Well, I mentioned in an earlier post that in the middle of the week, we had a lot of rain. For three days, it rained quite a bit, especially in the mornings. It by no means dampened our good time (except in the literal sense), but it turns out it did have a negative impact on the whale shark excursion. The rains had cooled the ocean temperature enough to drive the plankton to a lower depth, so we were told. The plankton being the food for the whale sharks, they had followed... out of snorkel range. We were told that our excursion had been canceled, as they could offer no guarantee of seeing any whale sharks.
So we needed a Plan B.
It started out as more time at the pool. I'm going to wedge in here a mention of the jacuzzi, not because we used it that day, but because I was amused (more than I should have been) by the nearby sign, and this is my last chance to show it:
It seems that no two languages presented the same information in the same way. There were different numbers of bullet points, a different order or information, some information missing in one language and present in another, typos aplenty, and what seemed like questionable phrasing to those of us with a little German and French familiarity.
But we decided we weren't going to spend the whole day at the pool. So it became a "shopping day." We started off with a lunch at a restaurant recommended to us by our dive master from the first three days. It was located right on the beach, a short cab ride from the hotel. The food was indeed delicious. I had a memorable mahi-mahi absolutely drenched in an amazing garlic sauce. But the highlight of the lunch was the miscommunication. A platter for three people was mistaken for a platter of three selections, so my friend ended up ordering a preposterous amount of food.
After lunch, we went to a nearby area of pedestrian streets lined with various shops. We picked up souvenirs for ourselves and some folks back home: t-shirts, Mayan calendars, and other various items.
I learned that either Mexicans really like Alien and Predator, or (more likely) American tourists really like to spend money on Alien and Predator. It seemed like every other shop had some carvings of both for sale:
And sometimes the depictions were quite bizarre:
Coming back from the shops, we came upon a park where a very tall pole had been set up. A group of five acrobats were performing:
Four of them spun around in a circle for a while, then stopped to allow a fifth to climb up to the center. That one simultaneously played a tiny whistle and a small drum, building up tension to...
...we never found out. We stayed watching these acrobats for five to ten minutes, but they never did anything more than sit on top of the pole before we all got bored and left. Mind you, I would not have wanted to do anything more extreme than that myself, but from a group of acrobats, it definitely had an "and now what?" feeling.
There was more time at the pool when we got back to the hotel. In fact, it turned out that all this outdoor time gave me a sunburn at long last, though I'd managed to avoid it for the entire trip with careful sunscreen use.
We capped the night at the notoriously slow Italian restaurant at our hotel, which was slower than ever on this last night. Some guy at another table got into a giant yelling match in Spanish with the maitre d', which seemed to be about some other table who'd arrived after him getting their food before him. We tried to play it nice by contrast, but still ended up waiting 20 minutes to order, 40 minutes for soup, and another 40 minutes for entrees, before finally bailing on dessert.
So in all, perhaps not the best day for our final day of the trip. But still... what a trip overall! Playa del Carmen, with my many scuba adventures (and misadventures), as well as my visit the the ruins of Ek Balam and two very different excursions to two very different cenotes... it's a vacation that I'll remember fondly for a long time.
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