Winter here, winter there: Mexico vs Canada

Our home in Penticton, BC, a few years ago.

Shivering despite wearing a turtle-necked sweater over a second sweater, her image is projected, via Skype, from her house in the north to our computer in Mexico.  It is -5 °C, or 23 °F!  The heating system is struggling to warm their house.  

The driveway has been snow-covered for two weeks, with never enough time between snowstorms to completely clear it. It is snowing again as we chat with her. Brrr.  

Every winter, a few of our dedicated friends and family members make the two-week trek back to northern homes to visit with grown children and grandchildren for the holiday season. Are they crazy? Probably.

Lawrie, leading the way on a hike across our property.

When we lived in Canada, Lawrie’s dad would make his annual sales pitch to his three grown children and grandchildren.  “Let’s go to Hawaii for Christmas this year!”  

And every year we all pooh-poohed the idea. “It’s not Christmas without snow.  It’s just not Christmas with palm trees and sandy beaches.” 

Were we crazy?  Yep!

Friends and family enjoying a winter lunch at Ballyhoo

In Mexico, we can swim, snorkel, fish, boat, and buzz around on a motorcycle or golf cart twelve months of the year.  

Occasionally, we experience a cold front from the north that drops the temperature by ten degrees, blowing fine white sand into our swimming pool and killing the more delicate tropical plants.  

Central heating for houses is unheard of here, so when the odd “Norte” hits, we simply add an extra blanket to the bed at night. The “Norte” also creates my only gardening challenge: finding plants that can survive the salty winds.

John and Lynda, 1986, x-country skiing.

In the north during the winter months, you can ski, snowboard, ice skate, toboggan, build snow-people, and shovel the white stuff from driveways, or scrape the ice from your car windshield every morning. 

Annually, in October, we drove our vehicles to the local garage to have winter-tread tires installed, and then in April, we reversed the process to switch back to summer-tread tires.  

World-famous Ice Wine harvest in Okanagan Valley, BC.

Every fall, I'd carefully put my garden to bed for the winter, covering over less hardy plants with straw mulch, cleaning out pots of geraniums and stacking the terracotta pots in the garage until spring. 

In Canada, we prided ourselves on not feeling the cold, wearing lightweight clothing during the winter months as proof that we were truly Canadian, tough like our pioneer forefathers, and able to face adversity. 

Friends and family enjoying a winter in Mexico

When we first moved to Isla Mujeres, we snickered at the sight of locals bundled up in parkas, with toques pulled down tightly over their heads, and knee-high boots covering chilly skin. 

Strangely enough, after living here for four years, we are comfortable wearing jeans and occasionally a sweater during the winter months.  

Our northern blood is thinning; we are acclimatizing. All the more reason to spend winters here and not there.

Hasta luego

Lynda & Lawrie

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The sky is falling. The sky is falling! The Mayan calendar ends.

Evan and Ethan, could this really be the End?

With the 5125-year-old Mayan calendar running out this week, many people have been making a fuss over the potential end of the world. Others debate whether there was an error in calculation, and the end is either December 23^rd, or 24^th, at noon or at midnight, or, in the opinion of one Phd degree-holder, the official end of the calendar happened six days ago.  

The news media and social networks have been predicting doom and gloom, urging people to check off an item or two on their personal bucket list of unfulfilled dreams before the end.  

(Cue the loud and gloomy music.)

The Mayans, on the other hand, say it is the start of a new beginning, not the end. They are taking a positive outlook with hopes of prosperity and good health for the future. Some venues are planning elaborate dusk-to-dawn events that include Mayan shamans and elders celebrating the beginning of a new era.

There is a countdown to the December 21st display at the entrance of Xel-Há, a terrific marine activity park south of Cancun. When we were there, we still had seven days until the supposed end of the world, so we checked off a thing or two on our lists. 

For me, it was the underwater Sea Trek and the opportunity to interact with stingrays. This activity features a walk along the bottom of the ocean at a depth of about eighteen feet, wearing a diving helmet. The helmets are heavy. They weigh sixty pounds! 

We were instructed to climb down the ladder until our shoulders were under water, then the staff lifted the helmet over our heads, settling it onto our shoulders.  

The weight was considerable, shoving me down the ladder in an awkward manner until the buoyancy of the piped-in air equalized the weight.  Gripping the handrail to prevent the inlet current from dislodging us, we shuffled through the fine sand, marvelling at the colourful fish and the grace of the stingrays.  We were able to lightly run our hands over the silky skin of the stingrays as the handler coaxed them to swim overhead or beside us. Both Evan, age nine and Ethan, age eleven, were exhilarated by the experience, as was John, our only non-swimmer. 

Re-surfacing, we spent the next seven hours exploring additional park activities. We snorkelled in the protected inlet searching out more stingrays and jewel-toned fish.  

We trekked to the head of the river and floated on tubes back towards the inlet, stopping along the way to test our strength and agility on tightropes strung across the water. 

Evan, the consummate adventurer, tried cliff-diving a few times, or in his case, cliff-jumping.  Wearing the mandatory Xel-Há lifejacket, he created a mini-tsunami when he hit the water.  

Then, being an all-inclusive park, we were able to browse the buffet a couple of times: once in the morning and once more before leaving the park after sundown.  

Fillin’ up the boys for the evening drive back to Isla Mujeres.  

The last event of the day at Xel-Há is a sundown Mayan prayer ceremony that includes hundreds and hundreds of floating plastic globes, each one with a glowing candle inside.  

Participants are encouraged to launch a globe on the ocean with prayers and wishes for a prosperous new beginning.

The End of the World?  Hope not. This world is pretty wonderful. 

Kids? What kids? Did we bring the kids with us?

(The photo of the diver and the ray was taken by John with his cool new waterproof Canon camera!)

  Grab your copy today!

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Death in the Vineyards Mysteries

The Adventures of Thomas and Sparky