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Cozumel

We spent two weeks and New Years Eve 2000 on the island of Cozumel.

Where is Cozumel?

Around the hotel


 
 We stayed at the El Presidente Hotel on the south-western shore, a 15-minute taxi ride below the island's only town, San Miguel. When we arrived, the hotel staff seemed lethargic but several days slowed us down enough to correct the impression. The first week from December 29 to January 5 was busy with holiday travelers; by the second week the place was nearly empty.

The beaches were artificial. Living coral reefs line that part of the island, so they carted in the sand and plopped grass palapas everywhere. You could just make out the mainland beyond the otherwise clear horizon. The water was deliciously warm, visibility was over 150 feet.

The air ranged from the mid-60s in the evening up to the high 70s in the afternoon. When the sun had a clear sky, it was intense. I've never been on the Equator, but if Cozumel's sun is its weaker cousin, it must be something.

We arrived in Cozumel to surprisingly cold wind and showers. The sun peeked only occasionally through dark clouds, but that didn't faze this dauntless soul.

When the sky cleared on the fourth day and the wind died down, it got hot.

Karen bought me a new digital camera for Chistmas, a Sony DSC-P1 3.3 Megapixel marvel. I've never owned a camera before, so I was trying many common variations as well as a number of settings peculiar to the camera. This should explain the varying quality of these shots.

Of those I took on the trip, this is my favorite photograph because I saw the shot first in my head, and it came out how I envisioned. Mexico is big on broad splashes of primary and secondary colors; it's common to see an all-yellow building next to an all-blue building and so on. We were walking by this colored wall when I looked at Karen's overalls and thought "hey, that blue would really stand out against that background". And it did.

There were iguanas everywhere. Most of them scurry beneath the nearest rock as you approach, but this one held his ground long enough for a close picture.

He was maybe 18 inches long.

Every afternoon at 12:30 and 3:30 these two gentlemen breathed new life into tired 70s tunes. While the 4-handed marimba can make even "Cococabana" hum, this particular marimba made it sing. Two of the marimba's wooden bars, one each in the alto and tenor range, were either loose or damaged and when struck caused an unintended sympathetic vibration elsewhere in the instrument.

The result was hilarious. The note in the alto range made, in addition to its expected tone, a sound remarkably like the "meep meep" made famous by the Warner Brothers Roadrunner cartoon character, while the lower tenor tone's second sound resembled the thunk of a 2-ton weight smashing into the ground. The unpredictable combination of these two wolf tones added an intriguing Latin flair to every song: "At the Meep o, Meep ocabaThunk..."

Neither of these gentlemen sang, but the one on the left had a speaking voice so basso profundo and gravelly it was hard to understand him, like listening to the Grand Canyon.

Scuba diving

We went scuba diving twice, once from the shore and once from a boat. Karen had never been diving; I've been twice before, both Hawaiian resort dives. Neither of us is certified.

The shore dive was uncomplicated. We were given a demonstration of how things work by our Norweigian instructor Lena, then we hopped in the water and were off. We went down to about 20 feet and checked out an old sunken freighter just offshore. After the shore dive, Karen said she enjoyed it, but not as much as she thought she would.

Karen wasn't sure she wanted to try a second dive, but when I signed up alone, she joined up soon afterwards.

The boat dive was much better. We only went out 500 yards or so, since the sights were all clustered among the living coral reefs.
The current was flowing to the south, so the boat headed north to begin the dive. The idea is that on coral dives you don't use your fins much, allowing the current to pull you along instead to reduce the chance of damaging the delicate coral. The current was 1-2 knots, a fine speed to keep you moving but not too quickly.

There were 8 of us in the boat: the captain, the divemaster and an assistant, and 5 paying customers. Luis the divemaster took us down to peer under large coral formations where we saw crabs 5 feet or so across and huge lobsters.

The highlight was when Luis gestured to us to swim lower and look there, no, edge in closer -- There! a 7-9 foot nurse shark sleeping beneath the coral, 6 feet away. You can look at all the photos you want and visit aquariums until you can recognize every shark on sight, but there is nothing like seeing a big shark that close and knowing it's in its element and you're not! Nurse sharks don't even have teeth, but that didn't detract from the thrill.

The boat dive convinced Karen that Diving Can Be Fun.

Around Cozumel

Locals refer to San Miguel's large town square as La Plaza or "El Centro". It simplified things to hop in a taxi and just say "la plaza", and off you went. The plaza is in the heart of the tourist area, but is one of the centers of local social life as well.

La Plaza was packed on weekend nights. Local families appeared with 3 or 4 generations in tow, well-dressed and groomed to be seen. The walls of the large planters located throughout the plaza were the perfect height for seating and broad enough to be comfortable, a nice touch.

On the night this picture was taken, a band in the square was playing an odd mixture of rock/country/mariachi. People came and set up tables to serve food and refreshments. The table shown here was serving cake and carbonated drinks. Not far away a priest was making crepes on a hot griddle, dabbing jelly in the middle, rolling them into a tube, and dusting them with sugar.

The sleepy Hotel Lopez faced the plaza, sandwiched between restaurants whose paid hawkers invited you to enjoy their "comida y bebidas". It had a delightfully rumpled look of old fedoras and half-chewed stogies. Lived-in rather than seedy.

When we first walked by, the desk clerk was asleep at the counter, a little desktop bell at his elbow. There behind the counter were the room keys in their wooden slots where letters and messages would also be stored. On the walls were photographs and certificates, posters and maps.

This Volkswagen Beetle looks brand new, doesn't it? In the United States, it's hard to find a SuperBeetle in this condition, but they're all over Mexico. Mexico loves VW, probably because there's a factory there which still produces the SuperBeetle!

The large number of them on the streets was delightful: some gleaming new, some hacksawed into convertibles, and some whose doors and fenders and hoods were painted in a patchwork of colors like the buildings.

Once you get away from the tourist area, there's a lot to see in San Miguel. On one stroll, we happened upon this permanent farmer's market. The meat aisle is shown here. On the other aisles you could buy vegetables, sweets, sausages, and Sony televisions.

Just down the block from the farmer's market, we passed a shop with a large cauldron out front, almost on the sidewalk. You could smell the carnitas cooking inside long before you saw them! I asked the guy tending the pot how long the carnitas needed to cook. "Tres o quatro horas," he replied.

Most of the shops on the touristy waterfront stocked the usual fare: logoed shirts, cheap but colorful blankets, black (and endangered) coral gewgaws. This store was a happy exception with warm colors and textures.

Put another way, I was snapping shots like crazy, and this one came out okay.

One shop had a glittering display of tequilas. The mirrored shelving caught the lights brilliantly, titillating this fledging photographer.

"How many tequilas are sold in Mexico?"
- "In Mexico, maybe three-fifty kinds. Here, lo siento, we have one hundred kinds only."

We encountered this captivating photograph in a small museum tracing Cozumel's history back 1000 years or so. The costumed characters portray various periods in the island's past: the Spanish king, gypsies, corsairs -- Jean Laffite and Blackbeard both sacked nearby Campeche repeatedly -- vaqueros, and one kid in blackface. Plus, that may be Michael Dukakis there on trumpet.
Nothing more exciting going on here than two tired, hot hikers stopping for a rest and a cold one.

"Dos Coronas con lima, por favor!"

Chichen Itza

The journey there

Chichen Itza is among the most important Mayan cities yet discovered. Originally erected around 600 A.D., it flourished for 800 years. It's in the middle of a large, stunted jungle.
Our day-long trip to Chichen Itza began around sunrise, the only day we bothered with an alarm clock. We caught a taxi to El Centro and walked to the dock from there.

A double-decked ferry awaited. We climbed to the top deck for the 45-minute passage to Playa Del Carmen on the mainland. The slow-moving boat was rolled about a bit by the rough sea. We learned on the return leg that there's a newer and faster ferry too. It costs a bit more, but shaves 15 minutes off the crossing and is steadier to boot.

Once off the ferry, we climbed into a outsized minivan which already held 11 other people. We were the last passengers -- good thing, since no more would fit -- so Karen and I had to sit apart for the ride. I sat next to a churlish Russian guy who spent the ride reading an English computer science textbook on elementary sorting algorithms.

"So, studying programming, huh?"
- "I am already a programmer! I learn new skills!"

The Yucatan peninsula is a big flat porous rock with jungle on top. This makes extremely straight jungle roads possible. The jungle itself is remarkable only for its short height. Not a lot of topsoil, perhaps. You can't see more than 8 feet into the bush.

The ride in the van took three hours, so we made one toilet and refreshments stop at a little Mayan village. This photogragh shows a little market adjacent to the area. Some kitsch, but some Mayan-crafted articles as well. Some Mayans still live off the land deep in the jungle, selling hand-made goods at local markets.
This Mayan girl was making fresh tortillas there at the stop, too. She's making a fresh flour tortilla here, with several corn tortillas already on the table. We saw this elsewhere as well: ready-made corn tortillas, but flour tortillas sold only either made-on-the-spot or by the doughball.

The dress this girl is wearing is a staple in the region. Not the pattern, but rather the design and weave -- one of the hand-made Mayan goods.

Karen posed next to this chacmool. The Mayans regarded chacmools as intermediaries between gods and mortals.

At Chichen Itza


south face 		After a taxi, ferry, van, and a hike, we finally reached Chichen Itza. The jungle hides everything until you're right on it. It must have been incredible to stumble upon it, overgrown with vines and rubble-strewn. It's been cleaned up now and restored where possible with the original stones.

El Castillo ("the castle") is immediately recognizable from countless photographs. It was most impressive, towering 93 feet above the jungle. You could feel the bulk of the thing, feel the effort it took to drag those stones into place, feel a surprisingly human connection, a tangible link with those distant Mayans.

Those Mayans had a splendid design sense. El Castillo is loaded with astronomical significance -- various aspects of its design depict the number of days in the year and the number of years in a solar procession -- but the fine attention to detail was telling as well.


west face 		The north and east faces are nicely restored, but you can see that the remaining two faces are not. Here on the west face you can see the little chamber up on top, a template dedicated to Kukulcán, the Maya name given to the plumed-serpent Toltec priest-king Quetzalcóatl. Inside were some inscriptions, but they were difficult to see in the dark.

There's not much room on the top, just enough for two people to squeeze by each other.


east face 		We climbed the east face you see here. There are 91 steps on each side. Multiply by 4 sides and add 1 for the common top step, and you get 365 -- the number of days in a year.

There were a lot of people climbing up and down. Even-larger crowds climbed the north face, where they've added a central steel chain you can hold on to as you ascend and descend.

It's not until you climb El Castillo and look down that you appreciate just how steep those steps are. I wish now that I had measured the tread and riser, but they are certainly the steepest I have ever climbed, short of a ladder. This photograph gives you some idea, but still doesn't do it justice.

Many people climbed the steps on all fours. Most people descended sideways: get both feet on one tread, lower one foot to the next tread, lower the second foot, and so on. Some people even descended on their butts, which seemed particularly dangerous, however understandable.

One thing was clear, though: a single misstep and you'd take out everyone below you. There was real fear in the eyes of many people at the top, who stood there with their backs pressed firmly against the wall behind them. You just can't appreciate the steepness until you reach the top, and by then you're committed.

The view from the top of El Castillo is spectacular. You can see here the jungle's uniform height and how remarkably flat the Yucatan peninsula is. This shot was taken facing the northwest, where you can see the ball game field.
The northeast view included the Hall of the Warriors and the Thousand Columns.
Here's the ball court. The Maya played a game much like soccer, where the players moved a gum ball around the field using their hips, knees, and elbows. But their version used a 4-pound ball and, instead of goals at the end of the field, you had to get the ball through a hoop located midway along the longer walls of the court. The hoops were 18 feet high! You can see one of them in the photograph.

I didn't get a good shot of the ball court--I scanned this one in from a postcard.

The field had interesting acoustics, too. Priests seated in the chambers located on each end of the field could carry on a conversation across the field without raising their voices. I've seen this trick executed elsewhere, but never on so large a scale.

Teams of impressed slaves and prisoners of war were pitted against each other. The captain of the winning team had the signal honor of having his head lopped off and the act commemorated in stone carvings on the field walls.
The Hall of the Warriors was a meeting-place for the high lords of the council that ruled Chichen Itza. It was built during the later Itza period, c.1000-1250.
The Hall of the Warriors is home to one of the most photographed symbols of the Maya. This chacmool holds an offeratory dish in its middle which held great significance. Here aged priests nearing death stood to have their living hearts ripped from their chests and placed on the dish in the hopes that the intermediary chacmool would convey the gift to the gods.

You'll recall that Karen posed next to a reproduction of a chacmool statue in an earlier photo. A comparison of the two shows how superior this one is.

Surrounding the Hall of the Warriors are the Thousand Columns, which housed tiny stalls where vendors held a market for the Mayan elite.
The Observatory is one of the few round buildings yet discovered in any Mayan site. You can't see it in this photograph because we weren't allowed up top, but on either side of the round structure lie two crescent-shaped pools. The astronomers placed rods across the pools to break the reflected sky into a grid. Each day and night they wrote down where in the grid the celestial bodies fell. This allowed them to track astronomical events with great accuracy.

 
 Not far away from Chichen Itza we stopped at a cenote, a watering hole. All rivers and streams in the Yucatan peninsula flow underground. Over time, the flow erodes thinner portions of the surface rock until they cave in, after which rain and the elements conspire to clear out the rubble. The result is a big round hole in the ground maybe 50 feet deep.

The Maya used cenotes for sacrifices. If young virgins tossed in survived the rocky slopes and bottom, they were retrieved and celebrated as holy ones; if not, at least the gods were happy. One Mayan ruler even leapt in himself to prove his divinity...and survived.

The cenote shown here had been converted into a swimming pool. There was a spiral staircase bored into the surrounding rock, complete with a diving platform. We declined to swim because we hadn't brought swimsuits or towels, but it looked fun. That diving platform is about 16-20 feet high.

The End