2017 - 2018:  Punta Mita Mexico to Quetzaltenango Guatemala

Dec 27, 2017.  Casa Del Mar, Isla Mujeres, Quintana Roo

Breakfast of coconut french toast at Mango Cafe.  Then two SCUBA dives, one through the amazing underwater sculpture garden MUSA (Museo Subaquático de Arte), with its several hundred full-sized statues of actual people, slowly becoming encrusted with undersea life: the other at a reef very close by: many large schools of fish, some extremely tame big silver angel fish (I could come within inches of them), crabs, eels, scorpion fish - I wasn’t expecting it to be this good.  Great visibility, too.

Dec 28, 2017.  Hotel Sac Be, Cobá, Quintana Roo

• Bus to Tulum to see the ruins: very nice, small box-like temples scattered amongst hillocks and grassy fields, some overlooking the sea, but truly ridiculous crowds.  Another bus to Cobá, which let me off right beside the lovely lake just as the sun was going down.  Settled down at a lakeside table at La Pirámide restaurant and ordered the local specialty, cochinita pibil (tender achiote-flavored pork - so good!). Then a tour bus pulled up and parked between me and my view.  And once its passengers debarked to my restaurant, an infernal cacaphony of drums, flutes, and horns began, accompanying a dancer dressed as a Mayan warrior.  Really awful.  I wonder what the tourists would have said if they were asked their opinions.  I took a walk part-way around the lake, and lo and behold, the same noise machine was howling away at another restaurant for the listening pleasure of another bus load of tourists.  The good news is that my hotel is far from both restaurants.

• Not sure where I’ll end up tomorrow.  It all depends on how long I stay in Cobá, and whether I can make connections and a hotel reservation at any of the several possibilities further south.