Overheard

I heard my colleagues in the pure math unit (not my unit) talking about the job candidates for a position in their unit. One of the candidates is a woman, but, so remarked a colleague, it was OK because she did not have children so she would be able to spend sufficient time in the office doing research.

Ladies and Gentlemen... THIS is Virginia

We still owe you more photos and stories of our Mexico trip, but we could not wait to post this photo. Pay attention to the license plate (B52-IP) once you have thoroughly amazed yourself that anyone could be evil enough to think that this kind of statement is appropriate. Then, do a google search and find that there is a whole line of products containing this offensive message. Conclude that the world really is not the place you continue to believe it should be...

Roughing It

Because A really has a total lack of compassion, we took a 3 hour bus journey (poor sick F) to Bacalar. Since we did not have any hotel reserved, we took a cab with a fellow traveler from the bus stop to the camp site/youth hostel that she had booked. Apparently, we still had not learned that we are not in our twenties...

Anyway, we got a tent with clean sheets and a slightly leaky air mattress. It felt like heaven since there were no fleas, and the owner was wonderfully professional.

Across the road, there was a very nice Cocina Economica, where the daily lunch special cost 2 bucks. They even gave us extra aqua fresca, which was especially good for F because he really needed to rehydrate!

Bacalar turned out to be a wonderful little town on a beautiful lagoon, with a nice town square, as well as nice Christmas decorations.

We spent the next day swimming at a sinkhole, and getting a couple of bug bites that made A's feet swell to humongous proportions.





Still, we had a lot of fun swimming and looking at the tree roots and fishes in the beautiful clear water.






On our way back to town, we stopped at a beautiful restaurant on the lagoon for some drinks and snacks.





In addition to a beautiful setting (we're hoping to add one of these pyramid things to our backyard -- it looks like a great way to hang your mosquito net!), the restaurant really made the experience complete with this amazingly off-key rendition of "Under the Boardwalk".






As much fun as pretending you're not forty-ish had been, we realized it was time to act our age. (Or, more precisely, we realized that traveling by bus took so long that we would not be able to go anywhere interesting in the remaining 7 days if we kept roughing it).



So, the next morning we took a bus all the way back again to Cancun's airport, where we picked up a rental car. Lesson learnt for next time: don't forget to pick up rental car at the start of trip!

National Park

After successfully decompressing on Isla Mujeres, we decided to forget the fact that we are 40-ish years old, and went on an adventure to relive our backpacking twenties. We took a (second class) bus down to Tulum, where we called the "National Park Camping and Hiking" to come and pick us up in an hour's time. The campground sounded great, a small place in the middle of the jungle, where you could rent a tent with air mattress and bedding provided.

While waiting, we had some good local food close to the bus station at arrival. Click on the sound-thingie to get the accompanying sounds.

At the agreed-upon time, we were sitting in the agreed-upon location and waited. And waited. And waited. The telephone I had used earlier to call the campground was now out of order (welcome to Mexico!), but after half an hour I finally managed to make a call on another phone. It turned out the owner was delayed by about 45 minutes. No apologies were made. We should have known better by then, but simply waited and waited, until one hour after the agreed-upon time, a tiny rickety old car appeared to pick us up and take us here:



The road to this place was long and pot-holed, and the car smelled bad. That was not the worst of it, though, because the owner was telling us about how LSD changes the way you see things, and how he was considering adding "guided experiences" to the programs offered at the campground (we were told that guidance is needed, because otherwise, when you get an out-of-body experience, your body might get cold, and you will go back to it, thus ruining the whole experience). We got quieter and quieter, in the end not even responding at all. We were going into the middle of nowhere with someone whose brain was clearly severely damaged...
 

The tent turned out to be provided with a good air mattresses and flea-infested blankets only. After asking about 5 times, we also received pillows but no pillow cases nor sheets. And we had already paid for two nights, damnit! The next day, we joined two school psychologists from California on a visit to the ruins of Coba. The weather was hot and humid, there were too many tourists, and A looks like she is about to cry.

But the day wasn't over yet! The food at the campground was terrible, so we decided to eat dinner in Coba, before heading back. At 8 pm, we - together with 3 other "happy campers" - arrived at the turnoff for the potholed road to the campground. The owner promised to come and pick us up in 45 minutes. Being somewhat more experienced with his time-keeping skills and not looking forward to 30 minutes in the smelly car, we decided to start walking, in the hopes of being picked up after a couple of kilometers.

We walked for about 90 minutes on the moonlit road (click above to hear the sounds), when the car pulled up next to us. The owner told us that the car was full, and that we were almost there anyway, so there was no point for him to drive back and forth to pick us up. We had walked about 8 km in the darkness by then, and had 4 km to go... We were flabbergasted by this lack of hospitality or concern for our well being, but had no choice but to keep walking.

Ten minutes later, we saw the car appear again from the direction of the campground (it turned out he still needed to pick up 2 of the 3 people who had been with us). He did not even stop but sped past us. The "ASSHOLE" I yelled after him in the quiet jungle made my throat hurt for quite a while.

The next morning, F had severe diarrhea, but I did not care. At 8am, our suitcase was standing at the exit, and we got into that crappy car again to listen to the asshole Canadian talk about drugs and how he was just a robot on solar energy and how Disney was going to buy up his property and hire him to set up more successful ventures etcetera etcetera. We even paid him a handsome amount for these services. But at least we got out of there!

Mexico: Isla Mujeres

We're back from our two week holiday in Mexico! We spend most of our first week decompressing on Isla Mujeres, an island across the bay from Cancun. We sampled Mexican food,

... (this barbecued fish ("tikin-xit") was so good we had it twice)...

... walked and biked around on the island, and even went scuba diving! We enjoyed the sunsets...

... and the pelicans...

... and sampled some of the margaritas.

Decompression accomplished!