May 1 - 8
Happy Birthday to Me!
OK, I’ll sing it to myself. Karen
was supposed to fly in today, but her flight was cancelled. No reason given by TACA... as is typical.
But all was not lost. When I got to the condo we had rented at
Sunset Beach I ran into a group of people staying upstairs, who immediately
said “Oh, you must be Steve, the guy on the motorcycle whose birthday it is
today”. Word travels fast on a small
island! So they took me out to dinner and
many drinks to celebrate.
It was one of
the most spontaneous 39th birthday parties I have had. Karen arrived
the next day for a week of diving and relaxing.
The condo itself was very nice. Our friends Bill and Melanie (in Panama) had lived in this building and recommended it. It was a bit more upscale than I am used to on a motorcycle trip, but I managed to adapt!
The town of San Pedro is small and very touristy, but it does have a lot of good restaurants and bars. The main form of transportation on the island is golf cart. It made me feel like I was living in a retirement community (which in many ways it is). But it's still a fun place.
The diving was pretty good, although we’re extremely spoiled
from our years in southeast Asia. But
the Blue Hole was still fascinating.
This is a geological formation that is basically a hole in the middle of
a coral reef that goes down to about the center of the earth. We, however, only went down about 140
feet. On either side of the hole it
opens up into caverns full of stalactites and stalagmites. Also a couple of sharks. Fortunately one of the guys diving with us had a camera to record the event.
One day we went to explore the Mayan ruins that are being
excavated on the island. The excavation
site is shared with iguanas, boa constrictors, poisonous trees (called che chem
in Mayan), and many mosquitos.
The ruins are about 600 years old. They think the site was a kind of trading post. One thing of interest was that they used conch
shells extensively as a building material, and there are piles of literally
hundreds of thousands of shells.
Karen also managed to find a Mayan jawbone.
By the 8th our time on Ambergris was up. Karen headed back to Panama and I'm off to Mexico.
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