Gifts from the Caribbean Sea, Isla Mujeres

Lost sole

It’s astounding. The stuff that floats in from the Caribbean Sea is downright fascinating.  

From huge to tiny, boats to drift seeds, wood to rope, all sorts of weird and interesting junk get tossed up onto the sand.

In our life, BD, Before Dog, I combed our neighbourhood beach on a regular basis, looking for fun stuff.  

Oars from Cuban refugee boat 

Now that we are WD, With Dog, my short, terrier-cross, walking partner doesn’t have a lot of patience for my frequent stopping and poking at strange items lodged in the sand. Walks are all about him!  

It’s probably not a bad thing, as our house was getting a bit crowded with the treasures I have dragged home. Our casa resembles a hut owned by castaways, salvaging anything that might be potentially useful.

One of my best finds was a set of long wooden oars used by Cuban refugees to land their insubstantial, home-made craft just a couple of hundred feet north of our house. The boat was equipped with a diesel motor hooked up to a tiny plastic propeller. The oars were necessary as a backup for the motor and as assistance when landing the boat eighty-five miles from Cuba on Isla Mujeres. Not a leisurely cruise, but a dangerous, uncomfortable struggle towards a better life.

At the beginning, tangled and heavy.

More recently, I entertained three young workers with my valiant struggle to drag four hundred feet of wet, sand-saturated, seaweed-encrusted rope out of the water and up to our house.  

From their vantage point at the top of our ocean-side palapa, they could chart my painfully slow progress. They were still giggling when they joined me on the beach to drag my newest treasure home.  

Six hours later, a bit of fun for the patio

It took me six hours of untangling and re-winding before I was satisfied with the results. A large pale-blue rope ball now sits on our patio along with a collection of smaller spheres, all made with various bits of rope scoured from the ocean.

We usually leave the various fishing net floats, solid pieces of lumber, or bits of netting out on the street. Someone, somewhere on the island, will find a use for these bits and pieces.  

The plastic bottles, old toothbrushes, and other plastic junk we collect fairly regularly and toss into our household garbage. 

It’s all part of living on an ocean shared by billions of people.

Prettier treasures include jars, boxes, and bowls of shells and fascinating seed pods in every size, shape, and colour.  

Monkey Hearts (Sea Hearts) and Deer Eyes drift seeds

There is a sun-bleached turtle skull that I found several years ago, perched on the top of our microwave alongside a bowl of the fragile husks left behind by sea urchins.  

Another bowl holds a collection of volcanic pumice gathered from the beach. It’s useful for scrubbing calloused feet, and I have a thirty-year supply, just in case. 

And sea glass, oh, my goodness, sea glass. White, aqua, royal blue, pale green and even a few bits of lavender. 

My favourite pieces of sea glass

I collected so much that I finally set it free, salting our beach with twenty pounds of sea glass that I didn’t need. 

It’s amazing how many visitors find sea glass in front of our house.   

I kept a few choice bits for me to eventually turn into a necklace or a bracelet.  

Eventually.

Moto-helmet washed up on beach

There is always an abundant supply of shoes on the beach, never a matching pair, just lonely, mismatched, barnacle-encrusted shoes. A number of the lost soles have found their way to a shoe-tree built by a guest at Punta Piedra.  The shoes decorating the tree come and go, depending on the whim of passing dogs who take a fancy to this one or that one as a good chew toy.  

Along with flip-flops and stilettos, the occasional moto helmet floats up on the sand, or a set of keys. Questions like: Why? How? Who? Flicker through my mind when I see them.

Lawrie repairing fiberglass moon

The most useful bit of flotsam and jetsam that hit the beach several years ago was not found by us, but by another islander.  

It was an eight-foot-tall fiberglass crescent moon, a very old remnant from an out-of-business bar in Centro.  

Lawrie’s sister’s house is called Casa Luna Turquesa, so as a surprise, fun gift for Linda and Richard, we purchased the moon.  

Garry - airbrushing paint

Lawrie repaired the battered fiberglass shape, and an artist friend, Garry Sawatzky, airbrushed on a new paint job. The moon has become a focal point of the large swimming pool at Casa Luna Turquesa.   

But the biggest bit of beach junk was and still is, the navigational light buoy that drifted in over a year ago from the channel at the southern end of the island. It’s huge. Unwanted and unclaimed by the various government agencies, it is slowly beginning to flake away, bit by rusty bit.   

We aren’t allowed to remove it or cut it up.  Nature will gradually take its course, and in twenty years no one will know it was here.

The navigational buoy is slowly rusting away. 

In the meantime, we need to convince our little rescue mutt, Sparky, to enjoy beachcombing.  

There are some pretty cool treasures to be found out there.

Hasta Luego

Lynda, Lawrie, Sparky, and Thomas

Isla Mujeres Mystery series

Or

Death in the Vineyards Mysteries

OR

The Adventures of Thomas the Cat and Sparky

One person's junk ... is another person's treasure

Crouching Crab.

A large, brightly-coloured crab crouches near a rocky ledge; as I sneak up to capture it on my camera, I discover it can't run away. It's a beautiful skeleton, motionless in the sand.  

Further on a single multi-coloured shoe has been discarded on the sand by a careless wave. The shoe is an interesting patchwork of pink, blue and green crisscrossing the sides.  

Lost Sole!

Regularly, a variety of shoes and sandals float in, prompting one artistic acquaintance to start a tree of "lost soles." Passersby helpfully added their beach finds until over a hundred shoes decorated the tree. Realizing his creation was out of control, the artist dismantled his display.

All year round, the wind brings an assortment of other items to the beaches; some are interesting, and some are junk. Earlier in the year, the beaches were buried under a large mound of debris that winter storms had flung high along the eastern side of the island. 

Cleaning up the mess.

Picking up garbage became a never-ending job for homeowners. A hard-working group of city workers and volunteers were dispatched to dispose of the trash, making the beach usable again. No one knows where the excess garbage came from, but hopefully we won't experience that again.

The one change I have noticed is that I seldom find shells along this beach anymore. Why? Perhaps due to the increase in beachcombers. Or perhaps due to the 2008 removal of many tons of sand from the sea bottom to refurbish the Cancun beaches devastated by Hurricane Wilma in 2005. It's my personal grumble. The barges and their massive pumps worked for months, stripping the sand, along with mollusks and other small sea creatures. Many of the shells for sale on the island have been imported from the Philippines to fill the gap between supply and demand.

Tiny, fragile sea biscuit sand dollar

Other items I have found along the edge of the surf include an assortment of sea glass, turtle bones, a large turtle skull, and several pieces of fan coral uprooted by storms and tossed on the beach.

I also happened upon a tiny and delicate sea biscuit, or sand dollar.  

It was only two inches long and extremely fragile, leading me to wonder how it survived its journey in the waves.  

Sea Hearts (Monkey Hearts) and Deer Eyes

I now have several glass vases filled with Sea Hearts, and Deer Eyes; drift seeds from the Amazon River. My latest find is a grapefruit-sized seed pod called a Calabash.  

More recently, I have been picking up small, smooth flat stones in a variety of colours: tan, black, and white. 

Maybe I should create something with them? Or maybe not. I enjoy just looking at them.

Garafon Park zip line braking system

Recently, I found several wooden items with two strong fabric straps attached.  We puzzled over that, finally sending a photo out by email asking friends if they could identify the items. One said they were hand brakes for riders of the Garafon Park zip lines. 

Exactly right. When I returned the items to a staff member, he was grateful, but puzzled. Why would the items float counter-clockwise against the current at South Point to the eastern side of the island?  Lost items normally float with the current.  He shrugged. I shrugged.  No clue how that would happen. Two days later, I found a fifth one.  

Drift seeds, sea glass, turtle shoulder bones, carved wood.

Every once in a while, I open a kitchen drawer or storage box, and realize that - yet again - my collection of treasures is unmanageable.  I ask friends: "Do you want a bag of Sea Hearts?  Or Deer Eyes?  Or sea glass?"  

Thankfully, our creative friends are always happy to have fresh supplies for their artistic endeavours.  



Hasta luego, Lynda, Lawrie, Sparky, and Thomas the Cat.

Murder. Mayhem. Revenge. Romance.

Isla Mujeres Mystery Series

Death in the Vineyards Mysteries

The Adventures of Thomas and Sparky

Lost our marbles …over sea marbles, Isla Mujeres Mexico!

A marble? A perfect black and cobalt-blue marble somehow had made its way to our beach. 

Huh! I asked Google and discovered that there appear to be several theories as to how marbles arrive on beaches.

First of all, there is the obvious reason: kids playing with them. However, we have not actually seen any kids on this island playing with marbles, and marbles in general seem to have lost out to other, more sophisticated toys in the mid to late 60s.

The second possible reason is that house painters have been known to toss a handful of marbles into a paint can to help stir the ingredients while they are working. Back in the “old days,” it was acceptable to dispose of empty cans in the ocean, thereby allowing the ocean currents to work the marbles out of the remaining paint and eventually deposit them on the beach.

The third possible reason is the one that really fascinates me. They were used as ballast in ships’ holds. Cool! Maybe there is a sunken treasure ship just waiting to be discovered.

1983, Lynda Rusty Duck Antiques on Bowen Island BC

In one of our previous incarnations, when we were still working for a living, Lawrie and I owned an antique store on Bowen Island in British Columbia, Canada. (My apologies for using that four-letter word - work.) 

We have always been interested in things antique or classic. Lawrie had an enormously varied collection of classic English and American cars, and a 1959 mahogany Continental Chris Craft speedboat. 

When we travel, we enjoy researching our Irish, Scottish, French, and Canadian genealogies. 

Lawrie fixing my Overlander delivery truck

Before moving to Mexico, we owned a collection of antique furniture, toys, and hand tools. 

When our friend and nearby neighbour, Marcy Watt, loaned me a book, “Pure Sea Glass” by Richard LaMotte, I was hooked.  

I started sorting through all the bits and pieces that I have collected from the beach along this side of the island and have found a few really interesting shapes, colours, and patterns. 

One large fragment had an embossed design. Unfortunately, that photo is hiding somewhere in my vast collection of photographs. 

(I searched my photos and found the image! I still have no idea what the letters or design mean.) 

The marble that I found is in much too perfect a condition to have survived a number of decades, grinding its way from the deeper parts of the ocean, across the reef in front of our house, and onto the beach. 

Interesting book about sea glass

But the romance of a sunken ship somewhere in the deep waters east of our island…well, that’s just too good to let go without a struggle.

Hasta luego

Lynda and Lawrie

Grab your copy today!

Isla Mujeres Mystery Series

Or

Death in the Vineyards Mysteries

The Adventures of Thomas and Sparky