This post is part of a series. You can read Cruzin’ and Cruzin’: Day Two that occur before this one
What’s surprising about this trip is that, even though it’s open-bar, I’m not hungover and am waking for the sunrise each day. I never do this at home.
That over there, that’s the mainland, Met-hi-co. But we’re not going there, we are heading for a little place called Cozmel, an island apparently constructed and operated by cruise-lines.
If you read the Adam Curtis blog post that I linked in the previous article, you’d know that cruise-lines like to keep their passengers’ spending ‘on-shore’, if you will. That means, inside the company shop and our first landfall was an example.
The Carnival Celebration over there got into port before us, lucky devils, and there were two other ships already in port with us making number four. I’m still agog at the scale of these vessels. The concentration of capital is truly majestic yet there seem to be loads of them around, full of (thousands of) happy families and shy young couples feeling their way about the world. We spotted another two of these floating office-blocks at another port closer to town.
Speaking of happy families and shy young couples, Mrs Sachie and are are neither. We are rugged, in fact hagged, experienced travellers. Mrs Sachie was going to live in Mexico and tried it out for a few months before declaring for Thailand. She had been to this island back in the early 2000’s, even has some old cash from then, which would prove handy later. So we were first off the ship for a day’s hard work of sight-seeing, snorkelling and drinking.
It has been raining and was a bit wet on disembarkation. A long walk along the jetty found us in the complex of shops, bars and restaurants ashore in a free-trade zone before entering Met-he-koh proper. It was early and a bit vulgar. There’s plenty of cheap silver jewellery shops in Bangkok already so no need to visit any here. There’s also lots of nick-nack shops to tempt the novelty-seeker. I was interested in a sombrero, like my hero from The Three Amigos, but I’d probably look like a dickhead trying to stuff it into the overhead locker on the flight home.
Overall, the on-shore attractions were a bit sordid and not at all helped by the rain. Outside there’s a gauntlet of taxi-drivers, then the the road to town.
We had swimmers, snorkels and flip-flops (a stupid name. In Australia we call them thongs, in New Zealand they call them Jandals) and planned to swim the azure waters beneath swaying palm trees until the ship cast off later that afternoon.
The thing is, it was cloudy, wet and humid. The tide was super-high and rough. There was a cyclone hurricane coming in that would shape things later, but more on that… later.
It was early (10am) and everything was shut so Sachie and I decided to head for town, to get some real Mexican food and beer and call it good.
It’s a long walk to town and my flip-flops are cutting new grooves between my toes. I’m not used to them. First it irritated, then it hurt. But this is Mexico, there’s fermented painkiller everywhere, right?
Nope, It’s fenceline-to-fenceline resorts all down the coast and they are not open, at least for us. In town it was worse. After much hobbling around on now bloodstained thongs flip-flops we collapsed into the only open restaurant. But this was paydirt.
Right on! I even know what most of these things are! “I’ll have the Polo Chicken, please.” Now, I imagined we would be sipping tequila and stuffing burritos into our faces by the sea but this will fit the bill.
I don’t usually drink before noon, as a rule, but I was not in a good state and very frustrated indeed. Besides, who can resist a handgrenade-shaped beer? Fire in the hole! Glug glug glug.
And this is exactly what I wanted. A Mexican grandmother, with most of the family filtering in and out of the restaurant during our meal. The food was OK and and I had a proper molé that didn’t contain avocado, although I had one that did, too.
It turns out that credit cards are a bit dicey in Met-hic-o and this place carried a 15% surcharge. Also, the first two transactions didn’t work so I was worried that we would be triple-charged our USD 67 for a few beers and not much food. I was a bit let-down but worse was in the offing… That’s what we call foreboding in the writing business but you’ll have to wait a few posts.
By now it was 11am and we decided to go score some drugs. No, gentle reader, not angel-dust or Turkish cigarettes, but only the finest pharmaceuticals shipped fresh from Switzerland. You may know that in the US, the people who make the medicine can charge whatever they like for it and often do. This is a stupid situation so US citizens will go to more civilised nations like Canada or Nicaragua, where the prices are kept in check, to fill their prescriptions. Mrs Sachie is prone to insomnia so this may be a good chance to stock up Horlicks and valerian root.
Well, it turns out that they only sell pills by the hundred and the price is not that much lower than in the land of the free. Probably cheaper to find an ethically-flexible pharmacy in Bangkok.
It was after eleven by now and the Senior Frog and Hooters in town had opened up for a bunch of cruise-people wearing balloon-animals on their heads. I was getting pretty pissed off by now and just wanted to get our fridge magnet (we started collecting them ironically but now it’s a duty) and fuck off back to the ship. The magnet was five dollars, tourists fuck up the price of everything, and I was not looking forward to the final theft-by-taxi back to ship. Luckily, Mrs Sachie’s 200 Pesos from 20 years ago saved the day.
Later that day, at the Mast Bar, we reflected on the excursion and concluded:
- Eating ashore is a bit rubbish. And you have to pay.
- Pay for a cab, don’t walk to town.
- Don’t bother getting an early start.
- The overpriced packages that the cruise sells aboard are probably better use of time and money than independent travel.
The food aboard is better than ashore and the booze is free so I can see why some people don’t disembark at all on the port visits. I’m sure we were not seeing the best that Mex-ico has to offer, which is a shame because the island was obviously beautiful and fun at one time. Mrs Sachie says it was when she was there in the 90s. It probably still is if you have a car.
There are bees buzzing lazy circles of the the Mast Bar and eating up the sticky drippings of liqueur and other boozy delights. Fun for them but soon we will be underway so they should fly their drunken way home. It’s not too bad up here but the pool bar is swarming with them. Doesn’t shorten the queue though. There’s a joke about barflies but I’m too drunk to make it.
I noticed that the blue peter was flying but we hadn’t yet cast off, in spite of the hour. Glancing over the rail I saw a ship’s officer running for the gangway. A minute later a passenger was escorted up the jetty in front of two large seamen, looking a bit sheepish and hesitant. I have heard that it is great sport to have a shore view at departure to watch panicked passengers returning late but this chap looked like he wasn’t keen to get on. A minute later I barely noticed that we had cast off and were thrusting away.
We are leaving four other liners behind us, each a temporary home to thousands. It’s really something.
By now back in our cabin, we were passing out of the channel to the open sea when, what’s that? Dolphins! At least three of them and other pod of five bringing up the rear. I can’t call the day a success but seeing these creatures in the wild made up for it all. Time for bed.
