Walking: here, there and everywhere, Isla Mujeres Mexico!

Heading out for a walk early in the morning

Slurping down my second cup of wake-up coffee, I can hear my friend Marcy’s voice outside my front door: “Hola, Hola.”  She’s come to collect me on her morning walk. Marcy is much more committed to exercise than I am. I need to be pushed into a routine. We typically head south on the Caribbean side, cut back west through the Colonias, and then walk around the pathway of the Salina Grande before returning home. 

Fruit vendor at the south end of Salina Grande

Along our route, we pass the fruit vendor’s makeshift stand tucked under the roomy shade of the trees at the southern end of the Salina Grande.  

She has tables and free-standing boxes stacked with fragrant, fresh vegetables and fruits, protected by an assortment of tattered old tarpaulins strung in the branches.

In the shallow marshy end of Salina Grande, there is a variety of birds: herons, storks, cranes, cormorants, a type of duck, and spoonbills paddling and hunting in the muck. 

Various birds in Salina Grande

Further on, a very sweet little pit bull-cross plays with us, begging for pats and belly rubs. We trek past several congenial young men having a quiet morning beer or two, chatting with friends, and enjoying the peace of early morning.  

They greet us with Buenos Días and a smile. Perhaps they are thinking that their way of beginning the new day or finishing the previous night is preferable to our method.

Pat me please!  (M.Watt photo)

Marcy and I are just two people out of the dozens who stride up and down, or around, the island in an attempt to stay active and reasonably fit. Every day, there is a steady stream of people passing our house. The long-legged former vice-principal of the high school, who now works in Cancun, marches past around six in the morning, with his arms swinging enthusiastically to increase his heart rate.  He returns an hour later, saluting a greeting as he passes our house.  

A little later on, another local couple and their sweater-covered lap dog do the same route from the Colonias into Centro and back. The little poodle manages to keep up most mornings, although occasionally, on very hot days, he gets a ride in the arms of his accommodating human.

Mango Café - "smoking chair"

Earlier this week, while Marcy was away, I trudged to the south end of the island to feed two kitties (not cats, I’m told) whose humans were out of town for a few days.  

Along the way, I snapped a few photographs: the colourful smoking chair outside Mango Café, the group of workers lengthening the ocean side path, the four-year-old sign for the still unfinished General Hospital, and the construction of a beautiful stone wall in front of Isla 33 condos.  

Fifty minutes later, I had reached my destination, chugged down a bottle of water, and then fed and played with the kitties. Retracing my route, I had planned to catch a taxi home.  

Four-year-old sign - General Hospital still unfinished

I soon discovered that on the Caribbean side of the island, there are so many walkers, joggers, and dog-walkers that taxis are few and far between.

Everyone is focused on exercise. They don’t want or need a ride. I was footsore and sweaty, and about halfway back to our house before a taxi appeared. 

By the time I got home, I felt righteous, very righteous, for all of my exercise.  

At lunch time, I indulged in an order of tasty beef fajitas and a cold beverage at the Soggy Peso with Lawrie, my other walking partner.  

He usually ambles around the various island neighbourhoods with me. 

Marcy, on the other hand, sets a brisk pace.  We hustle!

Hasta luego, Lynda & Lawrie

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Express yourself with a carrito de golf, Isla Mujeres, Mexico

Santa Claus parade 2012

Dozens of wrapped candies tossed by giggling children litter the roadway in front of our house. 

Steelers fan!

Our two grandsons madly scooped up the candies, catching them mid-air, or zipping between vehicles before the goodies were squished under a wheel.  

Accompanied by many honking horns (or is it horns-a-honking?), a flotilla of vehicles passes by our house.  

In a parade, there will inevitably be many golf carts overflowing with passengers who wave and toss treats to enthusiastic observers. These are privately owned golf carts, painted, decorated and accessorized to express the owners’ offbeat personalities.  

Some of our friends have decorated their personal golf carts with the logos of their favourite sports teams, or flashy chrome hubcaps, or a variety of flags. Many locals have retrofitted their carts with plastic roll-down side curtains to protect them from tropical rainstorms.

Great decorating job!

One American friend has a very charming carrito de golf.  It is upholstered in vibrant orange and painted fluorescent pink, matching the exterior of her eye-catching house.  

For Christmas, she added garlands, bows and ribbons, making her golf cart one of the prettiest on the island.  

Other friends were over-the-top with their holiday decorations, adding ornaments, wreaths, tinsel, strings of garland and pearls, reindeer antlers and even solar-powered lights.  

We left a trail of broken ornaments around the island.

When the grandsons were visiting, we borrowed a riotously decorated golf cart for a few days.  

We entertained a lot of people, leaving a trail of shattering glass ornaments as we were buffeted by north winds, or we thumped over speed bumps.   

Golf carts are legal to drive on the public roadways of both Isla Mujeres and nearby Isla Holbox. There are several golf cart rental outlets on the island where tourists can rent golf carts tricked out in camouflage, or as a 1957 Chevy, or a Jeep Wrangler, or even a fire truck.  

Not the way to drive a golf cart

And yes, this is a tropical island, and yes, you are on holiday, but letting an underage child drive a golf cart is a disaster waiting to happen. 

There are ambulances, fire trucks, police vehicles, propane trucks, or tractor-trailer units, plus hundreds of taxis, golf carts, motorcycles and bicycles all vying for limited road space. You are unnecessarily risking not only your own safety but also the safety and livelihood of the other drivers. 

More friends decked out for the holidays!

Quite recently, licensing a personal golf cart on Isla Mujeres has become almost impossible as the taxi drivers keep up the pressure on both the state and municipal governments to restrict the number of licenses available. 

But, whether you rent one for the day, or own one for your personal use, the one thing the golf carts of Isla are not used for - puttering around a golf course. There are no golf courses on Isla. 

No matter, you can still have a great time driving a carrito de golf that expresses your individual personality while circumnavigating a beautiful little Caribbean island.

Hasta luego, Lynda & Lawrie

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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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Traveling light: e-readers have replaced our stacks of paperbacks

1991 Lawrie reading on cruise ship

When Lawrie and I started travelling together about a bazillion years ago, we had a luggage problem; one suitcase for clothes, and one suitcase just for books.  We both were voracious readers, chewing through novels, magazines, and newspapers at a great rate. There is nothing quite as enjoyable as reading a good book on a chilly winter’s night with a crackling fire burning in the fireplace and a favourite beverage close to hand.  

At one point in our lives, we had one room in our house filled wall to wall, floor to ceiling with shelves of hardcover or paperback novels.  Books on antique cars, antique furniture, gardening, cooking, Canadian history, or house remodelling; books we had read and happily loaned out to interested friends. 

1957 Grade one reader

My earliest memories of reading include a set of sixteen large books that my parents had purchased from a travelling salesman who visited our isolated mining-town residence. The first book started off with nursery rhymes, and each one after had progressively more difficult and complex stories. In between reading those books, my three sisters and I feasted on novels featuring Trixie Beldon, Nancy Drew, and the Hardy Boys.  

By the time I was nine, my dad insisted I read two of his favourite non-fiction books: The People of the Deer by Farley Mowat, and The Miracle at Springhill by Leonard Lerner. (The latter book was about the 1958 Springhill, Nova Scotia mining disaster, where 175 coal miners were trapped in an underground earthquake. More than half of the men perished. It was pretty intense reading for a nine-year-old. It left a lasting impression on me.)

1987 Another vacation - another dozen books!

Lawrie started reading at a young age as well. His first memory is of reading My Friend Flicka at his grandmother’s house in Winnipeg, and crying over the sad parts. As he progressed to more difficult reading, he enjoyed the Enid Blyton series of books about three intrepid youngsters in the Mountain of Adventure, Circus of Adventure and Sea of Adventure and many more.  Another favourite series was the Boy’s Own Annual, featuring a series of short stories. By the time we moved in together, we were on the same page as far as reading goes, enjoying many authors primarily in the adventure-mystery-thriller genre, or the intensely fascinating novels of South African writer, Wilbur Smith.

1987 Reading my favourite author - Wilbur Smith

Fortunately for us, e-readers were created right about the time we moved full-time to Mexico. It had been a concern for us, wondering how we were ever going to find enough books in English to keep us supplied with reading materials.  

Our first two e-readers were Sony books. We quickly racked up over four hundred novels in the first year and a half. Then Sony made it very difficult for Canadians to access current titles of our favourite authors, so we switched to Amazon and Kindle readers. We have already worn out three Kindle readers, and now have two of the newer Kindle Fire versions.  

2012 Kindle Fire e-reader.

The Kindle Fire readers have colour graphics, allow internet access and emails. For e-readers purchased in the USA, there are several other features, such as downloading music and videos.  We have to date read an additional three hundred and eighty-eight e-books through Amazon. 

Our biggest problem is paying for our reading addiction. When we are in the mood, both Lawrie and I can devour a book a day. However, e-readers have solved a couple of problems for us. They have given us the ability to purchase a book in English from any Wi-Fi location in the world, as we learned this summer while travelling in France and Italy. And we have recently discovered several new-to-us authors; authors such as Joel Goldman, Tom Lowe, Michael McGarrity, Andrew Peterson, CJ Lyons, Brett Battles, Nick Pirog, and G.M. Ford, to name just a few.  

2008 Lawrie with Sony e-reader in Mexico

E-readers have reduced our dust allergies. No paper pages to foster dust mould. We have reduced the amount of room we require to store books; just one slim book-shaped electronic device.  

And they have definitely reduced our luggage problem when we travel. 

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!)

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The ups and downs of Garrafon Natural Reef Park

The distinctive sound of small metal wheels zinging on a thick metal wire, laughter, and whoops of joy; the sounds of riding the zip-line at Garrafon Natural Reef Park on the south end of Isla Mujeres. 

We recently spent a day there with John and his two boys, Ethan and Evan. It’s a handy location, right here on Isla, to entertain a couple of energetic youngsters for a few hours with a choice of snorkelling, kayaking, swimming in the pool, or riding the zip-line.

The scenery couldn’t be better, sunshine sparkling on turquoise blue water, feathery green palms, and sugar white sand. My version of heaven. 

Being permanent residents and in possession of a Mexican seniors’ card (unfortunately, yes, we qualify as seniors), Lawrie and I were able to secure a 25% price reduction for our entry fee. John and Ethan were the regular price, while Evan was in the 50% off age range. 

The snorkelling was interesting, especially with the new Canon underwater camera that John and the boys had with them. 

I tried it for a few photos and discovered that wearing a snorkelling mask made it almost impossible to compose a photo. You just have to point, shoot, and hope for the best.  

Predictably, we had several photos that included the tail-end of a pretty fish, or a kid-sized arm, or a big pink finger stuck over the lens. 

Still, it is something that is worth considering for future snorkelling adventures. John wisely attached a floatation device to the camera for the times when it might slip out of small and busy hands. 

Even though Garrafon Natural Reef Park opens at nine in the morning, the zip-lines don’t start up until eleven, so we spent the first hour snorkelling and fooling around in the two-person kayaks. These two activities and equipment are included in the entry price, while the zip-lines are an additional $10.00 US per person. 

The kayaks were fun for a few minutes, but the area they are confined to is quite small, allowing a couple of back-and-forth trips before it becomes repetitive. I accidentally strayed too far out of bounds and was promptly whistled back inside the boundary by the beach instructors. “Don’t go there!” Oops, sorry.

As it turns out, the big disappointment of the park was the zip-line rides; only one trip per person, and both boys had to be accompanied by one of the park instructors. The age for riding alone is thirteen and older, as the braking system consists of applying pressure to the metal lines with a wooden block. It is too primitive and difficult for younger hands. Last year at X-Plor, south of Cancun near Playa del Carmen, the boys were able to do the zip lines on their own, as that park has a better braking system.  Evan was so keen to ride the zip-lines that we convinced the instructors to use John’s ticket and then my ticket to give him two additional rides. Luckily, in Mexico, there is usually a creative way to get around most rules.

The other thing that was a little bit annoying was that the park had two different buffets set up, one for people who came in the main entrance, and a better one for the day-trippers from Cancun who arrived via the Garrafon company boats. 

The boys managed to find enough food to satisfy them after a morning of activities.

This sounds like we didn’t enjoy ourselves at all. But we did, and I bought the complete photo package to remember the fun.  

It’s just that having been to X-Plor last year, we are spoiled. The upside of Garrafon is the location, convenience for islanders, scenery, and it is less expensive than X-Plor. The downside is that we kept comparing the amenities to X-Plor, and Garrafon comes up short. 

Hasta luego,

Lynda and Lawrie

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