Friday July 1
We got up about 9 and decided to hang out around the house since we were pretty wiped from traveling. We went to the beach behind the house and snorkeled around and just relaxed. We decided to come in for a late lunch and the guys decided to go to the MEGA (grocery) really quickly for some supplies. Amanda and I lounged around the house while we waited on them. Two and a half hours later the guys returned with their provisions. We wondered what took them so long and finally one of the guys cracked and let us know that the car wouldn’t start when they tried to get back in the car after the MEGA trip. That night we prepared a delicious meal and figured out that frying flour tortillas in oil is an absolutely delicious thing to do. We made grilled salmon and made some kind of fish taco thing with that and some lettuce and onions. We decided to make a trip back to downton Cozumel to get some gas. We returned and went fast asleep.

Saturday July 2
We woke up an hour earlier today and decided to go to Chankanaab, which is a national park about 2 miles from our house. There you can snorkel right off the beach, swim with dolphins, get a massage, or walk through the lagoons and botanical gardens. We got there pretty early and it wasn’t too crowded. When we walked in, there was a baby black jaguar tied to a table that you could get your picture taken with. The guy said they are endangered, but we did not get a picture of him. He was all black but you could still see the spots on his fur--something we did not know about, so that was really cool. Afterward, we went and found chairs on the beach and began our snorkeling adventure. This was awesome because the water was not murky like the beach at our house and it was about 30 feet deep. While our heads were under water we saw some sergeant majors, blue chromis, stoplight parrotfish, sea fans and bicolored angelfish--yes I looked all of these up. We saw one giant orange fish that looked like the Finding Nemo fish but those are normally about the size of your fist, this one was the size of my torso. It was outrageously beautiful and I tried to google it to figure out what it was, but I haven’t done that yet. We hung out around that beach for a while and then decided to head in town again. It’s very hot here. Once we got in town, we wanted to try to find some local sea food at a small vendor instead of supporting the MEGA, which is like a Wal-Mart. We found this really cool market that seemed like it was just closing--a father and son provided us the food at the first stop, they were very reserved, but pleasant. We got about a pound and a half of shrimp and two snappers for around 200 pesos, about $20 USD. The fish was fresh, caught just the other day of the Yucatan and shipped down to be sold today. At another vender, there was a really nice lady who provided us 4 mangos, 4 limes, 8 habernero peppers (spicy!), 2 tomatoes and one onion all for 30 pesos, $3 USD. That’s a STEAL!!! Now here we are preparing dinner and we are going to the eastern side of the beach after dinner to hang out.


Curt and Kris with the snapper