Today I learned how to open a beer on a metal bench, because that’s what you do when you are at the bus station waiting for the airport bus. I didn’t even get a strange look for doing it. Haha.
It’s been an eventful and entertaining stay on the island and I feel like I’m leaving too soon. I don’t think you can leave Cozumel without looking at what houses are selling for.
I saw an eagle ray as big as my living room when I went scuba diving – it’s “wings” cutting through a hard current like butter. It was magnificent. I also saw a moray eel that – and I’m not exaggerating – looked like a baby dragon. At least twice my size and hanging out under a ledge away from the current – this beast just sat there opening and closing its mouth as it watched us drift by, and I was super grateful the current was pulling us away from it instead of towards it. Haha. Yeah, they will bite you if you do something stupid. A huge purple crab (I mean like the size of a beanbag chair), some nurse sharks, and more brilliant fish than I can name or count made it one of my best diving days ever. If you can get past the whole claustrophobia thing and the realization that your life depends on the thing in your mouth, I highly recommend it.
I got sick while I was here and needed to go to the doctor. But my friend took me to a doctor away from the tourist zone, and my visit was absolutely FREE. Three prescriptions with 15-day doses cost me about $14. Can you imagine? Compare that to a little box of anti-nausea pills I picked up at a pharmacy in the tourist area – that alone was $13. Madness. You definitely need some Spanish for the place I went, so either learn some, buy a translator, or make a friend. Oh yeah, and have that friend transcribe the prescription instructions. Haha. I may or may not have been taking twice the dose the lady prescribed. Better than half, I guess.
This week I also learned that I’m not a bad salsa dancer, there is no such thing as being able to skip deodorant here, and my Spanish is NOT actually better when I drink tequila.
Here is the thing about Mexico… it’s a biiiiiiig country, and issues in one area can be a lifetime away from other parts. Mexico has had some real issues. But so have Chicago and Washington D.C. But that doesn’t make everywhere treacherous. Take Cozumel, for example. It is no doubt one of the safest places in Mexico, second only to Isla Mujeres. Here, tourists are the lifeblood of their existence, and Cozumelians do it very well. There is a “tourist zone” along the waterfront with everything you expect to find there, but there are many neighborhoods nearby with local cantinas and lunch counters that are as real as Mexico gets. And, at least in my experience, tourists are safe venturing well outside of that tourism area. People are sincerely friendly. Crime is scarce. The music is blaring. And the beer is oh, so cheap. I absolutely love this place. And if a free scooter ride to a cantina, some fun salsa lessons, and a neighborhood cat that can’t live without me are any indication, I think it loves me back.
