May 22-27:
We are in waiting areas, cars or airplanes for 21 hours on our trip back to Mexico from Rio, via Sao Paulo and Houston. It’s an overnight flight with little sleep. Normally, the wait in Houston and Cancun immigration can be an hour or more. The swine flu hysteria has clearly grounded travelers’ enthusiasm in North America. The wait is short in Houston and non-existent in Cancun.
In the 17 years we’ve been going to the Mayan Riviera, I’ve never seen the Cancun airport so quiet. We go right through immigration, pick up our bags and have them x-rayed, clear customs and find our driver in 15 minutes. About 45 minutes later we are opening the doors to our condo. We’ve taken as long as three hours to do the same during peak holiday travel. This is the US Memorial Day long weekend and usually very busy.
We experience another scary medical emergency – the second in three days – 30 minutes outside of Cancun. A flight attendant looks to be suffering a serious attack of some sort and she’s lied out on the floor directly beside us while a nurse passenger and a friend is administering oxygen and medical care. Tony tells Alana to look at the Caribbean outside her window as we come in for landing. He fears the worst. Paramedics greet the plane on arrival. The flight attendant returns to consciousness. We are not sure of the outcome.
The first day back is a bit surrealistic with nobody on the beaches or in the restaurants. More than 20,000 are laid off currently. One local hotel offered a week’s stay with all food and booze included for less than $200. Another hotel that has five lobbies and 2000 rooms is down to one lobby. There are signs of desperation for those without any savings. One man was caught be local police with an ATM in the back of his truck, insisting he was taking it home only to do repairs.
The famous and frenetic Fifth Avenue in Playa del Carmen is empty of shoppers this Sunday afternoon. Some restaurants aren’t even bothering to open.
In our building, where there are 17 condos, ours is the only occupied. A couple from Utah, renting in the building beside us, appeared, relieved to see Alana and I as they’ve seen few people during their three-week holiday. We are offered beverages and a plate of nachos and guacamole. Alana looks baffled as she’s served coke in a Super-sized, one-liter Styrofoam container. Tony is not so lucky with his Corona.
Ruth has temporarily returned to Canada for a family commitment booked in advance of the South American trip. Tony and Alana will be by themselves in Mexico and Havana, Cuba for a few weeks.
Alana has become a good translator during the travels. She is demonstrably more comfortable using her Spanish. Tony hasn’t and usually needs help. Alana comes to the rescue again with the air conditioning technician, fearing Daddy is ordering three new units instead of just getting the Freon recharged.
We learned the US has just lifted a travel advisory for Mexico, and it is as if a light switch was turned on. By Day 3 the beach is showing some life. Then we are awoken Sunday night by an American couple arriving late evening and staying above us. Both Tony and Alana like their peace and quiet so they are a bit annoyed by the noise at night and their music in the morning. We want people to come back to Mexico – just not Quinta Maya in Puerto Aventuras!
The Yucatan Peninsula rivals any place in the world for beauty, culture and heritage. It is home to white sand beaches and the turquoise waters of the Caribbean. Mayan Ruins dot the landscape throughout the Yucatan, including Chichen Itza, one of the modern wonders of the world. The Mexican people are far more laid back than their counterparts in other parts of the country. It is classified as sub-tropical, like parts of Brazil but it is much drier here. We are in the middle of a very dry spell with almost no rain since leaving in March.
One of the most overlooked features of the Yucatan is its vast networks of underground caves or cenotes. Cenote is a Mayan word for “abyss”. There are an estimated 7000 cenotes in the region, all interconnected by undergrounds streams and the ocean. Think of them as a type of freshwater-filled limestone sinkhole. Cenote water is often very transparent, as the water comes from rain water infiltrating slowly through the ground, and therefore there is very little suspended particulate matter. Cenotes around the world attract cave divers since many of them are entrances to underlying flooded cave systems, some of which have been explored for lengths of 100 kilometers or more.”
There can also be layer of heavier, salty water that sits near the bottom. The water levels rise and fall with the tide and with rain fall. Many cenotes feature fantastic stalagmites and stalactites.
We spent a day exploring a park just down the road that features several cenotes, among the best known here due to being featured in BBC’s Planet Earth series and also on Discovery Channel. IMAX also used the location to film Journey into Amazing Caves. As a testament to the clarity of the water, in one scene you don’t know the camera is filming underwater until one of the actors suddenly appears in scuba gear.
The first cenote we visit is called the “Church” due to its cathedral-like formation. Hanging from the ceiling are hundreds of thousands active stalactites, which grow at the warp-speed pace of one inch every 100 years. A drip of water at the end of the stalactites tells you they are still forming.
We rappelled, then later zip-lined and snorkeled in the larger Tak Be Ha cenote. This cavern is remarkable for its sheer size, along with diversity of its stalagmites and stalactites.
Outside of the caves, the property is unique as it is situation on Mayan land in the middle of the jungle. There are spider monkeys, quatimundi (raccoon-like creatures we also saw in Brazil), reptiles and several species of birds. Jaguars are known to come to the cenotes to drink fresh water at night.
The park has invented a “skycycle” that takes you over the canopy of the jungle and through three cenotes. Yellowstone Park in US is reported to have acquired the technology for its visitors.