Meanwhile back on Isla Mujeres Mexico…

 

Dinner at Rolandi's Isla Mujeres.

We’ve been away from our little beach house on Isla Mujeres a lot lately.  

First, we spent three weeks wine-touring in Argentina, returning mid-March, and then we were off again for a week to John and Maia’s wedding in British Columbia, Canada

Sparky, our almost-famous rescue dog, is still miffed at us for disappearing not once, but twice this year. He had two fabulous sets of babysitters while we were traveling, but now that we are back, he’s demanding a lot of attention.   

In mid-February to early March, the weather in Argentina was warm, much like Mexico, as it was late summer going into early autumn.

  

Sparky lying on my lap when we returned home 

British Columbia, Canada, on the other hand, in late March, was cold, damp, and chilly as the temperature struggled to rise above 10 °C (about 50 °F). We’re not accustomed to the low temperatures anymore! 

Sunset in March on Isla Mujeres

While island friends tortured us with Facebook photos of beautiful, sunny weather, we bitched and complained about being cold. 

Our discomfort was partly our own fault for not purchasing the necessary items to bundle up and stay warm. 

Lawrie wore sandals the entire time, except for the formal part of the wedding ceremony. 

He was unable to convince his feet that they should be stuffed into stiff, unyielding shoes. I kicked off my shoes at the wedding once the dinner was served. What a pair of beach-bums we have become.

Lawrie the MC at John and Maia's wedding

With only two days of sunshine among the fog, rain, and drizzle, John and Maia got lucky for their special day. Sunshine!  And a week later, the day before we left was also sunny and slightly warmer.  

Everywhere we went, people were hidden under cozy jackets, scarves, and hats. One restaurant provided fake-fur wraps to patrons who wanted to eat outside on their patio. 

At the end of the day, photographers gathered along the ocean shoreline, snapping pictures of the spectacular sunset similar to the eye-popping colours of an Isla Mujeres sundown. 

Fake-fur wraps for the outside patio

Meanwhile, back on Isla Mujeres, the temperatures were flirting with the lower thirties Celsius (mid to high eighties Fahrenheit). Hot, sunny, and breezy! 

Now we know what it feels like when we torture our northern friends with pictures of people wearing shorts and bathing suits in February. 

Doesn’t mean we will stop tormenting you; it just means we can empathize a tiny little bit…maybe, until we forget what it was like.

Lawrie - happy to be back on Isla

And as a last ‘gotcha’, our Air Canada flight from Vancouver to Cancun did not have heat inside the aircraft. 

Cold! Oh, my goodness, at the end of the five and a half hours, we were darn near frozen solid. When the doors opened on the aircraft, we were happy to be back in the land of warmth and sunshine.

Despite the chilly weather, we wouldn’t have missed John and Maia’s wedding for anything.  

John & Maia. We wish you endless happiness.

It was a beautiful ceremony connecting two extraordinarily happy people and their blended families.   

Hasta Luego

Lynda, Lawrie, and Sparky

Isla Mujeres Mystery series

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Love is in the air. Getting married in Mexico!

Punta Sur, Isla Mujeres

It’s a perfect place for romance – Isla Mujeres.

Sunshine, white sand beaches, palm trees, and dozens of locations where you can tie the knot, get hitched, walk down the aisle, go to the chapel, drop the anchor, or get spliced (two ropes woven into one). 

You could also celebrate your mutual weirdness or blend your families.

First, there are numerous options for the proposal, ranging in price from expensive, with the fine champagne, an enormous diamond, and dinner at a classy restaurant. 

Or a spur-of-the-moment sign on the beach using pieces of coral and shells, asking his lady love to marry him. She said, Yes!

Marry me?

 

Then there are the bachelorette parties frequently featuring the bride, maid-of-honour and bridesmaids wearing matching t-shirts. Hilariously happy, the women ricochet around the island, flitting in and out of bars, nightclubs, and restaurants, creating their own party wherever they go. 

Typically, the bachelorette bashes are the advance party, celebrating the last few days of singledom for the bride. 

Occasionally, the women celebrate for a week in paradise before returning to their northern homes for a large formal wedding.

The Bachelorette!

Guests arriving for destination weddings are recognizable by the amount of luggage and the fancy clothes draped across overburdened arms. 

They disembark the passenger ferries in chatty gaggles of parents, in-laws, assorted relatives, and close friends. The groups disembark the passenger boats heading to the host hotel, or an assortment of private homes rented for the occasion. 

Once the throng has settled into their accommodations, they start the social whirl of gatherings, getting to know one another before the big day. By the time the event takes place, everyone is relaxed and sociable, having finally settled into the slower pace of island time.

Zama's Beach Club decorated for big day

For venue choices, there is everything from large all-inclusive beach resorts, beach clubs, beach restaurants, or simply on the beach. 

You can arrange for your guests to arrive by boat, taxi, golf cart, or whatever transportation method you can dream up.

We have also seen a colonial-style, horse-drawn carriage transport the bride and groom from the church to the reception. 

 

Bodas Colectivas 2012

And for the economy-minded, the municipality of Isla Mujeres traditionally sponsors Bodas Colectivas, collective weddings, group weddings around St. Valentine’s Day for residents who wish to be married in a civil ceremony.  

A decorated bus drives the prospective brides and grooms to the chosen location, and everyone recites their vows together. It’s an affordable and festive event reserved for Mexican citizens.

Goddess IxChel at Punta Sur

And for the younger just-marrieds, a stop at Punta Sur, a small gift for the Goddess IxChel, is rumored to quickly produce offspring. 

A couple of years ago, a thirty-something American woman told us her four children forbade her from even looking at IxChel. Every time the woman visited the goddess, she became pregnant. The kids said, “Enough already!”

We have attended an assortment of island weddings, everything from a handful of people to hundreds of guests joyfully celebrating the happiness of the new couple.  

Isla Mujeres is a romantic destination for the proposal, the wedding, and of course, the annual celebration of your unforgettable experience in paradise.

Golf cart decorated for a wedding

Cheers

Lynda, Lawrie, and Sparky

Isla Mujeres Mystery series

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Death in the Vineyards

    

Isla is Booming!

2015 concrete docks, bigger boats, new signs

Our little paradise here on Isla Mujeres is rapidly changing.  We think it’s great.  The focus has been gradually shifting from a sleepy fishing village to a tourist-based economy with more amenities available for everyone.

Our Presidente Agapito Magaña was ahead of the curve on this.  A great many of the projects he has introduced have the tourism industry front and foremost, from having our beaches designated as the coveted Blue Flag status, to getting Isla Mujeres chosen as a Pueblo Mágico destination in Mexico. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that Isla has been frequently mentioned in the news:

Ferry terminal - 2007 Lawrie waiting for friends

TripAdvisor - Top Beaches in Mexico

NBC News – Best Islands to Live On

Travel & Leisure - World’s Best Islands

Islands – Best Islands for Retiring Early

And as you explore the island on a golf cart, you can’t help but notice the construction of new homes, condos, and resorts, including the infilling of vacant lots in the local neighbourhoods.  

2015 Street entrance to the new terminal

On our street, in the last seven years, there have been twelve new houses built, plus several other existing homes have undergone major renovations.  Chris Shannon, Managing Director of Mundaca Real Estate (Isla’s biggest real estate company), told us that it is hard to keep up with the requests to show property.  Their sales team is busy, and it’s a good busy!

At Punta Sam, the continental part of Isla Mujeres, a larger car ferry terminal is under construction.  We haven’t heard what the projected completion date is, but it looks like the project is well underway.  Hopefully, the new facility will have a better system for selling tickets to drivers.  

It is amusing, and unnerving, to wait, and wait, and wait until mere minutes before sailing time to see if you are actually going to be able to get your vehicle on the ferry.  It’s all part of the adventure of living here.

Feb 2015 starting to remove tower 

At the south end of the island, Punta Sur, the large observation tower that was built shortly before, and severely damaged by, Hurricane Wilma in 2005, was finally demolished and removed in February of this year.  The newspaper report said that there were 100 tons (metric tons) of metal to be removed.  The demolition company cut the tower into several slightly more manageable chunks and lowered them to the ground.  
At the present time, there are four modern homes/townhouses being built in the same area.  The removal of that towering menace is certainly a relief to everyone living within its considerable reach, had it broken off and crashed to the ground.

Oct 2015 Four new homes at Punta Sur

Another new project this year was the completion of a new fire hall, next door to the renovated police station and across the street from the soccer fields.  Now the new fire truck has a home out of the weather, and hopefully will last longer than the last vehicle.  The previous vehicle disintegrated into a heap of rust.  As we have often mentioned, living on an island surrounded by warm, salty water creates a huge corrosion and rust problem for anything electronic or mechanical, although for humans, it’s a perfect environment. 

New fire hall and new truck

We know some of you will lament the changes to Isla, remembering the sand-covered streets, the small tiendas (shops), and the slower pace, but change happens, and we can’t go back.  We wouldn’t want to.  We love our large, well-stocked grocery store, the new hospital, a second gas station, the larger passenger ferry terminal, reliable electricity, paved streets and sidewalks.  And the internet – well, it works, most of the time. 

The island people have not changed.  They are still the most welcoming and friendly folks you would ever meet, but now they have more employment opportunities to provide for their families.

Hasta luego, Lawrie, Lynda, Sparky, and Thomas

Isla Mujeres Mystery Series

Or 

Death in the Vineyards Mysteries

The Adventures of Thomas and Sparky 

A Caribbean fairytale wedding, Isla Mujeres Mexico!

When an event starts off with a cruise in a flotilla of colourful boats bedecked with flowers and ribbons, you know you are in for an adventure.  Wow!  And what an experience it was.

Our new part-time neighbours on the island are a young couple from England, Carly Lancaster and Simon Davison. They kindly included a number of their island neighbours in the celebration of their wedding on April 14th, the night of the full moon, and of the lunar eclipse.

Gathering at the renamed Avalon Reef/Mia Reef Hotel at the north end of the island, eighty of the bride and groom's family members and close friends from England, Ireland, Scotland, and the Netherlands joined the dozen or so locals. Teetering along the wobbly fun-house style dock at the hotel, we made our way to the flotilla of decorated boats.  Simon wryly commented. "In England, this dock would have been condemned." I couldn't help but laugh. "It's a perfectly good dock - sort of," I said as the dock lurched sideways for several breath-stopping inches.

Clambering into the eight multi-hued boats, we cruised past the choppy water near North Beach into the calmer area of Makax Lagoon and south to the Zama's Beach Club dock.  

Some of the guests experienced the warm Caribbean water first-hand as the odd wave splashed over the low-riding sides.  Other than a few nervous giggles, everyone seemed to be enjoying the experience.


Arriving at the dock, we walked through a flower archway to the main entrance of Zama's, where the staff offered us yummy cool drinks and an invitation to pick a seat for the wedding ceremony. The Zama's Beach Club staff had done an amazing job.  The facility was decorated in whimsical hearts, candles, gauze-draped walkways, flowers, flowers and more flowers. 
It was enough to make even the crabbiest of curmudgeons feel romantic. 

Every guest was supplied with a bright pink umbrella to shelter from the hot afternoon sun, and a two-foot-long compressed air wedding Popper designed to shoot pieces of biodegradable paper into the sky at the culmination of the ceremony. The Poppers are the modern version of tossing confetti or rice.  
Carly looked like a fairytale princess as she made her way down the rose-petal strewn aisle on the arm of her very proud and emotional papa. It was a lovely, short ceremony involving the pouring of two types of sand into one vase to signify their union, the release of a live butterfly to invoke a Mayan blessing, and the traditional exchanging of marriage vows with a personal twist at the end.

Then the swirl of Scottish bagpipes could be heard as a fellow Canadian strode down the aisle playing Amazing Grace, on an instrument that only a person of Scottish heritage can truly love. Foreign to most people, the sound of the bagpipes always thrills us, sending chills up our spines and tingling the hair on our arms.  Simon is a Scot!  He gets it.  

The piper escorted the couple, followed by wedding guests, into the cocktail reception on the upper level at the beach club.  Here we were served beverages, tasty tidbits of food, and serenaded by a full mariachi band paying homage to the country where Simon and Carly have built a new home. Whew! At this point, anyone would have thought that it had been a very lovely event, and would not have been surprised if that was the end of the celebrations. 

But wait!  There's more!

Next, the mariachi group led everyone to the beach for group photographs and to enjoy the Caribbean sunset. Then we were asked to congregate in the dining area, paying particular attention to find our assigned seating.  

Aye carumba!  


Each place was set with three wine glasses, three forks, two knives, a pink rose, a heart-shaped name tag, a small box of candy, and a menu with two main course choices: Buttered Sirloin, or Tic in Xic Mexican style Grouper.  The centrepiece was a three-foot-tall crystal vase with an enormous cascade of flowers spilling overhead, but not obstructing the view of our fellow tablemates. While we waited for our main course to arrive, a magician visited each table, engaging the guests in various tricks.

When dinner was finished, the bride and groom asked their guests to join them on the beach for a demonstration of fire-dancing.  It was a spectacular show that ended with the two halves of a heart blazing together in unison. We could feel the heat from where we were standing. I can't imagine how hot it was for the performers twirling, juggling, and dancing with burning batons.  

And there was still more!

Back inside the dining area, the eight-piece band began their evening performance with an eclectic mix of modern, oldies, and Latin music.  

Simon and Carly had their traditional first dance as a married couple, followed by family members, and finally asked everyone to join in the fun.

Between the great music and the ever-attentive waiters topping up beverages, the dance floor was quickly packed with celebrants.  

Mingling with guests were performers on stilts, a spinning cage for disco dancers, and a werewolf holding a large picture frame, encouraging zany photos.  Dancers were given balloons, glow-in-the-dark glasses, carnival masks, and other party favours to increase their enjoyment.

Later in the evening, closer to midnight, I watched in amusement as five sturdy men struggled to carry in the wedding cake.  

It was huge!  A few minutes later, a beautiful slice of cake was set in front of me; four layers starting with red on the bottom layer, and ending with light pink on the top layer.  An amazing amount of detail went into creating this extravaganza.  

About midnight, we decided to head home.  As we were leaving, we discovered the dessert bar, covered in cookies, slices, brownies, and other good treats.  Darn! I was too tired and too full at that point.  

I asked other friends if they stayed until the end. No, they didn't, but the party carried on until 3:30 in the morning.   Carly and Simon have stamina.

The wedding day for Carly and Simon was a magical event, a nice mix of Mexican traditions and British customs.  It was a feast for our eyes, our ears, and our taste buds. We enjoyed every minute. We are so happy that these generous folks have moved into our neighbourhood and included us in their special day.

Hasta luego,
Lynda, Lawrie, Sparky, and Thomas 

Murder. Mayhem. Revenge. Romance.

Isla Mujeres Mystery Series

Death in the Vineyards Mysteries

The Adventures of Thomas and Sparky

Beach porn, Isla Mujeres Mexico

Ah ha, you couldn’t resist that title, could you?

White sands of North Beach

This week’s blog is not about rude photos of nude people. It’s about the pretty beaches on Isla Mujeres, and the things you can do on a beach, legally!

Lawrie, my idea-man, tweaked the slang expression food porn, referring to the photos that travellers post to internet sites such as TripAdvisor extolling the virtues of a particular meal, at a particular restaurant.  Food porn or beach porn, it is all about photos and memorable moments.

Crystal clear waters

The sugar white beaches of Isla Mujeres lend themselves beautifully to sun-tanning, lounging, and daydreaming for the laid-back personalities; the people who can stare at a grain of sand for hours, perfectly content to let the hours slide by as they bake first one side of the body, and then rotate to bake the other side. 

Bake, grease, flip, and bake. A bit like a BBQ rotisserie.

Build a sand pyramid

And for the slightly more active beach-dweller, there is snorkelling, shell hunting, and swimming in the luminously clear water.  

The sweeping sandy beaches are primarily located on the northern and western sides of the island. 

This is where sand sculpture contests, organized or random, take place; people expressing their creativity while working on a tan.  

Dolphin Discovery 

These beaches are also where the majority of the restaurants and bars are located, serving refreshments and meals to the thirsty and the hungry. The Sac Bajo area on the western side also has Dolphin Discovery, where visitors can play, swim, and interact with dolphins, rays, or manatees. Either the northern end or the western side is fabulous for personal sunset celebrations: a glass of wine, a few good friends. Life is good.

Wild and rocky Punta Sur

For the more adventurous, the beaches at the south end of the island are less inhabited and more difficult to access.  Most of the area requires a hike down dangerous and friable cliffs to the pounding aquamarine surf.  The turtles and the rays love the south end for mating during the summer months. It’s a great area for photographs; lots of sea life, and wave action. Sea glass collectors also haunt this area, searching for the perfect specimen for their collections.  On the south-western side of the island is Garrafon Natural Reef Park, with zip-lines and great snorkelling.

Sunrises and moonrises on the eastside

On the sunrise side of the island, where we have a house, the surf changes dramatically from season to season; calm and easy-going in the summer, wild and pounding in the winter. There is a thriving coral reef that is a favourite with the day-trippers. The dive boats drop snorkelers and divers into the surf to explore the long reef that runs the length of the island and continues further south to Belize. It is ranked as the second-longest reef in the world. However, swimming on the eastern side is a bit trickier, not because the coral is skin-tearing-sharp, but it is lumpy underfoot, making the walk out to swimming depth challenging. But in exchange for the bother of coral underfoot, we get turtles, lots of turtles laying their eggs on the beach in front of our houses. We think it’s a good trade-off.  

Some of my beach treasures

The one beach-oriented activity that surpasses all others is weddings.  

There have been hundreds of weddings celebrated in various beach locations around the island. Good friends Bob and Leanne Frye, and Chris and Marianne Shannon chose beaches on opposite sides of the island. This year, I witnessed the communal Valentine’s Day weddings at Punta Sur.

Going for a walk with his best friend, Dad!

Friday evening, we will be at Playa Mirada for a wedding, and Saturday, our neighbours are hosting a traditional Mayan celebration on their beach. Tropical beaches and weddings: perfect.

Ah, it is another sunny day, with a light breeze and a few fluffy clouds.  It must be time to snap a few more beach-porn photographs. 

Hasta Luego          
Lynda and Lawrie

Murder. Mayhem. Revenge. Romance.

Isla Mujeres Mystery Series

Death in the Vineyards Mysteries

The Adventures of Thomas and Sparky