Cozumel

Mary and Steve’s Trip to Cozumel, Mexico

Hi everybody!

We had such a great response to our last travel E-mail that I have decided to write one for every trip we go on! We just cannot seem to stop traveling and I cannot shut up!

Although this is a mass E-mail, any responses I get will result in a personal response from moi! I have not heard from many of you in a long time! I have been on an E-mail drought lately myself... My wife says I am far too busy at work! I must agree... Our school is staging Grease, the musical in a month. I'm taking 70 crazed teenagers to New York City on May 4th (wait until you read the E-mail of that one...) Our school's musical ensembles have been asked to perform at the Ottawa Tulip Festival, a local church fundraising concert and the National Trustee Convention.

And can you believe it? I am teaching a vocal class and two grade 9 instrumental music classes. My singing resembles a chicken being choked but my students learn somehow. I was also a judge at our school's "American Idol" competition where I had the unique opportunity to hear singers worse than me...

Anyways, we traveled to Cozumel over five weeks ago. During the last five weeks, we hosted a friend from Berlin, Germany. She was my exchange student five years ago and came back to Canada to job shadow me! She is thinking of becoming a music teacher as well. We toured her around Ottawa, Montreal, Toronto and Niagara Falls. We saw an amazing musical called Hairspray and were part of a great dinner theatre called Tony and Tina's wedding. We also waited in line at the CN Tower for a length of time comparable to the average human gestation period.

After those three weeks, I was ready to write this E-mail to all of you but we were involved in a production of Les Miserables at my wife's high school. Thankfully the conductor took care of our volunteer orchestra and consistently fed us strawberries during the intermissions...

Okay, Cozumel... for those of you who cannot even find Canada on a map, Cozumel is a Mexican island located about 15 km east of the abundant keg fields of Cancun. Teenagers and college students usually do not find their way to this island paradise because there is water in the way. Screaming babies still manage to find a loophole though...

Cozumel is famous for snorkeling and catering to drunk American cruise ship passengers. Thankfully, when the sun sets, the Americans retreat to their floating suburbs. It is also famous for extensive Mayan ruins, which sometimes spanned the area of an outhouse. Needless to say, they were small enough to only house a few iguanas.
Upon arrival at our resort, our four-foot tall bellhop took off into the jungle with our luggage. Thankfully, the alarmed scream of thousands of scattering geckos helped us find him again. We were shown to our beautiful room with a thatched roof. This roof was ideal for nesting horny geckos. We were sometimes serenaded all night long...

Our dinner that night consisted of every possible cut of a bovine. Mary had no idea I was capable of eating that much meat. She opted for tiny strips of fajita meat... The fresh pineapple is amazing... my guess because it is fresh...

Many tourists park themselves at the pool bar all day drinking the equivalent of a large duty-free store's inventory. The scary thing was... they never got up to go to the bathroom...

The hammock hanging outside our room on the balcony was a challenge to get into. It reminded me of my glory days in Grade 7 gym which I almost failed because I refused to participate in the gymnastics unit.

The shows at the resort improved every night... then again, so did my consumption of Mexican beer...

Our maid took it upon herself to organize our room every day. Besides the usual towel art, our shoes was aligned to within 1 millimeter, our prescription medication was arranged by pharmaceutical company and our underwear was folded neatly and separated by color, not gender.

Mexican construction workers should be mentioned. The experienced ones have a siesta in the cab of the truck while the younger workers fill in the infinite potholes with a black sludge that resembles nuclear waste...

We regularly attended a disco at our resort that catered to serving under aged patrons unlimited alcohol. Our entertainment was watching the parents catch their unsuspecting children during the act and try in vain to lead them away from the bar. One 15-year old boy discovered that a wall was not an exit...

Snorkeling was an amazing experience…we witnessed millions of silver fish parade around in a circular formation as a waiting barracuda eyed his unlimited buffet. Cozumel has the world’s second largest coral reef... we were not disappointed. For those of you who remember our last snorkeling outing, we took proper medical precautions this time. The weather did not supply us with ten-foot waves... We drifted with the current and had to keep our eyes on an orange ball to avoid being lost at sea. I felt like a trained seal...

Mary had her first shot of tequila and commented it was quite tasty. The tequila helped us endure the mariachi band that was performing its own version of Hooked on Classics in the resort lobby...

Our jeep tour of the island would make any chiropractor rub their hands in glee. After being promised an off road tour of the jungle, we endured a butt-numbing experience for 1 hour each way traveling at a whopping speed of 10 km/h in 35 C heat. We did navigate the entire circumference of the island and even stopped at a rest station called the Pee-Pee station. They were even kind enough to charge us to pee...

Jalapeno poppers for breakfast?...some other culinary delights were limes stuffed with coconuts and large bathtubs filled with guacamole...

We toured the main town, San Miguel one day with some great new friends, Sean and Leigh. The main form of entertainment for shopkeepers is watching tourists stagger out of bars and lose the tequila they just paid handsomely for. One bar in particular had pine shavings all over the floor to prevent "slippage"

Cab rides in Mexico are interesting... speed bumps encourage the drivers to go faster... the result was indentations in the cab roof from my abused skull...

Our stopover in Toronto really gave us an opportunity to explore the wonderful terminal since our luxurious flight was delayed by five hours...

Anyways, thanks for reading! Please E-mail back if you have time! We would love to hear from all of you!