L2O2

It is so, so nice to be on holiday and do nothing! Nada, zip, sfa, not! But there are observations to be made and pictures to be taken. Having said a sad good-bye to Mark and Jean, we are now on our own. But we are in the relax mode until Lawrie gets beyond the white pasty colour of our Canadian winter.

Then we will find a pile of ancient rocks to go see, maybe Ek Balam, Chichen Itza or Coba, we aren’t decided yet. We also have an evening at Playa del Carmen’s 5th Avenue to do. And I think we also want to go to a Cenote.

Okay, this last paragraph was our thinking yesterday morning when I started to write this post. However, a good 24 hours can make a difference, especially when your names are Lynn and Lawrie. We are notorious for changing our minds as you may know. In this case we have made some very conscious decisions. And this is how it went. (You may think we should be certified too)

So Friday afternoon we wandered out to the 307 (the highway to Cancun and everything in between) and picked up the colectivo (local bus that takes about a dozen people, no particular pickup or drop-off locations, just wave them down and speak up when you want off) to get to Playa del Carmen. We were bound for the 5th Avenue pedestrian mall and looking for information about taking a bigger bus to some of the more major centres around the Yucatan Peninsula. We also had investigated a car rental and wondered what the addresses were of those listed on the internet. So a little shopping and a little investigation work. All good.

So we were successful getting to Playa del Carmen and walking to the 5th Avenue mall. In the process of wandering around taking in the sites we were more or less offered a rental car for an amazing price. The hitch (of course there are hitches, and we do know that nothing comes without a price) is that there is a hotel that is new that is having a promotion. An hour of our time to tour the hotel (just five minutes away) and we could have a rental car with air conditioning for 68 US for three days. Not a price to be sneezed at, the fellow is friendly, convincing, and seems to have fun helping us decide which of the Mayan ruins we should really go see while we have our rental car for three days. I ask the question, is this a time share promotion? I’m told that it is not. So we agree to get picked up at 9 am tomorrow in Akumal. We are going for breakfast and a tour.

Of course this isn’t strictly speaking a time share, but how does fractal ownership, or membership sound? Same difference, name slightly changed. But the breakfast was good, the hotel nice as ocean side hotels should be (they do occupy some wonderful real estate so they better make it nice) and we came away without spending a penny. We also came away without our rental car. We listened for almost three hours, we endured and enjoyed the company of Angelo (the guy on the street), Roseanne (the lady who made sure we had the right credentials, as in a major credit card, picture id to ensure we were who we said we were), Alex (the poor fellow who was supposed to convince us that this was a good thing to do), and then four other dudes who were supposed to convince us when Alex didn’t. What it really meant for us was a confirmation that this trip will likely be our last vacation that we fly to frivolously. We really don’t want to be part of a society that doesn’t think anything of jumping on an airplane when the evidence says we are destroying the planet doing so. Yes, there are many things we are continuing to do now that are contributing to the problem. We are going to work at stopping doing these things as best we can. It is a process too. Not buying into making Mexico our yearly holiday place and not driving our own rental car around the countryside is a start. So we got a colectivo back today to Akumal, had a second delicious meal at the very Mexican place just outside the Super Chomak (grocery store) and then wandered back to Luna Azul, our modest but very comfortable home here. We are a bit stunned at being so decisive in our decision making, but know it was very much the right choice.

We are also now the happy owners of 4 acres and a modest 750 square foot house in Saskatchewan and look forward to a major experiment trying to grow as much of our own food as we can using a permaculture model. Why shouldn’t life be an experiment? We don’t think to rule out going to Yarrow, but not just yet as we see it. That being said, we do change our minds frequently and without warning, so stay tuned!

In the meantime, we do plan on enjoying this trip to Mexico and so here are a few pictures of things found interesting!