this coffee drink one of the tables ordered. Kahlua and another alcohol were lit on fire, poured back and forth between gravy boats, and finally doused with the coffee. We decided to stick to a beer and glass of wine.

After we escaped from Prima we followed the sound of live music to the plaza. There was a small band playing, vendors selling food, and a ton of people enjoying the great weather and music. Believe it or not the guy in the shot below was posing.

The music was a great surprise. We had read there would be music and dancing on Sunday evenings, so we were thrilled that our otherwise quiet Saturday night would have some real entertainment! There were half a dozen drunk guys who were a riot dancing between a few couples. It took us a song or two to figure out whether they were drunk or super happy.

This put smiles back on our faces... ok ok the smiles never left in the first place.

Day 2 (Sunday):

This day found us woken by roosters and dogs at 4:30 in the morning. Flashback to St John!!! Where were the donkeys?? Anyway, we managed to stay in bed a few more hours and headed downstairs in the hotel for a great breakfast. Chocolate cake and eggs with salsa and tortillas, fresh squeezed OJ, and coffee. What a way to start the day! We talked with Memo about the pro's and con's of renting a car, and decided to rent one for 2 days so we coupld explore the island at our leisure and see the Mayan ruins and east coast. We went out to walk to the car rental and were met by an iguana! By the end of the day they didn't feel so unique but this was photo worthy!

We got the car (wasn't until later that day we realized it had no plates!), went back to the hotel to change, and were ready to go!

Here's Jim behind the wheel of our Chevy Comfort. That name was a bit of a stretch... but the car got us from Point A to Point B and back again!

This cemetery was a few blocks up the road from our hotel, and on our way out of the city.

We cruised out of the center of town straight over to the east side of the island - where it would have been really difficult to take a taxi and even more difficult to find one to take us back home again. There's basically three roads out of the city: one heading north past the airport that eventually dead ends, one heading south along the western coast, and one that heads east across the island and then jogs south at the east shore, where it eventually connects to the road that headed south out of San Miguel.

There was a short sandy beach leading steeply from the road to the water, where it quickly turned to rock. From what we understand, this used to be a very sandy beach before the recent hurricanes.

More tidepool action! Jim's more impressed than he looks. Really.

Ahhh, the Chevy Comfort. 40 mph never felt so fast and dangerous!

The water on this side of the island had amazing coloration that was very difficult to capture in a photo.

The Mexican K-Mart!!! If you're really tempted to make a visit, it's where the E-W road meets the road that runs along the east coast. Fair warning - the "negotiated" prices we got on t-shirts was a few bucks higher than the asking price back in town! Obviously we didn't buy.

This setting was tempting, but we had bigger plans! We took just enough time to get our feet wet before moving on.

We drove back west a few miles until we got to the entrance to the Mayan ruins at San Gervasio. The ruins are maintained as a national park. It was a surprisingly long straight 25 mph ride off the main road to get to the ruins. This sign got us excited...

but the curve sure didn't. Actually it looks like really sharp corner in this photo!

Once inside we were greeted by these little guys.

Most of these descriptions will be place holders until we come back and fill in the details. It was amazing to see the ruins, which dated from 400 - 1500 AD. The signage along the park was in Spanish, Mayan, and English.

We left the ruins and headed back south down the east coast of the island. Sunday is almost everybody's day off on the island, so there were a ton of families picnicking along the 15-mile shore. Kids playing in tide pools... barbeques... it looked like a great way to spend an afternoon with the fam! These are a few select photos of the drive.

We crossed the southern tip of the island (but didn't go out of the way to check out Punta Sur) and then started back north up the west coast towards San Miguel. Memo, the owner of Mi Casa En Cozumel, told us that Playa Corona is one of his favorite places to relax and snorkel so we decided to stop. Pretty much all of the good snorkelling spots on the west coast have a little restaurant (beach club or snorkel club) that have rights to the water front (can't really call it a beach since it's so rocky). In the peak tourist season some of them charge you to get in, but not when we were there. Order some food, water, or drinks every now and then and you've got a nice shady table to sit at and easy access to the reef. Depending on which club you go to the food prices are pretty good too!

The travel guides warned that the beach clubs get really crowded and you should show up before 10AM or after 4PM to find seating in the shade... but apparently that doesn't apply when you vacation during the "off-season". Memo told us we were in a 2 or 3 week quiet-time during their tourism year. Works for us! We had our choice of primo seats.

OK, is this commercial quality or what??? (Believe it or not, I have video of Pauline drinking this saying "hey not bad.")

Another commercial! Somebody missed her calling.

We made it out into the water for some great snorkelling - our first of the trip. Place saver for more details on what we saw.

Back at the hotel and freshly showered, ready to go out and celebrate with an anniversary dinner!

We went to a restaurant called Kinta, a bit of a play on words with one of the main roads in town (5th Ave) on which it was located. This was a fusion Mexican/Yucatean restaurant with great food and a really friendly owner named Kris. We bonded for a bit over New Haven pizza (go figure). The food was Awesome! If you're looking for the restaurant, it's on 5th Ave just two blocks north of the central plaza.

After dinner we were ready to go back to the plaza and enjoy some more music and dancing! There were a lot more people out and about tonight enjoying the festivities.