OTRA MEXICO -- GRINGO MEXICO

Xcacel Beach

Monday, January 4, 2010

What a culture shock!! Here I am in the Mexico of tourists and over the top resorts. Most everyone speaks English, but I continue to speak spanish to Mexicans! Yeah for me!!

I arrived here on the "Maya Riviera" yesterday afternoon. I took a 6:15 bus from Queretaro to the airport in Mexico City and then AeroMexico to Cancun. What a surprise when I arrived in Cancun in Terminal 2 of three terminals. I remember in the 1980s arriving in the Cancun airport with Clay and my three sons very early in the morning and sitting on the steps in front listening to a tree full of birds across the way. It is now a major, full scale international airport.

I had gotten a text message from my friend Adele who was supposed to have arrived 2 hours ahead of me that her plane was delayed in D.C. I had envisioned that it would be easy to find each other (the vision I had was of the airport of the '80s). Ooops!!! Without going into the details of my efforts to find her, I finally gave up traveling from terminal to terminal and found the Sixt representative to take me to the car rental place and got my rental car. Again, my vision of the car rental agency being in the airport was wrong. I did finally find the Sixt sign being held up by a person who took me to a van which took me outside the airport to a trailer where I signed the contract and drove off with a surprisingly nice little 4 door sedan -- an unexpected upgrade from a 2 door Ford KA. And, returning to the airport, I found Adele waiting outside one of the terminals.

It was about an hour and a half drive from the airport to the little pueblo where my rented house is, and it was dark before we got there. I was very grateful to have Adele as a navigator -- I hate driving at night because I just don't see that well at night. There is a major highway that runs from Cancun right down the coast past countless spectacular resorts, and there is quite a lot of traffic traveling at a good clip. You just have to watch for "topes" (speed bumps) which Mexicans use quite liberally to control traffic.

The first time we missed the very small unlit dirt road off this major carretera that was our turnoff, so we had to take a "retourno" to go back for another try. Finally we arrived at the small little development of modest homes called Chanchemuyil where we easily found Casametamorfosis which is painted bright orange. It is a very cute little (little being an important word here) casa, very artistically decorated by the owner who happens to be a woman who lives in Jamaica, Vermont -- pure coincidence.

Today we explored the area -- checked out "our" very nearby beach, Xcacel, which is one of Mexico's most important turtle nesting places (May to August); checked out Akumal nearby which has good snorkeling -- had lunch there on the beach at Lol-Ha (fried grouper and salad and beer) and bought snorkeling equipment; and finally ended at "our" beach for a late afternoon swim. The water was perfect temperature, the waves big enough to be fun but not scarey, and the sand like powder. Unfortunately, the weather has been overcast all day, but it's still warm and quite pleasant.......especially when I hear from my friends in Vermont that they are digging out after 30 inches of snow.

Posted by Nancy B. Weber at 7:19 PM