Note: We are dependent on free internet from the parks, mostly Parque La Ermita, and there is a major overhaul of the internet service gratis going on in Merida. A lot has gone on in the past 2 weeks+ since our last update so I will break down the blog accordingly. The following 4 parts includes all of our lastest updates. Enjoy and thanks for reading!

Part 2 of 4-part update

Cozumel - You Guys Sure are Looking Mexican

We arrived in Cozumel in the early afternoon on Wednesday. Ken and Lorraine were coming in on the Carnival Paradise from Tampa, Fla. on Thursday. We ate dinner at La Mision, one of our favorite eateries in Cozumel. Seafood mixed platter for Terry and the coconut shrimp with mint salsa for me. We then walked to Wet Wendy's. It was live music Salsa Night! We thought we were such damn good salsa dancers....with a little help from those margaritas at La Mision. Either we got worse at dancing or the margaritas started wearing off because towards the end of the night a group of Cubans showed up and they showed up all right....they showed us up! But we had fun and we didn't really care how good our dancing skills were or weren't.

 

Thursday morning we woke up and Terry went out looking for coffee. We had requested our promised breakfast early - 7:30am as that is how we roll. But, we never got breakfast nor coffee through the hotel - La Vista del Mar Boutique Hotel downtown on the waterfront. We didn't care. No complaints from us...we were just happy to be spending a couple of nights in Cozumel and spending a day catching up with Ken and Lorraine. Finally got coffee at a small coffee shop around the corner, went for a great breakfast on the waterfront, and started walking to the Carnival terminal. Ken and Lorraine were to arrive at 11. But, that was actually 10 our time. We did meet up after catching a taxi. All four of us headed downtown for a day of talking, with a small amount of listening going on, a little shopping, some drinking, some eating, some drinking, some eating. The guys headed to a little upstairs bar along the course of the day, and Lorraine and I met up with them later after doing some shopping. The  waiters were a hoot and kept us in stitches...not to mention they made some mean mojitos followed by complimentary tequila shots. Thank you Willy!

We ended the day at Fat Tuesday's down by the terminal watching spring breakers pole dance and discussing how lucky we had been to have been able to drink and pole dance if we wanted without the fear of appearing on You Tube. We also saw a young version of brother Neal - looked just ike him! 
 

Great day with Ken and Lorraine with lots of laughs. We said our goodbyes and they headed down the walk way to the cruise ship. We walked back downtown stopping along the way to take sunset pictures and cruise ship pictures. After regrouping at the hotel, we went out to eat at Gaido's - another one of favorites. Lasagne for me and linguini with carbonera sauce for Terry - and homemade sangria. During dinner I kept seeing this woman looking at me and smiling. Finally, she said: "We saw you at Wet Wendy's last night. You looked like you were having a great time." Reply: "Yes, we did. Hope you're enjoying your dinner as much as we are". After dinner we acknowledged the couple again and left. We ended up at Woody's listening to a young Cuban play the guitar and sing. He was unbelievably good. Hung for awhile then headed in.

Friday morning we got up, went for coffee, went for breakfast, then walked out to Papa Hog's - another Cozumel favorite. We made ourselves comfortable in the lounge chairs that overlook the water and enjoyed watching the goings on. The two J-boats semi-racing kept us entertained as well as the snorkeling/diving boats, crew and people coming and going.

We had already check out of the hotel and had our traveling backpacks with us. We stayed as long as we could, then changed from swimsuits to traveling clothes and started the walk back to the ferry terminal for the trip to Playa del Carmen and to the ADO bus station. We ran into the same people that had hung out at Wet Wendy's and later we had seen at Gaido's. Stopped and talked with them and exchanged emails. They had recently bought a condo in Cozumel and spend half the year in Cozumel and half the year in Atlanta, Ga. Hope to see them again someday! There was a 5:30 bus back to Merida. As we had walked the main tourist street in Playa del Carmen on our way to catch the ferry to Cozumel, we had discussed how the street vendors tended to ignore us. We decided it was because of their training, ie, they look for women with jewelry on and also look at their handbags for name brands. As for me - I travel with very little jewelry on and my handbag was the red and yellow plastic tote given to us by Gaspar and Lupita at our local Merida Cerve Frio. When we walked the main tourist street on our way to catch our return bus to Merida we knew for sure we had been right on about our assumption when the Mexican guy laughed and hollered loudly out at us: "Hey You Guys from Merida! You Sure Are Looking Mexican!!!" Yes, he had checked out the Cerve Frio "handbag" and knew it was from a Cerve Frio in Merida. And, we were very proud to be looking Mexican...we took it as a compliment. Especially since this exhange happened a few days after we had been stopped  on Calle 64-A by three visiting Mexican tourists. They wanted us to take their picture in front of the Cantina - the one that became famous for the many scenes filmed in it in the novela "Abismo de Pasion". We laughed and said we had come a long way since being in Merida as now we were the ones taking pictures of the Mexican tourists visiting our little La Ermita neighborhood in Merida.

We got home a little after 9pm and started getting fired up about our company coming in the next day.