Dia Tres

On Monday we had scheduled to go on a snorkeling adventure--something we were both super excited for.  The boat wasn't scheduled to pick us up until around 1:00, so we leisurely got out of bed, ate breakfast at the resort, and made our way downtown to do a little bit of exploring beforehand.

Downtown Cozumel is about what you would imagine a touristy Mexican marketplace to be.  There are tons of restaurants, brightly colored sombreros, and worthless nicknacks.  Urgh.  I am so bad at being a Mexican tourist shopper.  I can't handle the pressure of someone urging me to look at what they are selling and then trying to get me to buy it.  I am more of a window shopper and I don't like someone standing over my shoulder telling me they are giving me a "special Honeymoon discount."

I think the amount of sales pressure we experienced was doubled by the fact that we were in Mexico during the slow season and were some of the only tourists walking down the vendor-packed streets.  This made me only want to walk more quickly to avoid eye contact and resulted in me not getting to look at much.

We made the mistake of going into one shop where a man had hand painted designs onto some old tree bark.  It was pretty cool, really, but he was asking $35 for them.  We said no thank you and turned to head out of the shop.

"My friends, I sell you this for special price, $20, just for you."

I stared.  Why would he drop the price so quickly?  Did he need money that badly?  Did he have children to feed?  Were we his only customers today?  "No...we have a boat to catch, I'm sorry..." I started.

"I'll wrap it in plastic for you, my friends, it is almost half price.  Which one you like best?"

I liked the one with the blue birds on it best, but I was too nervous to point that out.  I looked at Nathan in desperation.

"I'm sorry," Nathan said.  "We're just not interested."

"Okay," said the shop vendor, "How much do you want to pay?"

What?  How much did we want to pay? At that moment I didn't want to pay $5 for his stupid tree bark, I just wanted to get the heck out of the shop. I grabbed Nathan by the arm, murmured some variation of "Sorry," and rushed down the street.

Our downtown adventure was redeemed slightly by an ice cream vendor with a trained parrot.  After several assurances of "No poop, no poop," the vendor convinced us to do a couple tricks with the bird.  First we each fed the parrot a sunflower seed with our mouths, and then we put the parrot on our heads.  It was very exciting.  We bought some ice cream from him which we thought was vanilla but tasted either like really bad vanilla or some kind of banana. 

...

The snorkeling expedition was...okay.  To be honest, we were a little disappointed by the lack of sea life we saw.  The boat was advertised as a Party Boat (free drinks and food and music), and would take us to two of the best snorkeling sites along the island.  Frankly, all I remember seeing were some common fish and scattered coral.   The boat took us out in deep waters so we were pretty far away from what sea life there was. 

After we had snorkeled for about an hour at each of the two locations, the boat took us to a private beach where they served us hamburgers and drinks.  The beach had comfy chairs, water toys, and ...iguanas?  

While we were eating our meal, an iguana lumbered out of the foliage toward our table.  Nathan and I had very different reactions to this.  Mine was to stand up and squeal.  Nathan's was to feed it potato salad.  Which it ate, quite contemplatively.