Honeymoon Post: Thursday

April has promised me (Nathan) copious amounts of sex if I post again on her blog, so I guess I can manage to talk about Thursday.

Over the course of our stay in Cozumel, we had heard a lot about the national wildlife park called "Chankanaab." This park had snorkeling, animal shows, and was basically the Mexican equivalent of SeaWorld. Our taxi drivers even advertised it saying that we could get a free t-shirt if we paid $1 extra. With all the hype, we decided to give it a shot.

We took a 10 minute taxi ride to Chankanaab late Thursday morning and asked the ticket office about the t-shirt deal. Apparently, this was a special "taxi promotion" and we needed to know the number of the taxi car we took to the park in order to get the t-shirt. None of our drivers had mentioned this to us and we had no idea what our taxi number was, but the people selling the tickets let us have deal anyway. They gave us a little ticket booklet which had coupons for free drinks, free t-shirts, and discounts on diving equipment and other things. We picked up our free t-shirts from the store on the way into the park. They handed us both a medium sized shirt that looked like it had been designed by a kindergarten teacher. April asked if they had a small. They said, "No."

We entered the park 15 minutes before a sea lion show. The man advertising the show told us that it would start in one "Mexican minute." Based on the "Mexican sharks" (common fish) and "Mexican eagles" (regular brown sea birds) that the waiters had pointed out to us at the resort, I figured that we would be waiting for a bit.

The benches began to fill with people and the show did eventually start. I was surprised that the show was primarily in Spanish with a sprinkling of unintelligible English. We were still able to enjoy the show and saw three sea lions of various ages do various tricks. The tricks were actually quite amusing and the sea lions appeared to be quite well trained. The most humorous trick involved a sea lion lip-syncing to a bluesy song.

After the show, we decided to go to the snorkeling area to make up for our disappointing trip on Monday. There we found a beach with many restaurants and several stands with snorkeling equipment. We passed two stands who offered to rent us equipment for two hours for $15/person. At the third stand, a man came and told us he would give us equipment for the day and a locker for $10/person. We readily agreed to keep the special price a secret and were off snorkeling a few moments later.

We were much happier with our snorkeling experience at Chankanaab and saw hundreds of beautiful fish and all sorts of other wild life. April found a squid that we were able to get quite close to and I found a stingray at the ocean bottom. We also saw a school of silver fish that were grouped together and acted as one organism (like in Finding Nemo).

The creepiest thing we saw while snorkeling was the anorexic Jesus statue. April refused to get close to the thing and I saw no reason to. There were other statues and things in the water which were marked by buoys. These included a fake cannon and star fish queen (or strange virgin Mary?).

We spent the rest of the time on the beach reading and eating food. I asked for carne asada fries, a delicacy I had learned about in New Mexico, and thoroughly confused the waiter with my request. He was a good sport though and managed to get my order to the cook who did a pretty good job.

We left the park when it was closing. On the way out, we stopped by the store where we got the t-shirts and were able to trade in our coupons for free cokes. April started looking at the jewelry and found a necklace pendant that she really liked. I was able to haggle and get a third off the price. After that, we took a taxi home and relaxed for the rest of the day.