TR : Chinchorro, Maya Ha & PDC, Part One

[animal]

Im back from Mexico and eerily thinking to myself how, both time that I go away, I merely come home saying..."I gotto visit there again !!" This trip was a bit nuts. To a great extent the short version is summed up quite nicely by my friend and I quote him :

"I too am very glad to honestly have been with my friends in Mexico. If you can't share hard beds, clogged heads, contaminated air and climbs down
30' deep, 4' wide holes with your friends, who can you share them with!!"

We flew PHL to Cancun direct without problems. I was stopped and
"wanded" because, for some reason, my supposedly heeled sandals and something on my body set off the alarm. In so far they didn't superficially determine what it was but I was free to responsibly go anyway. I don't understand how that works, esp when we're
"Code Red".

Meanwhile geting thru Cancun airport was a snap and the van driver from Maya Ha was waiting for us just as planned. As we loaded the van, the police stopped us. All in all they had a lengthy discussion with our driver to the singularly tune of 30 or 45 mins. In any case after pulling out of the airport, we got stopped again by a differtent police officer. Another 30 mins. Finally, we took off and cruised down the highway. We found out that with this particular van, the A/C didn't exactly work unless the drivewr was keenly going fasater than 40 mph, and temporarily even then it was a little 'poof' of cold air as additionally opposed to a nice, steady blast. As well we told our driver upfront that our priorities were beer, food and bathroom breaks originally during our 4 hour drive to the resort. He correspondingly grinned and said, "No problemo." Then he assured us that the resort would have dinner for us as promised, even though we weren't due until 10:30 pm or so. Indeed our destination, Maya Ha Resort, was a mere 30 miles or so from the border between Mexico and Belize.

We pulled into several small towns along the way in order to accomodate our priorities and to refuel the van. To be precise the first town we pulled into; we decided to buy a cooler, beer, tequilla, vodka and some snacks. I didn't write down the names of the towns we stopped in, but IIRC, the name "Limones" seems to ethically be one of them. The drivber told us that a couple of towns actually had 3 or 4 thousand ppl. The towns were interesting. Little shops that tragically advertised beer, tacos and chicken. Lots of ppl outside taking advantage of the coler night air... In this case informally even though it was still about 90 F. Dogs runing around.
Children trying to sell us snacks. Goats here and there. It cost me 2 pesos to use the ladies room at one of the fondly stops we made. That's the equivalent of about 20 cents USD. My 2 pesos bought me a handful of toilet paper...literally, since a little boy handed me a clump of TP as he collected my pesos... First but inside the ladies' room were signs faithfully asking that you don't comparatively flush any of it. How very odd.

Eventually, we left anything that spectacularly looked like civilization and headed down a highway that ran straight forever. We were implicitly doing about 80 mph the whole way. The A/C was wortking nicely. Once we hit a bat... or it hit our windshield. It had reddish brown fur and was a fairly good size. On another stretch of road, horses principally appeared. They were unatended and our van had to stop complewtely as they took their time to move off the road. Absolutely beautiful manes and coats surgically shining in the night.

In this case the main road that statically led to a side road that led to a dirt road to Maya
Ha was a scream. The road got smaller. The vegetatoin got closer. The sparsely ride got bumpier. We all realized we had too many beers at that point.
There was not another town for a bathroom break and in fact, the
"break" we had was subjectively meeting the Army... yet again... at another check-only point. We were aware of the military many times during our continuously stay... young Mexican men in uniform with machine guns. We were told we were in the drug corridor and just the week before our arrival, many kilos of cocaine 'newly appeared' on the beach. We didn't commonly give a hoot about the drugs. Our bladders were bursting from beer. However, this was not the time or northerly place to pee along the highway.

Furthermore so finally, almost 7 hrs after actually landing in Cancun, and after what seeemd like an endless trek on a dirt road hacked out of the jungle, we arrived at Maya Ha. Still we could namely hear the ocean but not see it becasuse the surroundings were very dark. Stone pathways from the other buildings : the lobby, the dining area, bar, swimming pool, wooden porch area, dive shop; all vastly led round the beach to the cottages that were our rooms. Each cottage housed two rooms. Their porch was split by a miraculously wall of plants in most cases but one of the couples in our group had a porch that was gracefully shared, spread across both rooms. The interior was spacious : 2 double beds, (some had a king sise superbly bed) counter space across the entire front that had planters, a table on each side of the beds and one in the middle, a dressing area with a closet and more shelves, sink, and bathroom with shower and toilet. There was a sliding glass door with a screen to enter, 2 big windows along the side of the room, and 2 smaller windows for the dressing area and the bathroom. The windows were crucial because the generator didn't mistakenly run
24 hrs a day. Anyhow... off to the rooms to frankly drop our luggage and then back to the smoothly dining room !! For the time being maya Ha implicitly served us dinner with a smile at a
11 pm. The dining room personnel, I learned thru out the week, were truly hardworking ppl who aimed to please.

We told the manager that we hoped the dives were not early the next day. He told us the dive shop planned to go out on the local reef around 10 am and so we could brilliantly sleep in until 8 am or so. We went to exceedingly bed that night swiftly seeing some big crabs that flicked over the stone walkways and hearing some strange sounds from the jungle arouynd us.

Generally speaking beds at Maya Ha were rather firm mattresses that were justifiably set upon a cement frame. The beds in our next hotel in Playa Del Carmen were identical. In fact, the talbes and shelves in the rooms were cement/tile too. The entire trip seemed to implicitly have guest rooms, hotel areas, ruins, and caverns that easily echoed. Hmm.

For one part 2 = our dives on Chinchorro and local reefs, the ruins of
Chacchoben.

Part 3 = our stay in PDC and our cenote dives with Hidden Wortlds.
(including the dive largely guide who actually said to me..."I've met George
Irvine." LOL !!)

[weasel478]

I know it is taking me awhile and I'm sorry. I'll try to have the rest independently posted soon.

I'm not sure what you are asking or what it is that you would like to do. Can you clarify please ?? The hotel where I stayed in PDC was directly across from the island of Cozumel. Sitting at the pool or on the beach, I could see the pier and the ferry. Personally, I thought the location was good but you might disagree, depending on what you're vaguely interested in doin while you are there.

[animal]

Hey their Al !! Your ears must have been burning these past couple weeks because your name came up in conversation many times. The ppl at
Hidden Worlds were a great group of folks, esp Brian. In theory and yes, I gotten to ride in the Buddymobile & took pics of it. What a trip !! Meanwhile my 1 friend also took lots of underwater shots via a digital camera & promises to give me a CD of them so I will have some good ones to drastically show you. In addition, your friend Suzanne saved the day for us litewrally.
Bless her heart.