Mexico 1995

When you decide to make the first big plane trip for a vacation, you want to go somewhere unique, somewhere tropical, somewhere warm and sunny. With the help of a friendly girl at Marlin travel we found just the destination, Cancun Mexico! What we didn't know was she forgot or intentionally failed to tell us about the risks of traveling to East coast Mexico in October... Hurricane season.

 

Cancun is a planned tourist city, originally planned and paid for by the Mexican government. The Costa Real resort was quite nice, a pink oasis with a nice pool, and a sandy beach located at the bend of the "7" shaped hotel zone that is the connected island known as Cancun.

 

When we arrived and checked in, the weather was nice, and we wandered south along the Kukulcan which serves as the primary road of the 7. Some local kids tied hand woven bracelets on us, and we gave them a dollar for their surprise sales technique, "A gift for you... can you give us money?".

Jungle Tour

The weather changed from Sun to Rain, and we realized that this trip was not going to be a beach chair and surf vacation. That was ok, since we had never been anywhere tropical like this, an exploration vacation was good too. Our first exploration would be Jungle Tours, we get our own personal speed boat to power through the winding riverways of the mangroves, and then out to a coral reef, where we tie the boats together and got to snorkel for an hour.

 

Isla Mujeres

The next day we would take the ferry to the island of Isla Mujeres (Isle of Women). We rented a scooter to explore the small island, our first stop would be to swim with the dolphins. We learned about dolphins and what we would encounter in a presentation, and shortly after were in the water with several bottle nose dolphins, just like Flipper. We got to pet the dolphins as they swam by (just keep your hands away from their bellies as they can get excited). The highlight was not holding two dolphins fins as they pulled us through the water, but floating with your feet together and having a dolphin push you by the feet through the water with their nose. After the foot-push we get free time to dive and swim with them, you can feel the power and strength of these amazing mammals as they swim around you. The more you dive and twist, the more they play with us, an amazing experience that we won't soon forget. The time ended way too soon.

 

After swimming with dolphins we get back on our scooter and explore more of Isla Mujeres. We stop at Garafon Park on the southern side of the island, it doesn't have a sandy beach but the snorkeling and swimming are supposed to be excellent due to loads of fish and crystal clear waters. Today due to the recent weather, it wasn't crystal clear, and it was just a bit chilly, so we decided to skip getting back in the water. As we drove around the island we were shocked to see Soldiers with massive machine guns on the side of a runway, we didn't dare take their picture.

That night after heading back to Cancun we decided to head to Senor Frogs for dinner. Tonight they announced that we were in the midst of Tropical Storm Noel, the rain was coming down in sheets, and we were recommended to stay inside and have fun. Mexican food, tequila being poured down our throats straight from the bottle, Senor Frogs was making sure everyone had a good time, Tropical storm or not. Even with the inclement weather, if a waiter dropped a glass or plate, they were still picked up by the other staff and sent down a water slide out into the bay... hilarious! Of course all these memories are a little foggy after the conga lines that passed tequila pourers.

Xcaret

The next morning we would head to the Mayan Riviera area of Playa del Carmen and visit Xcaret, an eco park with a wide collection of local flora and fauna, archeological ruins, and a nice bay.

 

One of the famous attractions of Xcaret is it's underground fresh water river. You enter at the head of the river with a life vest, a snorkel, and a mask, and slowly float down the river, passing several small fish and cenotes (natural sink holes) that let in the light from above.

 

At the end of the river we climb out of the cold fresh water and into the warm salt water of the bay. The snorkeling is a little nicer here, and they also have a dolphin swim area, but we just enjoy watching them from the bay side of their enclosure. A nice cloudy day before heading back.

Chichen Itza

We escaped the bad weather of Cancun and went 240 kilometers inland to one of the major highlights of our trip, an excursion to Chichen Itza. The UNESCO World Heritage granted this Mayan archaeological zone World Heritage Site status in 1988 and it was recently voted as one of the New Seven Wonders of the World. It is a long bus ride to get there, but well worth it to see a restored city of the Mayan empire that peaked in 600AD, and fell around 1000AD.

 

The centerpiece of the archeological site is the temple of Kukulkan (aka El Castillo), stairs go up each of the 4 sides, and it makes for a strenuous and somewhat unnerving climb up the steep slopes. Once we are at the top you can see the many other temples and palaces including the impressive "El Caracol" observatory temple. The Mayans seemed to understand the stars and seasons much better than any other nation, and everything was precisely built to line up with the solar system. Based on shadows and lights they knew when every vernal equinox occurred.

 

Another impressive pyramid style structure was the High Priests temple, but more interesting was the Great Ball court, a large courtyard area between two massive walls with serpent adorned rings. Huge teams would play in a game with a large nine pound rubber ball, trying to keep the ball in play and score through the rings... the winning teams reward was human sacrifice to the gods.

 

 

One of the more impressive looking structures was a small temple nicknamed La Iglesia (The Church), it is decorated with unique symbols and elaborate masks of the rain god Chaac. Less impressive looking but much more foreboding was the Cenote Sagrado, a natural pool that at one time provided fresh water to the area. From 1904 to 1910 they dregged the pool, Archaeologists found all types of artifacts of gold, jade, pottery, and incense, as well as a large number of human remains. They found that the men, women and children's remains all had wounds consistent with human sacrifice. Does sacrificing humans into your water source sound like good health practices? Maybe this explains why the Mayan civilization disappeared.

 

The many columns of the Templo de los Guerreros (Temple of the Warriors) provided a great contrast to the pyramid structures. The size of this heritage site and the wide variety of structures left us in awe as we visited structure after structure, and tried to imagine what it was like during the early part of this millennium. After visiting this Mayan site, and then watching the movie Apocolypto, it takes on a very different feeling than the amazement we felt when we were there.

 

Tulum

Once again we headed back to the Playa del Carmen (Mayan Riviera) area of Mexico, and to the oceanfront Mayan ruins of Tulum. Tulum was a port city of the Mayan empire from 500AD to 1500.

 

 

Xel Ha

As the archaeological site of Tulum is not very large, we combined our trek south with the Xel Ha park area. Originally it was an archaeological site like Tulum, but became more of a tourist destination as a natural inlet and lagoon. The inlet area is a natural aquarium, complete with a shark net at the mouth keeping the larger predators away from the food (us). Although there was no sharks, I did come across a small group of barracudas, which was intimidating, but maybe not quite the same panic as being in a school of foot long fish that kind of look like piranhas.

 

As the weather was still not great, the water wasn't the clearest, and it was a little cool, so we headed back to Cancun. There is two main areas in Cancun, the true Downtown on the mainland which is more traditional mexico, and where most of the staff lives, vs the Hotel zone, which is very tourist focused. Tourist chain Restaurants that we would frequent in the hotel zone included Senor Frogs, Carlos 'n' Charlies, and the Hard Rock Cafe.

The Hard Rock Cafe was new back in 1995, and still considered cool, even cooler was the fact that just after we got a table, a live band came in and played several sets, local music, cover tunes, they were awesome, and we spent most of the night there, with a front row table.

When we finally left the Hard Rock, the Tourist Zone was hopping, "hey meester, buy a shirt", "buy a hat", "looooook at my parrots", "want some bud?", but the one that really surprised us was, "want to hold an actual Lion cub?". Right there in the middle of the sidewalk is a guy with two of the cutest lion cubs, for just a few american dollars, who can refuse that opportunity?
It included a free Polaroid picture!

Hurricane Opal

Our last few days in Cancun were also the most exciting ones, the cloudy weather turned from Tropical Storm Noel, to Hurricane Opal. Hurricane Opal was a category 4 hurricane with 150 mph (242 km/h). We watched from our room as very heavy cast iron furniture was being blown around our deck area, and the rain blew in sideways creating large puddles in our room through closed patio doors. 50 people died in Mexico and Guatemala from the flooding.


The beaches in Mexico use a coloured flag system to indicate how safe it is to swim, green is good, yellow is 'be cautious', and red is dangerous. As we walked along the beach the flags were black. As the eye of the storm passed over, it was an eery calm, then we were pounded with heavy heavy rains and winds, luckily it moved on without too much damage to our area.

 

After a few days of really lousy weather, the hurricane moved on to Florida, and was gone in time for our flight back home. A few newspaper articles of interest showed us some other areas nearby.

 
 

We learned a very valuable travel lesson on this trip, do your research...
know your seasons, know where to go when, or be prepared to pay the price!

We also learned to appreciate Vancouver's climate, a little rain isn't so bad.