Sunday, December 29, 2024

2024: Cozumel and Playa del Carmen

 2024: Cozumel and Playa del Carmen-Our amazing Caribbean trip, December 4-15.

Jane’s younger sister and her husband Dennis were taking a Caribbean Sea cruise ship departing New Orleans aboard the 4,000 passenger ship Norwegian Getaway built in Papenburg, Germany. We went to meet them in Cozumel.

Ironically our friend Tilman Struemer had taken Jane and I to visit the ship building yard nearly the same time the Norwegian Getaway was under construction. Giant ships have been built there since the days of sailing ships. Papenburg is a long way from the open sea. This was a very impressive sight.

Back to our Caribbean Sea trip: Jane booked us on an ADO bus luxury class nonstop from Mérida to Playa del Carmen, a four hour ride to the Caribbean coast. Jane booked a studio apartment for a week at the Sofia Hotel; a great quiet location with a jungle view from our private balcony. This was a new neighborhood in Playa for us, and our favorite pizza place was next door. We loved it! The night sky was bright with the first slice of a waxing moon closely accompanied by the planet Venus. A week later at our apartment the moon was full.

Grisel and her husband Juan arrived, and we celebrated with our favorite pizza, Nino’s from next door. 

Juan exhibited his culinary expertise a few days later when he prepared Mexican huevos rancheros. They were terrific, and we declared him an excellent chef!

The Sofia had roof top swimming pool and lounging area with a Caribbean Sea view and briny breeze. Perfect!

The day we left Playa del Carmen to take the ferry to Cozumel. torrential rain poured down with storm winds generating heavy seas.

The hotel clerk called a taxi and the driver instantly appeared. The driver was extremely helpful and got us as far as he could. It was a seven block walk in the rain to get to the point of purchasing our ticket, and then an equal distance to the ship. The ferry company was extremely helpful and got me into a wheel chair pushed by a sprinting fast moving young lady up to the distant boarding ramp. The ferry was bucking and surging like a bronco against the stressed mooring lines. The dock workers efficiently grabbed the wheelchair and in unison deftly hoisted me onto the boarding ramp and then onto the jumping and jiving vessel making the process a very memorable experience. Even without my impairment that crossing would have been a challenge.

The smiling and courteous crew of the Xcaret ferry boat were extremely helpful in every way to these old sailors.

We were early for the check in at our Airbnb apartment, and the host recommended a waiting place at a nearby restaurant. We asked the restaurant employees about our apartment, and none of them had ever heard of it. One helpful waitress did a search on her phone and Jane was connected to the host, Irwing. Irwing told her to step outside and look. There he was just 20 meters away at the back door entrance.

The restaurant had good food, but the noise level was too distracting to enjoy it.

We were happy to get to our quiet, bright, clean, and very convenient apartment. We were ready for our afternoon siesta.

It was still pouring down rain as we charged up our bodily batteries. After our nap we listened to audio books and checked our emails.

Our next order of business would to do fact finding in advance of the arrival of Jane’s sister and her husband the next day. Our time with them would be short, and we wanted it to be great.

It was a seven block walk to the municipal market that we had loved on a previous trip because of the excellent variety of Mexican food at great prices and away from the tourist traps. This would be a stretch of our endurance especially on the transit challenging sidewalks. The rain has let up ,and we were on our way.

The market was literally bustling, and I found a place to sit. Jane took off fact finding as I watched a very noisy construction crew assembling a stage for live music to enliven the holiday spirits. A waitress impatiently asked for my order as Jane returned. Jane said that the market had changed, and the noise level was totally unacceptable.

It would be plan B. She did some shopping, and we hailed a motor-taxi for our ride back to our apartment.

Oh! My god! The lady driver sped off on the opposite direction from our apartment, and refused to listen to our protestations. Surely we were being kidnapped! This happens in this Mexican state of Quintana Roo, so we had good reason for concern. Finally, we were both screaming at the driver to turn around as we planned our escape route. Our protestations were finally acknowledged, and the dense driver did finally turn around. We old timers don’t need this kind of excitement!

After a light lunch, and our siesta Jane went out fact finding. We were three blocks from the waterfront.

Jane is a great detective. She had found our rendezvous spot, several resting places, and a great French café, Sucré Salé. Great news!

Rendezvous at Monument to the Reef in Cozumel.


The next morning at our rendezvous spot there was smiling Joan and her husband Dennis in a go-fast electric scooter. We took photos, exchanged stories, and headed toward our lunch spot.



Sucré Salé restaurant made us very happy. We got fully fed, has great service, and exchange of stories.

It had been fourteen year since our last get together, and we all felt this trip was not going to be enough. Dennis said that this was the best meal of their entire trip. Dennis picked up the tab that was not at tourist place prices. Thank you, Dennis.

A longtime friend of ours from Mérida was at a nearby table, and we hailed Andy Xenios over for introductions. Andy is a well known photographer/artist. His gallery in Cozumel was temporarily closed for remodeling, but he had several pieces of his work with him. Joan was amazed that we actually found an old friend this far from home.

Joan had been keeping an eye open for local art work to purchase on their vacation trip.

Andy was there with a collection of his art work and Joan purchased several. Dennis saw Joan’s enthusiasm and bought even more and made arrangements to connect with Andy for the stories behind them.

Next we walked to our studio apartment a block away for a libation, photos ,and confabulations. Joan was amazed at our apartment, its location and the price. It was less than $40 a day. We got in on the last of the off -season prices. Jane among her many attributes is a great shopper!

We stayed an extra day at off-season rates. We needed the rest.

Next, our trip home:

Another windy day, but we were on our way.

Jane went out for a taxi and a few minutes later returned with the man who gave us a tricycle ride to meet Joan and Dennis. His name was Santiago, he had been working on the ferry pier for twenty five years, and he lived around the corner from our apartment. Jane is a very lucky lady, and I am very lucky to have her.

Santiago delivered us to the ticket counter, the luggage check-in, and the ferry boarding ramp.

The sky was dark and threatening but the seas hadn't started to build up yet. Our trip was uneventful except we were placed in a handicapped section with polar ice cap air conditioning. Our neighbor must have been typhoid Mary and her overly active child was the same. We were wearing our KN95 face masks and thought our chances of infection were minimal. When you get sick in Mexico there are always a thousand suspects.

Disembarking the ferry in Playa del Carmen there was a tricycle driver looking for customers. We asked if he could take us to a taxi, and he asked where we were going, and I said; “To the ADO Alterna bus terminal.” He said. “I can do that,” and we were on our spirited at a rapid rate faster then a regular taxi.

What an adventure it was as we arrived at the bus terminal under the porte- cochére as the first rain drops came pounding down.

Jane got our bus tickets, and the line was all the way out to the street. Now the high tourist season was in affect as we paid.

Four hours later we arrived in Mérida. We took the first and only taxi and had to bargain the driver down so that we were only paying double! However, the driver Ruben got us home in record time. We entered our home sanctuary at 3:03pm.

It felt like we had been gone for three months.

It was another great adventure!

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Tuesday, December 24, 2024

Palm Beach, Mar-a-Lago, and the Rise of America's Xanadu by Les Standiford-Book Review-Five Stars

BOOK REVIEW: FIVE STARS

Palm Beach, Mar-a-Lago, and the Rise of America's Xanadu by Les Standiford

This is a powerhouse book crammed with startling revelations and background history. 

Les Standiford has added yet another crown jewel to his incredible list of fascinating and informative must read books.

EXCERPTS:

The glare of the spotlight that Trump’s presence brought has been as much bane as blessing. For this writer, what follows is an attempt to trace the record of an improbable dream of wealth and privilege carried from hand to hand, slowly working its way into shape, tempered by the intrigues of jealousy, greed, and the perpetual thirst for control.

It is the tale of how an unlikely place was born from nothing and how that place in turn spawned the perfect domicile to represent and nourish it

In that otherworldly retreat for the ultraprivileged there had been nothing like exotic Mar-a-Lago, Spanish for “sea-to-lake,”

In 1905, when a U.S.-supported revolution had resulted in the secession of Panama from Columbia and the new government’s authorization of an agreement for the building of a canal across the isthmus, Flagler had his justification for going to Key West.


In the end, the principal effect of what became known as the Oversea Railway was to transform Key West, which had always been a workingman’s town, into a tourist destination. Passengers on the Havana Special (one could board a Pullman car in Penn Station that would be ferried within a few days across the Florida Straits to Cuba)


Now I can die happy,” a visibly moved Flagler told the assembled crowd during the arrival celebration, which included a children’s choir brought to serenade him. Later, as he was being led from the reviewing stand, Flagler turned to Joe Parrott to remark, “I can hear the children, but I can’t see them.”


In December it was a minor bit of business, upping the amount set for Flagler Hospital in St. Augustine from the high five figures into the low sixes, but the fact that she had called in her own attorneys for the work and again made no mention of any change as regarded the standing of her new husband would soon prove to be significant.


Flagler’s opening of the east coast [of Florida] to rail travel and his resort hotels in Palm Beach and Miami marked the establishment of Florida’s greatest industries … No depressions or freezes, however damaging or painful, could destroy them, and in the following decades they would become as identified with the state as palm trees and alligators.”


Mar-a-Lago is more of a Boca [Raton] idea than a Palm Beach idea. Mar-a-Lago is a new-money idea at an old-money location.” Shortly after Mar-a-Lago opened, when its initiation fees


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Tuesday, December 3, 2024

Gator Country by Rebecca Renner - book review-five stars

 

BOOK REVIEW: FIVE STARS

Gator Country: Deception, Danger, and Alligators in the Everglades by Rebecca Renner

Gator Country is an in-depth look at the revolutionary transformation of Florida before and after Europeans turned this unique ecosystem upside down.

I personally witnessed it happen beginning in 1945 when the population was three million. My wife and I lived there for 22 years until the mid-1990s, and we wrote four books describing the monumental change while first living and cruising the waters, then engaged in ownership of income properties, and commercial shrimp fishing. We witnessed the change through two Arab oil embargoes and explosive population growth.

I found the book excellent; a great and informative read.

EXCERPTS

I would troll the creek for them, hoping to find the same magnificent gator that first lit up my imagination. But gators didn’t only pop up in the backyard ponds of my childhood. They took up residence everywhere in popular culture. In cartoons such as All Dogs Go to Heaven, fat and zany alligators provided comic relief. Although alligators can be dangerous, there is something in the way they move about the world, and especially in the way we react to them, that is inclined toward the slapstick.


Even in my hometown near Daytona Beach, it’s there. Just south, the Indian River Lagoon is embroiled in a decades-long fight to clean up Florida’s waterways. Once one of the most biodiverse estuaries in the Northern Hemisphere, boasting as many as forty-three hundred species of plants and animals, the lagoon is now dying. Nutrients from runoff have twisted the water composition. Algae took over, sparking a chain reaction that led to the most brutal manatee mortality event on record. More manatees died in the first three months of 2021 than in any other full year. Our love affair with lawns and golf courses is to blame. I was just as much part of the problem as any of my neighbors. It’s so easy to forget that our actions, no matter how small they seem, have environmental consequences. We defy nature, bending it to our will. That impulse is so prevalent in Western civilization that most of us have stopped noticing it at all. Nowhere is that animosity so clear as in the Everglades. For centuries, settlers have ripped up, paved, and drained the glades, and now we wonder why those ecosystems seem so irreparably broken that they’re poisoning us as we have done to them.


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