Isla Mujeres

Happy New Year from the beaches of Isla Mujeres.

We got up early....but not insanely early.  No matter how you slice it, I'm not a morning person.  We were, however, out and about before the McDonald's opened.  It took us a while to hail a taxi to take us to the bus station.  We stopped at a taqueria stand and got some yummy taco's for breakfast before loading onto the bus for our hour bus ride to Cancun.

So, on the bus they play a movie.  The movie we were subjected to was "Grown Up's 2".  Can I just say that has got to be the dumbest movie I have ever seen!!  I'm sure the fact that it was all dubbed over in Spanish didn't help, but man did I ever feel like my intelligence had been highly insulted.  I was so glad when that bus ride was over.

From the bus station, we caught a taxi to the ferry for a 20 minute ferry ride over to Isla Mujeres, in English that would be the Island of Women.  I heard a couple of different theories as to how the island got its name.  One is that it was a sacred island to the Mayans where they had many idols to their Goddess, Ix Chel.  It was named Isla Mujeres when all of the idols were discovered.  The other theory was that it was an island that pirates would keep their slave women on.   Either way, it's a beautiful island.  It's pretty small and there aren't many cars, mostly people get around on golf carts.

We got to the dock and thought we'd give some coconut milk a try...non-alcoholic of course.  Not a fan of coconut milk and neither was Meow-meow.  We had the guy cut up our coconut and he added lime juice and salt to it....yeah, not a fan of that either.  Now plain old, straight up coconut.....tasty stuff.  Consequently I had the lines "you put the lime in the coconut and shake it all about" running around my head the rest of the day.

Tasting coconut milk while waiting for the ferry.

That face just cracks me up!

I didn't get any pictures of the ferry ride because the waves were too rough making the ride really bouncy.  The ferry ride was highly entertaining though.  There were three guys from Russia, I think, they sounded and looked Russian.....anyway, they were knocking back a bottle of Tequila like it was water.  The more they drank, the louder they got, and the louder they got, the funnier they thought they were.  At one point, two of them got up and staggered to the front of the ferry to do a "Titanic" pose while their friend took pictures left and right.  Both stupid and amusing at the same time.

After the ferry, we tracked down a place to rent a golf cart from and took off for a day of sun, fun, and adventure.

Riding in the golf cart.

First stop was a turtle farm.  There was a pier you could walk down to take a gander at the turtles, then there were several different pools with turtles, a building with more pools of turtles, and lastly a gift shop with a Bano and no toilet paper.....I can't begin to tell you how frustrating it is to go into a bathroom and have no toilet paper!!  And yes, I am going to harp on the bathroom thing because I found it highly annoying!!  But at least this toilet had a seat. I did notice a trend....Bathrooms that had no seat usually had toilet paper.  Bathrooms that had a seat had no toilet paper.  I guess it's too much to ask for both a seat and toilet paper....and free.  It's kind of hard to carry toilet paper and loose change around with you when you are in a bathing suit!  If I had to choose, I'd rather have a bathroom with toilet paper and no seat rather than a bathroom with a seat and no toilet paper......but enough of my bathroom woe's.....TURTLES!!

Nathan and Meow-meow outside the turtle building.

I  like the Seagull just hanging in the water.

Hello Mr. Turtle head.

The building with the turtles is an Environmentalists nightmare.   There clearly isn't enough staff to keep track of everything.  They have signs everywhere saying, "Don't touch the turtles".....but everyone was ignoring those signs and picking up the baby turtles willy nilly.   Nathan was having kittens about it and was trying to tell people to not touch them.  In America, generally there is enough staff on hand to stop people from doing that which they shouldn't be doing.  Sad part is that the majority of people there touching the turtles were......well......American.....at least they had American accents.  You could also pay money and buy turtle food, but that was a complete waste of money.  Some kid gave us his half used bag of food as we were going in and they were coming out.  Those poor turtles are so over fed that they just ignored the food.

Just goes to show, that it doesn't matter......all babies are CUTE!!

AWWWW, babies.

Cool white turtle.

After the turtle farm, we ventured south......well, I say south because of the position of the sun.....but really I had no clue what direction we were going in....for all I know we could have been going crazy!!  It was lunch time and we were feeling peckish.  We found a lovely place at the very end of the island.  It was absolutely beautiful there.  We ordered our food and waited.....and waited....and waited....and waited....and waited....we weren't in any hurry so we........waited.....and waited.....and waited......  If we had been home in America, the occasion would have required a walk out.   But island life is slow paced and we just went with the flow.   We took in the scenery and I soaked in the sun.   Neither Nathan or I felt that the occasion deserved a walk out.  We weren't in any hurry and the point was to just go with the flow and enjoy ourselves. There was an elderly couple with two dogs sitting next to us.   Meow-meow wanted to love on those dogs.  The couple took pitty and let Meow-meow pet them.  We found out that they used to live in California and they retired to and live on Isla Mujeres.

Stopping for lunch.  Meow-meow wanted to "drive".

Look at him!! So proud of himself!!  Sorry dude, 15 more years!!

See, with scenery like that, who would want to walk out!?

 I've always said, I don't like fish....and this is true.  I've never met a fish that I liked.  I'm not a fan of that "fishy" flavor or smell.  Nathan kept telling me it was because I had never eaten fresh fish and that I didn't know what good fish was having lived in Utah my whole life.  However I wasn't quite daring enough to order fish......I went with the steak.   No matter how much Nathan tried to convince me I would like real fresh fish, I wouldn't believe him.....I was dead set.....I DON'T LIKE FISH!!  I am a curious person by nature and curiosity did get the best of me and I did take a taste of Nathan's fish (yes, our food eventually came).  Let's just say I ate my words that day and leave it at that!

Waiting for our lunch.

Warm and beautiful.

Weird art sculptures that you had to pay money to go see.....we skipped that part.

Magical.

As we were waiting for our food and conversing with the older couple, another, younger couple came up to the table on our other side, sat down, and ordered their food.  They got up to take a picture and we offered to take it for them, and then they returned the favor as you can see in the above picture.  They spoke with a southern accent so naturally we asked them where they were from....Louisanna.  I told them my grandmother was born in Louisanna.  A conversation started......They asked, "where?"  And I launched into the story about how the town no longer exists, but there used to be a sign by the railroad tracks and how my grandpa used to joke to my grandma about how she was born under a railroad sign.....the town was called Shamrock....and no, they had never heard of it.  One conversation lead to another and before we knew it......we were talking Family History.

They were highly interested in Family History and so naturally we told them about the church history library, and they, of course, asked us if we were Mormon......and that's where the conversation took a  very unexpected turn.......

They are Evangelical Christians and fabulous people.  We talked with them for about three hours.  Our food arrived the same time theirs did...and they arrived a good 45 minutes after we had.  They asked us a lot of questions, and we asked them questions.  They were just as curious about us as we were about them.  We shared the gospel with them.  We shared our beliefs about families are forever.  The spirit was so strong as we talked.  It was an amazing and magical afternoon.  The amazing thing was that we were able to talk about our beliefs in such a friendly and relaxed way.  They listened to what we said, and we listened to what they said......and we had a lot of beliefs that were the same....we could see eye to eye on quite a bit.  They asked about how they have heard that we take care of each other and  I was able to share my testimony about Visiting Teaching.  We shared our testimony about eternal families.  In the end, will they go home and look up the missionaries?  I don't know, but what I do know is how strong the spirit was during our entire conversation.  Nathan got their information to help them do their family history.   As we left, both Nathan and I knew beyond doubt that our food had been delayed for a reason.  We were meant to meet that couple and talk to them, we both knew it without doubt.

After our wonderful and uplifting afternoon we took off to explore the rest of the island.   We found a cemetery and ventured in for a gander.  The soil is too rocky to bury their dead and so they bury them above ground.  It was an interesting experience.  The cemetery was very crowded with hardly any room to walk, and certainly no more room for new graves.  There were little pathways that wound in between graves....it was a bit......strange to walk in between them.

After the cemetery, it was getting around the time to return our golf cart.  We eventually found where we needed to go, returned the golf cart, and set out on foot to explore the main part of the island.  The sun was starting to set and we made our way to the beach.  I was dying to get some sunset on the beach pictures......and I was NOT disappointed!!  I took so many that I have a very hard time choosing my favorite one....because.....THEY ARE ALL MY FAVORITE!!  So, here ya go....tons of sunset, waves, and fun.

Sunset and waves.

I loved this angle.  You can  barely make out the foot indentation and then that little blob of sand with the sunset and waves in the background.  Sometimes my photography surprises me.

If someone held a gun to my head and MADE me choose my favorite picture....this one probably would be it.

Or maybe this one would.....

Well.....this one too

Just kidding...this one TOTALLY would win.  Why, you ask?  Because I'm in it silly!  But all joking aside, the one with my footprint would probably be my favorite.

Foot prints in the sand...specifically, my foot prints in the sand.  Very 3D looking.

 So I got the brilliant idea to write Happy New Year 2015 in the sand.  I tried once and the waves washed it away.  I managed to write it again and then took a sequence of pictures as the waves washed it all away.  Enjoy.

I could live here.

Nathan and Meow-meow chilling in a beach chair while I went camera crazy on the beach.

Me and Meow-meow.

Love this one too.

Nathan taking a picture of me taking a picture of the sunset.

Nathan's sunset beach picture from his beach chair perspective.

After the sun had successfully sunk, we hunted down some food.  We had completely forgot that it was January 1st until we came across a likely place that had FOOTBALL on!!  It was the Rose Bowl and so we ventured in to eat and watch some football.   Since I decided that real fish is okay, I felt adventurous and decided to try the steak and lobster......and proved myself right.....I don't like seafood.  The fish from lunch was surprisingly amazing and delicious....the lobster........yeah lets just say I'm not a fan and leave it there.  The steak was amazing though!  You can never go wrong with a nice, juicy chunk of beef.

So, while we were watching the Rose Bowl, the most ludicrous commercial came on.  I just sat there in shock that they showed it.   Set the scene......a snowy mountain range with people out driving the high, HIGH, rocky, steep, mountains in a Jeep.  They start an avalanche.  The Jeep zooms down the steep rocky slopes out running the avalanche.  But then, at the last minute, the avalanche overtakes the Jeep, burying it under mounds of snow.   But the Jeep shakes it off and comes out completely unscathed.  I just about died laughing.  There's no way they would every DREAM of showing a commercial like that to us Utahn's, they'd get laughed out of the state!!  I was just amazed at the advertising to people who have never seen a single flake of snow in their lives!!  I can just imagine the grand images of snow and Jeeps they have floating around their heads.  I was highly entertained by that.

As we were finishing our meal, a very boisterous Italian lady came up to our table to adore Meow-meow and bask in his glorious white skin and red hair.  She fawned over him just like everyone else had done the whole vacation and he ate up the attention just like he had for the whole vacation.   But not only was she boisterous, but she was Italian opinionated too.   We learned that she lived on the island and apparently had quite a few cats at home as she kept talking about how she needed to get home to take care of them all.  She also mentioned a few dogs too.  Now, I love cats, but there is a line....you can have too many of them.  It was an interesting experience and we were happy when she decided it was time to go home to her precious babies.

We would have loved to have stayed and finished the game, but we had a 20 minute ferry ride and an hour bus ride ahead of us and we wanted to be home in time to get a good rest since we would have to get up early for our trip to Chichen Itza....so we forced ourselves to leave at half time.  Which was sad because we later heard that the second half was fun. Oh well!!

The bus ride from Cancun back to Playa del Carmen was weird and hilarious at the same time.  They had another movie on and thank goodness it wasn't "Grown-up's 2".  I don't know what the movie was called as we came in around the middle of the movie.  It was all in Spanish so I have no clue what they were saying.  It was a movie about this famous chef and his friend who is a chef but I think was his sioux chef?  They had a cooking show and a restaurant.  One minute they were the best of friends and the next fighting over cooking styles?  They had some competition that took over their restaurant and changed it to some Japanese place?  They decided to spy and dressed up in tradidtional Japanese clothes and stole some food to sample and find out secret ingredients to?   I have no clue what was going on in the movie but found it highly entertaining all the same.  I would be curious to find out the name of the movie and watch it in English.

From the bus station, we caught another taxi to our hotel and settled down for the night.  And Chichen Itza will just have to be another story for another day........