First Impressions

I made it!  Arrived in Cancun Thursday evening to be greeted by many taxi drivers that REALLY wanted me to use their services.   I chose one and told them I needed to go to the car ferry in Punta Sam.  They began shaking their heads and talking mucho rapido to each other.  Finally after talking to someone who actually spoke some English (my Spanish is a little rusty), he told the driver where I needed to go, and the driver nodded as if he actually knew.  After waiting around for a while, I got in a van with seven others and a few babies (the babies sat in the front seat in their mothers laps with no seatbelts..they were more than a little nervous).  We started to drive through Cancun, and one by one, the other travelers got off at their respected resorts.  After about a half hour of this, I was alone with the driver heading to meet with Meg and Con.  I got dropped off at the ferry and began to look around for them.  After some back and forth emails, I found out that I wasn’t at the right ferry, and wasn’t even in Punta Sam.  So I had to get another taxi and another half hour drive before I finally met them.  We took the ferry back to Isla Mujeres and then took dingy back out to the boat.  

The first full day was incredible.  We decided to do a little fun cruising in the bay between Isla Mujeres and the mainland with the crew of one of the other boats in our flotilla, Bryan and Angie.  I began to learn the lingo, names, and locations of some of the equipment on the boat.  I was taught, although it will take a while for me to do it by myself, how to raise the front sail (named Code-Zero), jib, and main sail, and how to switch the jib in order to tack.  I spent a good portion of the trip at the helm just getting a feel for Gualby.  I quickly realized that sailing is so much more involved than people think.  Trying to keep the sails full, adjusting for which way the wind was blowing, and trying to look around the Code-Zero to make sure I didn’t hit any other boats or run aground was a hard task for someone who has only sailed once (It was during summer camp on a lake with no wind on a nine foot wooden POS).  After a little while, I began to get a hang of it and got her up to about 7.5 knots (for those of you who don’t know that’s ­­­8.6 mph, and it’s pretty fast for a catamaran to go).  It was a great first full day, full of laughs, beers, and me looking like a lobster at the end of it (forgot to put on sunscreen).

The next day we hung out, went to town and got supplies to make tamales and some other things needed.  People think it’s easy to go the store to get ingredients, right?  Well, when you have to dingy into shore, dock, walk to the market, figure out what the hell you are actually buying by looking at the label (hoping you’re right), and then returning, it took about four hours.  It was well worth it to eat the plethora of tamales that were made. 

Sunday we decided to splurge and rent a taxi for the day and go see the Mayan ruin Chichen Itza (2012 is right around the corner!).  It is “supposedly” the most spiritual location in North America, but when we got there, after having to pay over double what we were told to get in, it seemed more like a Mexican Disney World.  All I saw were foreigners hustling around, staff trying to herd people into groups to take on paid tours, and street venders lining both sides of the walk way trying to entice us to by something by saying, “One dollar! Everything one dollar!” I soon found out that nothing is a dollar, and he’s full of crap.  After we began to walk around, we realized how unbelievably HUGE this place really was, and advanced the Mayans really were.  Our tour guide, who introduced himself as Tony ‘Bologna Macaroni Pepperoni’, told us that it takes about two hours to walk through it all.  It took us two and a half at a quick pace and we didn’t even see all of it.  It wasn’t as spiritual as I would have hoped (we weren’t even allowed in any of the temples), but it was awe-inspiring just to think of a civilization that old creating their temples and statues on such a vast scale.  After Chichen Itza, we stopped at a nearby cenote (sort of a huge fresh water hole) for a quick swim and headed back to Isla Mujeres.  I loved the cenote, as I had yet to shower, and relaxing in the fresh, cold, clean water was good enough for me.  We got back to Gualby exhausted and all were in bed by nine that night. 

Sorry if this is long but I’ve been typing it for days and this is the first chance I have had to get internet.  In the future, hopefully it will be better and the posts more frequent and shorter, so hopefully you had the will and time to read this far and get this info.  Here are some pics so far.  I’m planning on posting them all on facebook, so just look there if you’re not much of a reader.

-Mike

Penny and I at the helm

Pumping drinking water.  You appreciate it more when it takes 45 min to fill a liter

Sunset in Isla Mujeres

Meg and I at Chichen Itza

Looking down on cenote

In town in Isla Mujeres