Yet another beautiful trip, motor sailing for about 5-6 hours down to Isla Cozumel. Easy easy port to get into, large harbour at San Miguel, where we anchored right beside the pirate ship already there. 🙂 We found there was another pirate ship that was used as a sunset cruise/party boat kinda thing, all lit up like a Christmas tree every evening as it travelled up and down past town, played music and partied. Good music, too! lol
San Miguel is a nice little town, approx 1 mile long and 1/2 mile wide full of all kinds of little back streets and cool things to see. We never did find the 3 hardware stores that were advertised in our book, but we did find a neat little bakery where we got Mexican croissants (same dough, same taste, very different texture) and great coffee (no such thing as lousy coffee in Mexico!) and sat and fed the pigeons. The Soriana grocery store, on Calle 8 and Avenida 30, was huge and we shopped enough to need a taxi back to the boat. lol
David and Melanie rented a motorbike to tour the island, they ended up touring by foot and thumb though cuz the bike decided to pack it in at the far end. I think they still had a pretty good day of it, though, touring around and seeing the sights.
There are ruins at the north end of the island in the midst of being restored, one having been sponsored by the National Park types and so is getting a good facelift.
Taking the dinghy back and forth to shore was very tricky as the entire length is faced by rocks/coral. There is no place really to tie up to anything so you kind of beach it and hope for the best. It didn’t seem to be a very honest spot so make sure to take your valuables, key, etc with you. In fact, the boats that were there already, the little fishing types, all had their propellers removed as an easy security measure. The easiest way we found was to either have one chauffeur back and forth, or to take the 2-way radios and call for a “taxi” ride. Wet feet (and legs and bum) were the norm as it was so much easier to walk out past the rocks to climb in or hop out.
We didn’t do much shopping other than groceries, or eating in the restaurants there. Senor Frog’s was hit mostly because they had wifi. Prices were okay there, food was most excellent and the people/atmosphere was totally bizarre, crazy, upbeat, and fun. Did I mention the margaritas? Came in a yard glass. 😀 And oh so goooood.
I think the worst part of being anchored there was the rocking. It was constant, back and forth and back and forth. It was difficult to sleep for fear of rolling off the bench and just got to be so monotonous and irritating at the same time. It must have been the currents combined with the tides, not to mention all the boats going back and forth and their wakes. But if that was the worst of it, that’s pretty darn good!
8 Jan we headed out at first light for Tulum. Approx 30-ish miles south, back on the mainland, but we knew there was a reef to get through and we wanted to hit there before dark. One thing we found on that coast with it being behind a reef in the southern part was that there is no where to run when it gets dark or bad weather. The reef had to be done in the daylight and in calm-ish waters or not done at all. We’re getting pretty good at this dodging weather stuff. 🙂
Été Infini 