Friday, January 24, 2025

Riviera Maya - Day 4 - Just Chill'n

[Composed 11/30/2024]

After two long days with early starts, Shira and I were looking forward to a chill day at the resort. We started by enjoying our resort's complimentary breakfast. I sort of hoped that breakfast would be underwhelming, as we'd skipped it the last two mornings.

Alas, it was awesome. There was a wide selection of food choices, all of it seemingly fresh. Service was great, with a server hovering nearby to top-off my morning tea. Just the ambiance of the breezy, open air seating felt like an ad for a tropical vacation.

Finishing breakfast, we were a bit surprised to get a bill. Undeterred, we figured this was purely administrative, and that ultimately it would be credited. As we made our way from the restaurant we found ourselves confused: a short walk from where we had just eaten was another restaurant, but this one bustling with people. Unlike the quaint vibe we'd just enjoyed, this was a large buffet with a typical cafeteria feel to it.

In that moment, we both laughed and cringed: had we just eaten at one of the resort's paid breakfasts? Doing so would forgo, for a 3rd day, the meal included with our stay.

Later in the evening we got to the bottom of the mystery: our breakfast spot was a restaurant that's normally closed mornings. The resort opens it as overflow when needed. The smaller location may have seemed more upscale than the main dining area, but it was still the same included buffet. Score one to the Fairmont for offering a luxury experience without an extra fee.

From breakfast, we made our way down to the resort's beach. Here we splashed in the water, took a nice stroll, attempted some awkward stand-up paddle boarding and ultimately found ourselves lounging under an umbrella. We aren't really beach people, but it was a delightfully relaxing morning. Itching for an adventure I nudged Shira into signing us up for an afternoon snorkeling excursion.

We made our way back to our room for lunch. While noshing on our balcony we had a surprising animal sighting: a half dozen fuzzy critters were foraging on the golf course in view. A foursome of golfers were unimpressed with the cute interlopers, and tried their best to shoo them off the course. I can't recall seeing such significant creatures and having no idea what species I was looking at.

According to Google, the fuzzy invaders were a band of coati (or maybe the preferred term is coatimundi?). These are a cousin of the raccoon, but unlike raccoons, are active during the day. They organize themselves into groups of adult females and children, with the males remaining solitary (insert joke about male coati's being the Lone Wolves of the animal kingdom.)

To me, they were a group of stuffed animals come to life. If I were a writer at Pixar, by the time the encounter was over, I'd have had half a screen play written detailing the band's adventures.

After lunch we made our way back to the beach for our snorkeling excursion. The experience consisted of Shira, myself, a guide and two other tourists taking a 20 minute mini-catamaran ride out to a small reef. Here, we splashed into the water and paddled behind the guide as he pointed out various fish, coral and other features in the area. After about 45 minutes in the water, we dragged ourselves back onto the boat and made the return trip home.

If you were an experienced diver or snorkeler, the experience might have been underwhelming: the boat trip was relatively short, the reef was not quite as teaming with fish and coral as other locations, and species quantity was limited.

And yet, from my perspective, the experience was top notch. It was scaled just right for a land-lover who's far more comfortable traipsing through the jungle then paddling in the sea. The guide put everyone, including and especially myself, at ease. The schools of fish and coral we saw may not have been exotic, but they were colorful and diverse. At one point, the guide got our attention and pointed to what appeared to be bland rock on the seafloor. He then swam up and disturbed the "rock", and like magic it came to life and swam away. I believe he was showing us a rockfish and its next level camouflage.

Oddly, our guide preferred to explore the area without using a snorkel. He just wore a mask, and like the rest of us, a PFD. When he wanted to take a breath, he casually rolled to his side and took in some air and rolled back. I tried the technique and found it far more awkward than using a snorkel, but I appreciated seeing an alternate technique.

One hiccup in the experience was that the valve in the bottom of my snorkel was loose and would frequently let in sea water. I made do with the setup, as I didn't have any other choice. However, I found it ironic that the last time we snorkeled in Mexico I also had a leaky snorkel. I promised myself then that I'd never get into the water again without testing the equipment. I of course broke this rule, and suffered the consequences. OK, so *next time* I won't snorkel without first checking the gear. Promise.

For dinner, Shira and I were a bit stumped. The resort has a number of upscale choices, but none of them were particularly appealing given our veggie leanings. We'd already had lunch in the room, so staying in felt underwhelming. As we considered heading to Playa del Carmen, Shira had an idea: what if we went out for Thai? I mean, that's what we would have done back in DC.

A quick Google search turned up Thai Dish Restaurant. The menu looked good, so off we went. On more than one occasion, Shira and I have arrived at a restauarant that didn't live up to its website's promise. But not so, tonight.

The restaurant was small, but brightly lit and a good distance from the touristy part of town we'd previously explored. The place seemed busy, which was a good sign. We opted to sit at their only outdoor table, positioned on the sidewalk right in front of the entrance. It felt wonderfully romantic. Especially, if you ignored the shuttered buildings around us, and the odd discount store across the street.

After perusing the menu, the owner came out and apologized. They'd had a big influx of delivery orders come in, and it would be another 20 minutes before they'd get us our food. This turned out to be a good thing, as we'd past a bakery on our way to the restaurant and this gave us the perfect opportunity to explore it.

We entered the small bakery, La Espiga and found a lone clerk manning the quiet shop. Eyeing the beautiful deserts, Shira turned to me and asked, 'do you want to know?'

'Ugh,' I replied, we better ask. I took out my phone, opened up Google Translate and typed away. I hit translate button and showed the screen to the kind lady manning the counter. My question: "are your products made with lard?" She shaked her no. Ooh, that was a good sign. I typed some more, "are they made with vegetable oil?" She shaked her head no, again.

She mentioned a phrase in response to our question, but we didn't understand it. So I handed her my phone and asked her to type it out. In a few moments we had our answer: butter. Butter? Butter! Butter is perfect.

We filled up a tray with a half dozen goodies and checked out. The total was almost certainly less than one Starbucks pastry. Hurray!

Returning to the Thai Restaurant, our food came out in relatively short order. I ordered Gaeng Ka Ree, a yellow curry that was new to me. Shira ordered tofu Ka pow, which came with a fried egg, a flourish that we don't usually get. After the meal, the owner came out and we kibitzed about his goal to bring authentic Thai to the area. I'd say he was nailing it. We've got tons of thai restaurants around us, and this one could easily hang with the best of them.

Dinner was a brilliant end to a brilliant day. Tomorrow we'd be doing little more than traveling. Oy, our vacay is quickly coming to a close.

Monday, January 13, 2025

Riviera Maya - Day 3 - DIY Adventure

[Composed 11/29/2024]

If yesterday was about operating in VIP Mode, today is strictly DIY. We started the day visiting another Mayan archaeological site: Coba

Coba provides a nice contrast to Chichen-Itza: it's more spread out, situated in the jungle versus an open area and is generally less polished. This all makes Coba less popular, and therefore, less crowded and chaotic. When we first arrived, we felt like we had the entire site to ourselves.

While you can hire an official guide, we opted to go the digital route by purchasing the Coba Ruins Cancun Mexico Tour Android App.

The app consists of a map with 19 stops or points of interest (POI). At each POI, the app gives a brief audio description of either the surroundings or background information on the Maya. The app allowed us to move at our own pace and be fully independent. The information in the app is high quality and seems well researched. Take stop 14, for example, which describes the Mayan view of heaven and hell:

The Mayans were and are - a religious bunch. They believed that when someone died, their soul went directly to a place called Xibalba, a scary underworld. In Xibalba, there were tons of terrifying beings and creatures, such as the Flying Scab, Bloody Claw, or Bloody Teeth, as well as a river of blood and pus.
...
There were only a couple of ways to go directly from earth to Tamoanchan while skipping Xibalba: you had to be sacrificed, die giving birth, be killed during war, or die while playing the ball game Pok-a- Tok. No wonder the Mayans were cavalier when it came to human sacrifice-after all, all sacrifices went directly to heaven!

In a few paragraphs of explanation the app reframed human sacrifice from a gory punishment to something far more sacred. That kind of insight would be impressive from any source, and even more so from a few dollar Android app.

So yes, the app did an admirable job. And yet, if we had it to do again we'd almost certainly hire a guide. What the app provides in quality, it lacks in quantity. There are just so many structures and details within those structures that as informative as the app is, it leaves many questions unanswered. What I missed most out of the app was the ability to point to some random curiosity and ask: hey, what's that?

I suppose the best option would be to hire a guide, and then listen to the digital tour afterwards, trying to get the best of both worlds.

Until recently you could climb Nohoch Mul, the main pyramid at the site (here's an account of someone doing this in 2017). During our visit, they were doing construction at the base of Nohoch Mul, so not only was climbing out, but the base was roped off. My guess is that the days of climbing the big pyramid are gone. Given my fear of heights and appreciation for this fragile site, I'm on board with this change.

With that said, a number of structures throughout Coba do allow for tourists to climb on them. The first large temple we saw, for example, allowed you to ascend a few levels. There's something profound about walking on the same steps that another individual tread over 1,000 years ago. I'm guessing one day all the ruins will be roped off, but until then, the ability to get up close and personal to the ruins is a notable feature of Coba.

It wasn't lost on me that workers at Nohoch Mul were using hand tools to shape stones they were installing at the site. 1000 years may have passed, but Mayans are still doing stone work at Coba.

Yesterday was Thanksgiving, and while we didn't have a chance to eat our traditional Thanksgiving meal (hot dogs, of course), we did have a Thanksgiving moment today. While exploring Coba's first group of structures we caught sight of turkey. Except, by our standards, this was no ordinary turkey: it was an Ocellated Turkey. His iridescent plumage made him look like a magical version of our typical gobbler.

Shira, with an assist by the tour guide app, was responsible for navigating Coba. And so when she announced that we'd seen all the buildings I was initially disappointed. Google Maps clearly shows that there's an observatory (Observatorio Astronómico de Cobá); why hadn't our app talked about this structure?

The answer underscores just how much misinformation exists about Coba. Consider what Chat GPT has to say about the Observatorio Astronómico:

The Observatorio Astronómico de Cobá, or the "Astronomical Observatory of Cobá," also referred to as the "Round Temple" or "Structure 10," is an iconic circular structure at the ancient Mayan site of Cobá in Mexico. While its precise role remains debated among archaeologists, its design and location suggest it had significant astronomical, ceremonial, and possibly administrative purposes.

We did, however, visit Xaibé, a building that our audio tour explained served as a watch tower situated at a set of key road intersections. ChatGPT explains

Xaibé, located within the ancient Maya site of Cobá in Mexico, played an important role as a key ceremonial and possibly administrative structure. The word "Xaibé" translates to "crossroads" or "place of convergence" in Mayan, which aligns with its location at the intersection of key sacbeob (ancient raised stone causeways) that connected Cobá to other parts of the city and surrounding settlements.

Turns out, both of these descriptions refer to the same physical structure. Our app hadn't mentioned anything about an observatory, because from its perspective, one doesn't exist.

The fact that you can get ChatGPT to cough up different explanations for the same location by changing the name isn't just a ChatGPT quirk. It highlights that enough misinformation of the web exists, that from Google Maps and ChatGPT's perspective, it's common knowledge that there's an observatory at Coba.

Harvard's Peabody Museum hosts a detailed history of Coba's excavation. Nowhere does it mention an observatory. This site clears up the mystery a bit: "This structure ([Xaibé]) has been erroneously termed an observatory." So yeah, any facts about Coba need to be consumed with care.

After Coba we planned to head to Punta Laguna for hiking and hopefully monkey spotting. But before we did, we needed the a bit of recovery time: a bathroom break, lunch, etc. In hindsight, the time spent around Coba's nondescript entrance turned out to be among the day's highlights.

It started with the bathroom break: we found ourselves with access to clean restrooms, something never to take for granted. I then wandered into a nearby gift shop, where a conversation about honey ended with a tequila and xtabentún tasting. Did I need to buy an absurdly priced bottle of the green, anise and honey flavored Mayan liquor? No. But, the salesman was just too good. The time spent kibbitzing with the shop owner meant that when we wandered to our car, we heard a rustling in the trees above. To our sheer delight, looking up, we saw a small troop of monkeys.

After taking countless pics of the furry cuteness above, we headed back to our car. I stopped to gawk at one more oddity: a large tree laying on its side. Instead of being dead, one of its branches had become a new trunk and was now thriving. A couple of the local guides noticed me pondering the tree. One explained that perhaps 10 years ago, he'd come to work after a hurricane and found the tree had blown over. The scene before us was a vivid depiction of resilience: out of an impossible situation, the tree simply found a new way to grow.

From Coba's parking lot, we drove a short distance to a Mayan restaurant. While Shira navigated the menu, I wandered to the marshy green space next door, where I was captivated by a couple of Northern Jacanas and some colorful dragonflies. When I returned, Shira had ordered. Lunch appeared minutes later and was excellent. It wasn't just that the food was good (it was!), it was that the whole experience just clicked. The open air restaurant, the colorful tablecloths and decor, the perfect breezy weather, the bright colors on our plate, the excellent flavors. It was a sort of pristine sensory experience that restaurants in the states strive for, and this random lunch spot, arguably in the middle of nowhere, effortless nailed.

After lunch we made our way to Punta Laguna. It was this article that planted the seed of visiting this park. I wanted to get some time hiking in the 'real' jungle, and unlike many of the touristy experiences around Playa De Carmen, Punta Laguna checked this box.

As we drove to Punta Laguna via QROO 109, something our guide said the day before came back to us. At one point, he remarked that he planned to take us on a longer route in order to avoid a so called 'dangerous road.' We were fairly certainly that this was exactly the road he'd had us bypass. The problem with route 109 was that it contained randomly placed, massive potholes. It was driving in a video game: the road would be smooth and picturesque, and then seemingly out of nowhere, obstacles that required careful maneuvering appeared. Shira did an admirable job weaving between the potholes, and we made it to Punta Laguna without incident.

At Punta Laguna we found ourselves once again with the opportunity to hire a local guide. This time we didn't hesitate, and we were assigned a young man who's basic English was apparently the best out of all those guides available. He had a single goal: get us to see as many monkeys as possible.

While we were clearly in a wilderness park, our first spotting came by walking down an access road. It was great to see monkeys, but this wasn't quite the jungle experience I was hoping for. After ticking off that first troop, we backtracked a bit and headed into the jungle proper. Now we were talking!

Our guide navigated us along a network of trails, constantly on the lookout for signs up of monkeys. The trails were well established and it felt great to be doing a bit of old school hiking. Though, having no map and seeing no indication of blazes, we absolutely needed the guide.

We saw a couple of impressive butterflies, a hard working colony of leafcutter ants and a number of gorgeous flowering plants. But it was the monkeys that stole the show. Craning our necks, we found half a dozen different troops as we followed the guide. They were noshing on the leaves, swinging from branch to branch and otherwise just hanging out. Nearly as impressive as the monkeys themselves was our guide's ability to communicate with them. He had a handful of different calls he could make, each demonstrating that he had years of experience roaming the preserve.

From Punta Laguna we made our way back to our hotel. In the main reception area, we approached the concierge to figure out dinner plans. This morning, before we left for Coba, Shira had a lengthy discussion with the concierge on duty about our dinner plans.

The Mayakoba resort we were staying at had a number of dining options available; many of them striving to be luxurious. As Shira browsed the stack of menus and chatted about availability, she wasn't really finding a home run. Given our Kosher / Vegetarian dietary restrictions, many of the extravagant options just seemed like overkill.

What about Ember, Shira asked? Ember is the Mayakoba's Kosher dining option. Was that an option? The concierge promised to look into the possibility and text us if he could get us a reservation. By the time we got back from our day of travels, we hadn't heard anything. We assumed Ember was booked up or otherwise unavailable. Still, we didn't think it would hurt to check for sure.

The concierge picked up the phone and called over to Ember. After a few moments of chatting he asked if we wanted a reservation for 15 minutes from now? While promising, that was a bit too early for us, as we needed time to clean up from our day's adventures. After further negotiation, they were able to fit us in for a reservation at 7pm.

We hurried back to our room, cleaned up and then walked from our location at the Fairmont to the extravagant lobby at the Banyan Tree. The hotel would have been gladly driven us, but we savored the evening walk. The grounds of the resort are meticulously cared for, so strolling along the paths is a worthwhile activity in itself.

It was appropriate that we should eat at Ember, as it's one of the reasons that inspired us to visit the Riviera Maya in the first place. While introducing ourselves to Courtney, our travel advisor, we mentioned that we keep kosher. She responded by mentioning that near Cancun, there was a five star resort that had kosher dining. That comment stuck with us, and when other plans we had didn't gel we considered Mexico. Admittedly, Shira was more interested in the '5 star' part of the comment, and ultimately it was the history, ruins and convenience of the area that pulled us in. But, Ember, that 5 star kosher dining option is what sparked the idea in the first place.

We checked the signs at the Banyan tree, but could find no mention of Ember. We asked various staff and was given direction, until we were directed to a quiet meeting room that was set up as a dining room. Ahhh, this made sense: Ember wasn't in a fixed space. If they had a large group, they could move the 'restaurant' to a large space, if they had fewer reservations they could use one of their smaller multi-purpose rooms.

We were quickly seated and a waiter started bringing us our first course. As we chatted with him, he explained that tonight we were the only guests dining at Ember. The phone call from the concierge was to fit us in; it had opened up the entire restaurant for us at the last minute. Now that's impressive customer service.

Shira and I then went on to enjoy a private 5 star, Kosher meal, with a personal waiter standing by to serve us. It simply could not have been more surreal. The sea bass, onion soup and stewed beef were all excellent. We left Ember stuffed and feeling like we'd had a one of a kind experience.

After two full days of traversing the countryside, we were excited about the plans for tomorrow: to chill at the beach and resort. Let the lounging begin!