Today is my last full day in Central America (for now anyway). I´m ensconced in an air conditioned internet cafe in the glorious Playa de Carmen, on the coast of Mexico. We arrived late last night after 13 odd hours of travelling. It´s stinking hot outside, so I´m making the most of the air conditioning in here.
Caye Caulker was amazing. A few of us went on an all day snorkelling expedition on Thursday. We were taken on a small boat out to four dive locations. At the first, we had a free snorkel over some corals and saw some beautiful fish, including some pretty blue ones with electric blue spots. The second dive was a guided dive and we found a manatee!! Manatees are very rare, there are only a few thousand left in the wild and due to low birth rates and high mortality, they´re expected to be extinct in 15 years. We saw its tail first. It was about 10 metres away from us. Ever so slowly, it turned to face us. It looked at us for a while, then decided to swim off. I always thought sea cows were ugly, but it was so gracious that it was beautiful.
The third dive spot was over a wrecked ship. The fourth was in shark and ray alley. Basically, you usually see either sharks or rays because they don´t like to be near one another. We saw rays. There were about 20 of them swimming in the water beneath the boat. I was a bit scared to swim with them, given the whole Steve Irwin thing. But I did get in. It was teh scariest thing I´ve ever done. I´d be looking at a pack of them through the snorkel, then suddenly one would pass directly beneath me, a full 1.5 to 2 metres. If the decided to flick that tail up quickly, I would have been a goner. Rays 2, Australians nil. I was very happy to get out of the water and go home!
Yesterday we left Caye Caulker at 7 am. We caught a water taxi, taxi, and bus to the border, then our bus drove off an left us. Our guide Paul found us another bus, but he said that someone should stay with the bags at all times because he didn´t knoe whether the guys were trust worthy. A few of us went off for lunch (some of hte best tacos I´ve had on this trip), and when we got back Paul was storming around yelling ´fuck, fuck, all the bags have gone, the bastards!´It turns out that the driver had locked the bags into a compartment so that they wouldn´t get stolen!
We arrived in Playa de Carmen about 8.30 last night, in time for a late dinner.
Today I have a lazy day of emailing, shopping and postcard writing before I head off to Cancun sometime this afternoon. It´s only a one hour trip from here. Tomorrow morning I´m off to Vancouver for the second part of the holiday.
A final note from Central America: if you ever make it to Caye Caulker, seek out the cake man and get one of his chocolate cakes with coconut icing. You will not regret it!!
