93.9: CHICHEN ITZA / CANCUN: July 2008

July 10,

• These photos appear mostly in chronological order. They were taken on July 8 and 9:

• Top left is the face of a god showing a goofy hooked nose and stony grin. That hook shape shows up as a design element in lots of places in modern Mexican architecture.

• Hannah has a whole series of photos of her thigh. She's been monitoring a bee sting. This is as bad as it got. Ointment helped. It's going to peel like a sunburn. She's been a while, but she soldiers on. Peace, sorta.

• Blow up picture 3 and tweak the contrast and you get picture 4. I marvel at the quality of the pictures that Hannah is taking.

• We signed up for a package of 3 activities at a place called AquaWorld in Cancun. First up was a boat shuttle that takes you out to a bigger boat in the lagoon. There you scramble into a little parachute borne wing shaped boat contraption and they take you up on what they dub the SkyRider. There are no seat belts. Yes an age check. No "Can you swim?'s". You sign away your life, and your kid's, and up you go. It's amazing up there at the end of 600 feet of rope, with a 15 mph breeze (tow speed) , peaceful, quiet, like sitting on a couch watching a really really wide screen TV. The ride down is what the captain decides to make it. He reeled us in and we landed on the back deck of the boat without ever touching the water. There was a honeymoon couple that went up after us. The probably-soon-to-be-ex husband thought it would be fun to play a trick on the wife. He told the captain to bring them down in the water. They hit hard. And went airborne again and dunked down again. Three times. The husband confessed to being jolted harder than he expected. The bedraggled wife was not amused.

• The second activity was what they call the Jungle Tour, but that's a total misnomer. They toss a life jacket, flippers, snorkel and mask at you, give you 6 minutes of instruction on how to operate a two-man souped-down-for-rookies jet ski and off you go. Hannah at the wheel, Don behind. The 20 minute ride snakes you between mangrove tree islands, under the bridge and out into the Gulf of Mexico. The coral reef out there has been declared a National Park. Buoys and ropes mark the reef so that snorkel-ers may only skirt around the edges. But that's plenty close enough to see schools of colorful fish. The photos taken with a watertight camera are being developed. Stay tuned.

• The third activity will come tomorrow (today?): Full blown SCUBA diving, with lessons first. I've shaved so as to get a better seal around the mask. Don't like inhaling salt water.

• The beach scene photo was taken from our hotel room postage stamp patio. White sand, very nice.

• We decided to wash clothes while we were stationary in Cancun. The machines at the hotel were in use so we struck out for town to find a laundromat. We found a Lavanderia, close enough, right? It had machines with coin slots, and we thought, eureka. No, a nice lady took our 3 bags full of dirty clothes, weighed them, and promised to have them clean and folded and wrapped in plastic in two hours. 12 dollars, US.

• So instead of Hannah sitting for two hours killing time reading her summer reading assignments, off we went to explore Cancun. The two fountains are not spectacular, but they tell a story. Cancun is the only town we've found so far where they have traffic circles, and these fountains are in the circles. We went by them a lot, for two reasons: either we were lost or mainly because I would get aced out of making my turns by the throngs of taxies and buses that will cut you off in the blink of an eye.

• We ate at a sidewalk Argentine restaurant called, maybe sadistically, Viva La Vaca (long live the cow? No. Yea for the cow! Si.) In any event, the cow was on the plate. Their specialty.

• The two mariachi players came over and played for us. Hannah recorded their gig on a movie clip. The file is way too big to attach to an e-mail, but it was added to the pile of experiences. A barker, I call him, the person who stands out on the curb and reels in customers, came and chatted us up. He told us about all the places to go in Mexico City. We leave today after the scuba deal.