A Successful First Day In Mexico

Southwest Airlines doesn't have assigned seating, which turns the boarding process into quite the struggle for territory. No one wants the middle seat, so the last third of the passengers to get on the plane have this "first day of kindergarten on the schoolbus" situation where no one wants to share their space. Anyway a lady wearing sparkly cowboy boots sat in our third seat and ruined our chances of comfort.

Anyway the lady didn't say much to us until we were nearing Cancun. But then she opened up. The lady said she'd been to Cancun about twenty times! I felt sorry for her. It was funny too because I was trying to take advantage of her wealth of experience but she hadn't been to many of the highlights. I was telling Lydia that we should skip Isla Mujeres because it just sounded like a boring bunch of beach. Guess what our new friend's first recommendation was? "They have sand like powdered sugar!"

I was flipping through my trusty guidebook on the plane and found a really cheap bus system that would take us up to like 2 blocks from our hotel for a fraction of what a taxi would cost. That bus service went everywhere went we wanted to go. We barely stepped foot in a stupid cab the whole trip. It was awesome.

As you can see Cancun is a city with a long appendage. We gave that beachy, touristy, resort filled appendage the nickname "hell".

I picked one of the cheapest hotels that my Chase credit card points could buy, which was nowhere near the beaches and resorts. It was the best accident ever. The hotel was walking distance from the supermarket, a ton of restaurants, the bus station, and this city center place where there was like a three day festival taking place.

We had dinner at one of those walking distance restaurants called La Habichuela and it was fantastic. They gave Lydia a free little Mayan necklace when we walked in. Our table was in another world, with lots of tropical trees overhead and ancient looking statues. The food was really well prepared as well. The table next to us ordered caesar salad and their waiter stood next to the table while he whisked the egg yolks.

The meal started with a free drink made from bark or something served in a gourd. This place was really good about all of the little extras.

We started the feast with some baller soups. I had the "Cream of Avocado: a cold soup of emerald avocado with aromatic herbs". I'm skeptical of cold soups in general but this one was killer. Lydia had the restaurant's namesake, "Cream of Habichuela: famous stringbean and vegetables soup prepared daily since 1977". Those were both like 6 bucks a piece.

There was a free lime sorbet palate cleanser for Huitzilopochtli's sake!

Lydia's main course was shish kabob flambe and mine was "The Famous Cocobichuela: chunks of lobster and shrimp cooked in a curry sauce served in a coconut shell with rice and garnished with tropical fruits." It was really good. And in a damn coconut. Hers was $20 and mine was $33.

Lydia's pick even involved a flaming pineapple for some unexplained reason.

It took every ounce of willpower to not order this chocolate pyramid.

After dinner we scoped out the festival that was right across the street from our hotel. Tonight on the stage there were lots of kids in fun costumes. I especially liked the little kids zooming around in their rental cars. Many of them were questionable drivers.

I've probably mentioned it before but I am obsessed with foreign grocery stores. They give you a little window into how people really live, and they have reasonable prices that are actually posted and the same for everyone. It's the best. We looked around, bought some bottled water, beer, and snacks then called it a night.

When we got back to the hotel we both had abundant reminders that bug bites are still a thing. My ankles are delicious.

World Domination

Mom and Tom mailed me an early birthday present. When I went to the shipping store the box was so large that I was worried what it might be. Well it turned out to be an awesome magnetic map. 

We quickly had to wrangle over which color magnets would represent who. We settled on me blue, her red, and yellow when we've been to the same country but only when together.

Now world travel feels much more like board game world domination.

The book business is currently booming.

Departing Jamaica

Caribbean paradise was fun but it was time to return to reality. Also we'd been eating about 6 meals a day in order to taste as many fun plants and animals as possible. I'm not a doctor but I think one weekend was enough of that.

Not only was the hotel full of travel agents but it had a shady palm reader.

Our flight was leaving midday so we had one last lunch on the hotel's dime before heading to the airport. 

We noticed they still had a couple drinks left so we drank them.

What the taxi drivers kept telling us ended up being true: "In Jamaica there are no problems, only situations."

A Walking Tour and a Far Out Fish Hut

We switched things up a little and went on an architectural walking tour of the nearby town of Falmouth. We hired a cab to drive us there. You know the cab fare is inflated when the cab driver insists on waiting 2 hours, for free, for the privilege of driving you back to the hotel 2 hours later. He even loaned me a little cell phone that I could call him on.

Falmouth started out a little scary. There was a very aggressive beggar who'd spotted us and had his grimy hand out touching the van window before we even got out of the car. Both our driver and the tour guide we came to meet tried valiantly to shoo the guy away but he was a tough one. They both kept telling him we had no money which was such an obvious lie that it made me uncomfortable. Not uncomfortable enough to give him anything though. Eventually he lost interest and beat it.

Our guide, Simone, was excited that we had heard of the tour and wanted to know more about how we found it. Usually the tour only operates when the cruise ships are docked, so we had this tour all to ourselves.

Falmouth was a big deal port town back when Jamaica was the world's largest sugar producer. The guide book claimed that the town had running water before New York did. 

Our walk began at the courthouse.

The town square. There was a food tour available that we wanted to do but since it was Sunday most of the restaurants were closed. Loud, boisterous sermons could be heard echoing out of many of the churches we passed.

I liked that this church's graveyard foliage was being maintained by several goats.

Simone does a lot of talking with her hands which makes her a good photo subject.

Some of the buildings were in better shape than others. I got the impression that this historical heritage was a bit of a mixed bag for Falmouth. On one hand having awesome things in your town is awesome, and the recently built cruise port makes it clear that it's something that tourists will pay to see. The downside is that it's really expensive to restore/maintain these old gems and many of the people living inside just can't support them. As a result many of them were looking pretty run down. The government won't let you knock them down, so one trick that we heard is that people will secretly build a cement block house inside an old house and then knock it down afterwards. Pretty sneaky.

Lastly we got to see a school which I think Lydia enjoyed. There were lots of educational things painted all over the place.

The school had the most excellent playground ever. It was right next to the ocean and had a colonial armory on it complete with a cannon. Can't beat that.

I hadn't planned on stopping at the Far Out Fish Hut but I spotted it on the way back to the hotel and asked our driver if he would mind stopping. I felt extra guilty when it took them like an hour to cook our food. 

Lydia had shrimp and okra which was nice and spicy. Well worth the wait.

I was pretty excited about getting pulled over because I got to see some up-close daily life happening. The driver was less excited about it. He had committed the grave sin of passing when the center line was solid. I think the fine was like $10 USD so my advice would be to just get over it.

We did some resting back at the ranch.

Sure we'd already eaten, but I needed to see if they had anything fun. The Hilton did a really good job of having a couple local things available for every meal in addition to the pizza and more boring stuff. Clockwise on the plate is oxtail, coconut, starfruit, and then unchewed and then chewed sugarcane.

It was pretty overcast again. We didn't really do any beach time on this trip. We were just too busy.

Boom.

Later that night we took a group night bus tour to the Glistening Waters Luminous Lagoon. The water there is filled with some sort of luminescent algae that lights up on contact. Our first glimpse of it was a speedboat zooming by with a bright blue trail behind in the black nighttime water. Swimming around in the water produced a sort of light halo that would follow you wherever you went. The splashier you were, the brighter the effect. Pulling your hand or face up out of the water made you crackle with little specs of light. It was the closest thing to magic that I think I've ever seen. I brought my trusty GoPro with me to capture this phenomena but it was just too dark and that failed completely. Luckily there was a photographer on the boat and we bought a few shots from him. It was epic.

This place made our trip to the Blue Lagoon in Iceland seem completely boring.