We spent our Honeymoon in Cozumel, Mexico.

It was beautiful, hot, and interesting, and we had lots of fun.

Our first five nights were spent at Sol Cabañas del Caribe, a quiet little hotel with an excellent restaurant and very friendly and courteous staff. They helped us arrange to rent a scooter for a day and drive around the island. That was fun. The whole island is only 30 miles long, so we went to San Miguel, the main town, then East to the less developed side of the island, then around the South tip of the island. On our way we stopped at San Gervasio, the ruins of a Maya town and Temple to their fertility goddess. We saw our first big Iguanas there. For some reason it had never occurred to me that iguanas climb trees.

The Eastern road travels right along the seashore, and is really lovely. Some people compared the way the waves crash and come up in blowholes to what you might see in Hawaii. We bought lots of souvenirs to the point where our little basket on the moped was full, as was my shoulder bag, and we topped off the evening with a wonderful dinner at La Mission, where musicians played us a Honeymoon song and I translated the Spanish to Bill as they sang.

Our second full day there we went snorkeling in the reefs, and that was wonderful too and Bill took a roll of underwater photos -lots of starfish and other fish and coral and stuff! It's really neat to swim in a school of fish. We saw Baracuda and trigger fish and grouper and parrot fish, and lots of others. The Baracuda always stayed a distance away, but the others would come pretty close! And we saw a lobster and a sea turtle and a sting ray and anemones and all that.

We also got really sunburned. We didn't look burned but we could feel it, so we skipped the boat ride home and went to see the Mummy Returns in English with spanish subtitles. Then we bought goop for sunburned skin and barres de granola and lots of water at a supermercado and went home to have dinner in our rooms and commence two days of sleeping, reading Sandman comics, running out of Noxema, and (for me) writing in my journal about the week before the wedding. We only got dressed for lunch and dinner and considered it a big improvement when we could sit out on the balcony with our strawberry daquiris without being too hurt by the chairs.

Our balcony also had a hammock, which was nice, and our room was lovely -- and no TV and no phone, which was part of why we picked that hotel. The maid knew how to make towels into swans and kleenex into flowers and everyone was happy to help me practice my spanish. The restaurant was right onshore with a patio overlooking the water. You could sit there and watch the crabs on the rocks and throw rolls to the fish. You know that turquoise color you see the water in pictures? It really is that color.

It was good in a way we got burned, 'cause it made me settle down and take it easy for a while. But this is our advice for snorklers: wear a long shirt. Actually, my shoulders had Banana Boat 50 on them and didn't get burned, but that was the only sunscreen we had that seemed to keep its effectiveness all day, in and out of the water.

On Sunday, one week after the wedding, we switched from our lovely quiet hotel with a real key on a chain one of us wore around our neck to its sister hotel, the Paradisus, where we had a 7th-floor room in the "Maya Tower" that you accessed with an electronic keycard, and we wore bracelets 'cause it was all-inclusive. All you can eat and drink with three bars and three restaurants, plus a game room and water sports and two pools. One of the bars fronted to a pool. You could sit in the pool and be at the bar, if you liked.

I read two romance novels off their freebie shelf, reading the good parts to Bill. We watched cable in the chilly air-conditioned room, took an afternoon trip to Chakanab park (beaches, a lagoon, a botanical garden, a museum, and some very large stone artifacts from different cultures. Oh, and some cute cats who begged some of my mexican-style octopus lunch off me), went kayaking, sat on the patio a lot, and learned that the buffet was mediocre but if you went to the people in Chefs hats you could get some really good food. We ate a lot of guacamole and Bill had a lot of margueritas.

At resorts like that they serve a lot of drinks called things like "Bahama Mama" that basically taste like punch. They also had good sangria though. We kept trying things we didn't recognize.

The beaches there had little sand crabs you could only catch sight of when they moved, and hermit crabs, which are easy to track in the sand once you know what to look for. The sky was pretty clear, though Cancun was fairly bright to the North across the water. Our last couple days there, the sun was almost full.

Our final day we actually spent mostly off the Island - we bought a day trip over to the Yucatan Peninsula to go to the ruins at Tulum and the river resort called Xel-Ha. Took the Ferry over to Playa Del Carmen and then a bus to Tulum. It was very hot, but it is a lovely place- a walled city atop cliffs overlooking very pretty water. The Maya were lucking to have a peninsula that is full of underwater rivers and freshwater springs (as is Cozumel). We heard about how the Maya sun god descended into the underworld each night and took the form of a jaguar to fight his way back to the other side so he could come up the next day. We saw temples of the wind and sun gods.

Xel-ha was similar to our resort hotel -you get a bracelet and your option of snack bar/grill, buffet restaurant, or sit-down place. We spent a little time watching the dolphins practice their tricks and then went deep along the river, to put all our clothes in a bag and trade it for some snorkeling gear in an exchanged that would be reversed once we snorkled down to where the river opened out into the sea. There are special kinds of fish that live in slightly brackish water, and some of them get very big! We also saw little tiny crabs that could walk upside down on rocks by clinging to moss, and I got slightly dehydrated, but, you know, I got better.

Another note for snorkelers: nobody drinks tap water in Quintana Roo (the state of mexico we were in), so there are no water fountains. Once we snorkeled for two hours and got out on the other side of the river I had to wait until we crossed the floating bridge and walked back down the river to the nearest restaurant before I could get a bottle of water. Thankfully, they just wrote down my bracelet number and that was no problem.

That whole day trip was definitely worth it, and we still had an evening to go back to La Mission for dinner and get in some last-minute souvenir shopping. (a cool part of Cozumel? people on the street will give you cards for free drinks to draw you into restaraunts. The amazing part to us is that these are just hand-written cards. "two free drinks with dinner. --Luis" And that works.)

We were really glad we went. Bill kept talking about retiring there or at least scheduling board meetings there in some possible future when he has his own company. We got enough junk to open our own tourist shop, and generally all the people were really friendly, especially when they found out I could understand their spanish (mostly I could, anyway).

The only people who jerk you around on Cozumel are, some of the taxi drivers, they don't have change. You know this is a puposeful stiff, 'cause c'mon! you're a taxi driver, the fare is 34 pesos, and you have no change for two 20-peso notes? But lots of the tazi drivers were perfectly cool. (you have to either rent a vehicle or take a taxi or walk, 'cause the taxi union makes sure there are no buses on the island, we were told.)

People who stopped there on Cruises told us they were not having fun on their cruises and we did it the better way. People who had been to Cancun talked about Cozumel being nicer, so it seems we made a good choice. certainly the shopkeepers were more polite and reasonable than at Tulum, where the venders were very agressive and you really noticed signs of poverty. One vendor lies to me that an obviously cast mask is carved limestone and then wants $65 for it (U.S.). When I say too expensive, he goes down to $50. When I walk away, he chases me with two of the things I liked, sells me one for $20. You shouldn't have to perform a soap opera to buy souvenirs at what is still for sure a very high profit for the vendor. When buying something for less than a third of the asking price feels like a tolerable price rather than a deal, that's extreme to me.

So.. yeah, we had a really nice time and would go there again. And now, two weeks later, our backs are almost healed from being burned. if we get skin cancer 20 years down the line, we'll know why. :P

And we learned something! if you ever come visit, remind us and we'll make your towels into Swans. I made home-made tostada chips and Yucatecan lime soup last week, so now I know how to do that too.

All our loot is spread out in the living room of our new house, and life is good.