Ideas

-Theory of learning a language

-Dissection of the small indie game shop

-Indie business: website, hosting, and sales, oh my!

-Market Trends/Direction

Snorkeling from the beach in Playa del Carmen

In and around Playa there are numerous opportunities for snorkeling and diving trips. You can hop on the ferry and zoom over to Cozumel for a day of beautiful reef diving or you can simply charter a panga off the main beaches in Playa and they’ll take you out to some nice dive spots.

For those interested, here is some basic information over snorkeling/dive trips you can find here.
Ferry to Cozumel: $20 USD roundtrip per person via Ultramar
3 hour trip on a boat in Cozumel to 2-3 reefs: $40 USD per person is the going rate, but you can often get these trips for $25 USD per person.
2.5 hour Panga trip from Playa: $40 USD per person, but if you have a group of 4, you can get prices down to $20 USD per person.

Laura and I have yet to make the trip to Cozumel, but we plan on spending a weekend there whenever work abates to enjoy the fine snorkeling. Maybe if I’m lucky I’ll be able to convince her to get her diver certification. Maybe.

As nice as taking a trip is, it is far more convenient for us to just hop in the sea and go explore. My assumptions were that I wouldn’t see a thing snorkeling from the beach in Playa, however, I was pleasantly surprised. Of course, there is no coral and this kind of snorkeling won’t even come close to rivaling what you will see out on the reefs; but as a little mini-excursion every few days, I find it quite enjoyable. Really, I’m always just looking for an excuse to strap on my fins I should mention that you should be a strong swimmer with good buoyancy control if you want to see anything snorkeling off the main beaches. You’ll need to swim 80-120 yards out to see the neat stuff and hover over large sub-surface rocks in the shallower water.

The first time I decided to try and snorkel off the beach, I had no camera. That is a mistake I won’t make again. About 100 yards off the main beach in Playa, not far from the Cozumel ferry, I swam over of an adult stingray in about 12 feet of water. I was actually really surprised; almost startled as my expectations were far lower than seeing a stingray. I’ve returned several times to this area with camera in hand and have yet to see it again.

After that, I went into exploration mode and have covered about every inch of the main beach in Playa from the shoreline out 150 yards (which is usually where any passing coast guards tell me to go back to shore) including the rocks around the ferry station and the actual ferry pier itself. For the most part you’ll just see smooth sand, but there are several sea forests of small marine plants and plenty of rock outcroppings.

Here are some of the things I’ve come across. Unfortunately the picture quality isn’t the best, but for a $12 disposable underwater camera, I can’t really complain. Getting a proper underwater camera is now on my “must do” list though!

Can you see the juvenile stingray in this picture?

Here is the stingray gliding down to the sand. Much easier to see.

I was lucky to catch this guy on camera. Haven't seen him since.

Once you are about 30 yards from the shore, you come across patches of undersea plants and rocks.

This is roughly 90 yards out to sea in about 12-15 feet of water. Looks like someone lost a tank!

Around 120 yards from the shore, the water drops down to about 18 feet deep and the sand gives way to an underwater forest. This is about as far as I ever venture out.

Celebrating Mexico’s Independence Day in Playa

On September 16th in 1810, Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla rallied the residents of his small town with Grito de Dolores to resist ‘evil governments’ and defeat the Spanish; thus began the Mexican War of Independence from colonial Spain. Next year will be Mexico’s bicentennial  celebration of autonomy and I’m sure it will be a grand affair.

It’s tradition in Mexico for the President and the local Governors to give their own Grito de Dolores every September 15th, on the eve of Independence Day.  This usually takes place in the zocalo, or town square, and in Playa was held in the large plaza in front of the Palacio Municipal. Laura had been talking about this particular event for about a month now and I was pretty excited to head out and check the festivities.

There was a large stage with several people dancing traditional Mexican dances with video monitors and huge speakers on both sides. The Palacio Municipal building was lit up with an enormous light display proclaiming “Viva Mexico” and the food vendors had the air smelling of fresh tamales and cinnamon twists. The general ambiance was happy, although not as festive as I had presumed. There was a large group of people already gathered while we there (which was technically early) and more and more kept pouring in from the surrounding streets.

Tomorrow there is a parade planned through central Playa to celebrate Independence Day itself. I’m hoping we’ll have the chance to venture out and partake in the festivities. Until then, here are some photos of this evening’s gathering.

The Mexican Flag lit up brightly

Tradition Mexican Dance

Food Vendors

Eclectic Electric Cacti

A lazy Sunday at the beach? Not so much…

As unfortunate as it sounds, our weekends are often compacted into a single day; usually Sunday. The city has a lot of energy on Sundays since a lot of the local families head out to the beach and the various plazas. In a way, it’s routinely a festive day around here and it it always gives us a day to look forward to.

On any given Sunday we’ll do a variety of things: browse some shops, go to a park or the central plaza, partake in a ‘mini-excursion’, and often we end up at the beach basking under the sun and enjoying a few hours of good swimming. Last night I told Laura that a really lazy Sunday at the beach sounded nice so this morning we headed down to the sea.

It was not to be a lazy day, however. The sea was extremely high, producing powerful waves and washing up over 3/4 of Playa’s main beach! The soccer goal posts had to be moved up near the boardwalk as the soccer field was covered in a newly formed intracoastal waterway! The beach was the busiest we’d seen in a couple of weeks and children were getting tumbled by the enormous force of the waves. There was hardly a place to leave your things as the entire beach was practically inundated with the tide. The lifegaurds were out in force today and the yellow flag (caution) was put up for the first time since we’ve been here. I’ve uploaded a couple of short videos to give you an idea

Rough surf in Playa part 1
Rough surf in Playa part 2

And here is a picture looking down the beach towards the Cozumel ferry. I’ve marked a pink line showing the typical point where the tide and beach meet; and where we normally set up our little camp.

Cancun Weather, Water Temperature, and Tropical Storm Tracking

More or less, people ask me 3 questions about living in Mexico. These are:
(1) What’s the weather like?
(2) Have any problems with drug gangs?
(3) Does the food make you sick?

We’ll go in reverse order with the answers. Up until last week, the answer to (3) would’ve been absolutely not. I’ve sampled food from about every possible microcosm here: street vendors, sweat kitchens (my name for the tiny, one room “restaurants” that line many streets), local restaurants, and tourist geared restaurants. Most all of them were delicious and I wouldn’t hesitate to return to any of them. Yes, I drink beverages served with ice (in most cases) and haven’t suffered. This Sunday, we happened to venture out a bit further than normal to a restaurant we’ve passed by many times but never sampled. The food was the worst we’ve had here, and yes, 30 minutes later I was feeling incredibly terrible. However, so far, that has been the exception, and the rule has been that the food is great. Needless to say, one bad outing won’t hamper our culinary adventures!

The answer to (2) is easy: not at all, have you?

And finally, the weather. Simply put, it’s really terrific. On weather.com it shows rain about every day this time of year. To be fair, it does rain a lot of those days, but it’s important to understand how it rains. First, it rains predominantly at night; some nights it’s almost like clockwork. The second point, is that it has only rained a few times during the day here and it doesn’t last very long. Storms blow in quickly and just as rapidly are replaced with sunshine. Since we’ve been here there hasn’t been a single day where rain would’ve ruined a beach outing for an entire day. We’ve been caught in rain once at the beach, but it’s actually quite refreshing, and again, always fleeting.

In some ways, I’m obsessed with numbers. I know that sounds strange, but it is what it is Accordingly, weather statistics and probabilities are very interesting to me. Here is a link that has an interactive and graphical representation of air and water temperatures, precipitation, and winds for Cancun. I couldn’t find something similar specifically for Playa, but I’d say it’s more or less the same.

Cancun Weather and More

Extrapolating from the local weather numbers, I also found some graphics on world sea surface temperature, which are really nice.

This is a picture of the world SST from August 31st of this year.

And here’s the same image taken at January 31st of this year, highlighting the Summer of the Southern hemisphere.

It’s pretty fun to see how much the Mediterranean changes from Summer to Winter, as well as the US East Coast. Note that California’s slice of the Pacific is notoriously chilly year round. That alone cured me of SO-CALitis!!

And finally, hurricanes. The National Hurricane Center has a pretty nice website tracking active storms in both the Pacific and Atlantic basins. Recently, however, I stumbled across a much more interface-friendly version (courtesy of RiverGirl, I believe.)

Tropical Storm Tracking

Here’s to hoping Erika stays North and/or disorganized!

Catching Crabs…On Camera!

This last week has been unusual; I’ve been up at 5:30 to 6:00 am on multiple days. Of course that alone is rather mundane, however, I’ve also gone to the beach each one of those mornings. The sea and the [empty] beach are extremely tranquil and relaxing at this time of day. The fresh sea breeze is almost like the jolt from a cup of coffee. Almost.

One of the really interesting things I’ve seen, are these little crabs that burrow in the sand (from a little research, perhaps ghost crabs? A fitting name, I concur.) They’re very small: at most 4 inches across with the legs. They have little holes dug in the sand (literally everywhere) and if you are lucky you can watch them scoop out a ball of sand before they hide in terror. I’ve really wanted to get a picture of one but it has proven tricky. This is mainly because:

(1) Their bodies are a sandy gray color and their legs are a sandy sand color. Um, yeah, you can’t hardly see them.
(2) They are extremely skittish. It’s hard to get within 5 feet of one, and if you do and you move, “swoosh”; back into the sand they go.
(3) I’ve only been able to spot them from around 6:15 am to 7:30 am. I’m not sure if they hide in the sand all day or I just don’t know where to look at that time.

Today, with 30 minutes of patience (and lots of empty photos) I was able to capture a decent picture AND a little movie. Enjoy!

The video was shot from about 12 feet away, so the guy is hard to see. However, towards the end of the video, you’ll see him flee back into his hidey-hole. Poof, like magic!

EDIT: Apparently youtube is still “processing” this video…if it doesn’t work when you try, check back later!

Mexican Gold!! Otherwise known as Dr. Pepper.

There are a lot of cliches about programmers. Some of the more common ones include: the anti-social dweeb, the basement dwelling 30 year old living with his/her parents, the vampire (i.e. sleeping during the day, awake at night), and of course, the ravenous consumer of caffeine products.

Unfortunately, I fall into 2 of the above categories. I definitely prefer to work at night and I too, am a ravenous consumer of caffeine, and nicotine to boot. In the US, it was pretty uncommon to see me without a Dr. Pepper or Mountain Dew. Although I wish I didn’t drink so much soda, the simple fact is that I do, and the lack of caffeine can really mess up my work flow. But here in Mexico, I have a problem.

You see, there is plenty of soda available: Coca Cola, Pepsi, Sprite, Fanta, and a variety of Mexican brands. I don’t really like any of these though. You could say I’m a soda loyalist I suppose, but coming across Dr. P or Mt. Dew (the dynamic duo, as I call them) is nigh impossible here in Playa. Without my usual supply of the dynamic duo, I’ve had to make substitions with Coke, coffee, and anything else saturated in caffeine that I can tolerate.

However, on certain lucky days (it’s happened twice since we’ve been here), the miniscule shelf space reserved for Dr. P will be lightly stocked in WalMart. Today was one of those lucky days and I preceeded to buy them out of stock…which was five 12 oz. cans. For the curious, they are 4 pesos a piece. So today truly is a good day (I know that’s incredibly shallow) and now I have to ration my bounty until the next time I will stumble upon dumb luck. In the meantime, I think it’s time to chat with the doctor!

Hammock Woes and a Photobook Project

Prior to relocating to Playa, I knew that hammocks are a popular rest stop for siestas in Mexico. It was also apparent that you could buy high quality, handmade hammocks from street shops in most cities. Playa is definitely no different, as every block will have 4 or 5 tienditas with hammocks for sale. Since the first day we arrived here I’ve wanted to buy one and take advantage of some great afternoon siestas myself! Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a great location to hang one. On our roof there is ample space, but little that would provide substantial anchoring. So, I pretty much tucked the idea into the back of my mind…until yesterday, when, with a little help, I made a mental breakthrough! But first, a puzzle.

One of the first things I noticed in our apartment when we arrived, were these small, concave steel “cups” embedded in the walls of the bedrooms. Each bedroom has two on opposing walls and one of these “cups” in our bedroom had a stubborn carbiner attached. For the life of me, I could not figure out what the heck these silly looking things were. My best guess was a horribly inefficient hanger for a backpack. A picture to explain my confusion:

Yesterday I was on a Cancun forum popular with expatriates and gabacha yucateca mentioned that most homes in this area have hamaqueros; bam!! It all clicked. Those bizarre looking “cups” in the walls are actually anchors to hang a hammock! Apparently, sleeping in hammocks is a popular alternative to a bed during stifling summer nights here if you are without or don’t use AC. Who would’ve thought? Not me obviously, and I feel a little “greengo” in hindsight With this new found knowledge, I made one of today’s goals the acquiring and hanging of a proper familial (larger) style hammock.

Like I mentioned, finding a hammock is not an issue here; finding a hammock at a good price, well, that requires a little more effort. After a morning swim, Laura and I headed out to the local shops checking the different prices. We were immediately hit with the going tourist rate: 700 – 900 MXP for a familial hammock. After bartering failed, we just moved on and on and on. Eventually, we came upon a quaint little shop that was decorated in home made vestidos; very lovely. The little lady running the shop was really kind and she had a large selection of hammocks available. When we questioned for the price, she said 700 MXP. We said “gracias, no” and started heading out of the shop when she said stop and asked us: “what do you want to pay”? Aha! My kind of bartering! To be fair, I try to be as honest as possible and I know that it is much easier for me to gain hard currency then the average local here; and I also know that most of said locals are downright good people and extremely hard workers. I just wasn’t willing to pay 700 MXP for a hammock.

Rather blunty I said “I don’t know what I want to pay. But I don’t want to pay 700 pesos.” This was pretty much the first bit of Spanish I had spoken in the tiendita but the little lady was instantly intrigued. After a few questions she asked us if we lived here. Before we could even finish saying “yes” she started laughing and said “well that changes everything”. The price instantly plummetted to 400 MXP and we said we’ll take it, and started looking around for other nice things with our newfound “local discount power”. I found a really nice stone ash tray, with the typical Mayan/Aztec designs and patterns. The price? 100 MXP. Ok, not bad. I told her we’d take the hammock and the ashtray and we’d be back in 10 minutes to pick them up.

10 minutes later, we were proud hammock owners! The next part of this story was the really painful part of the day and I don’t even want to go into detail. To make a long story short, we needed the hardware to hang the hammock from the anchors (carbiners, S bolts, C-rings, anything really.) The little lady said we’d have to go to a ferreteria (harware store) or perhaps get lucky at Walmart. The closest ferreteria wasn’t much closer than Walmart so we went there. No luck. For the next two hours the story goes like this: ask directions to the closest ferreteria, get lost on the way, finally get to the ferreteria to find they don’t have what we needed, repeat process.

Ughhh.

In the end we went to no less than 4 ferreterias plus Walmart (probably 5 kilometers of walking all together) before we found two S-bolts for 11 MXP and arrived back home drenched in sweat, thirsty, and with little afternoon left. Thankfully, putting the hammock up in the guest bedroom was a snap…although we have a bit of a problem…

Yeah…it’s about 5 feet off of the ground And not even my tall, gangly butt could get in it without stepping on the bed. It’s a pretty dangerous siesta spot at the moment!! So, we have a hammock, we’re just likely to have a lot of bruises if we fall out of it. Guess we need to go back to the ferreteria…………………………

And in keeping up the with the tradition of totally unrelated topics creeping into my main post, I present our Photobook Project! We picked up this amazing photobook for a mere 129 MXP; it's made 100% of dried and treated leaves, sticks, palm twine and recycled heavy duty paper. It's really beautiful and it may have been our best purchase yet. The basic idea is that whenever we have friends or family visit us, we're going to print off a couple of polaroids and put them in it, to keep track of all the wonderful people we keep close to us. Right now it's empty, but I just need to print off 2 pictures with my aunt and uncle who were here a few weeks ago and that will be a pretty good start. So what are you waiting for? Come visit!!

Sunrise from Playa del Carmen

Last night ended up being a late night for work, so I decided to stay up a bit longer and head to the beach to see if I could snap some photos of the sunrise over the sea. Unfortunately, there was a storm brewing to the East that hid the sun at the initial rising but I was able to snap a few photos I thought were interesting.

The sea in the morning is really beautiful. The tide was high and the waves were crashing with more force than I’ve seen here. About half way down the main stretch of beach in Playa, there is about 30 feet of rocks that intersect the beach and the water. As the tides flow up, they leave tidal pools and streams coursing through the rocks. Little fish get trapped in these pools and there were a couple of birds hunting the grounds.

This isn’t really related to the sunrise, but he was too cute not to mention. We found this guy lurking in our closet one morning but he was quite difficult to catch! Eventually I was able to catch him and release him outside — he was the smallest lizard I’ve ever held!

Daytrip to Cancun: Nightlife included!

Last week an aunt and uncle of mine visited us from the States. Well, they actually stayed in Cancun at their favorite resort but came down to Playa on Saturday (and loved it) and we decided to go spend Sunday with them in Cancun. Originally, I had planned on relocating to Cancun, but after our visit I’m sure that we have the better deal here!

Our day trip started at the bus station in Playa, where they have buses leaving to Cancun every 10 minutes during the day. An interesting thing to note: a 1-way bus ticket from the Cancun International airport to Playa is $90 MXP, but a 1-way ticket between downtown Cancun and Playa is $38 MXP…and it’s farther! With tickets bought we loaded up on one of the ADO buses, which as I mentioned earlier, are really great. The bus was packed and within 3 minutes of sitting down, we were off to Cancun.

The main bus station in Playa is located at 5th Avenue and Benito Jaurez Avenue, the main street from highway 307 to downtown Playa. The route takes you out to the 307 and then for about 10 minutes you ride through Playa, south to north, on the 307. On this part of the trip you get to see much more of the city of Playa, primarily the parts that are further removed from the tourist area. Some parts are a little rough, but the city is vibrant with life and traffic. For me, Playa is about the perfect size; with 100k people you get a lot of the amenities of a city without some of the headaches of a major metropolitan area.

A section of Playa on the 307 -- complete with amateur photo skills and bus window glare.

Once you get out of the city you find yourself in the thick of the jungle; it’s dense and overgrown and incredibly beautiful. The long stretches of jungle are broken up frequently by the entrances to resorts of the Riviera Maya. You can rarely catch a glimpse of the resorts but some of the entrances are quite stunning. I have personally never stayed at any of these secluded resorts (and the last time I was in Mexico only a few even existed) but I imagine that they would provide a very beautiful and tranquil vacation opportunity. From what I’ve read online, it sounds like even more of these resorts are planned or are in the works.

One of the many Riviera Maya resort entrances on the 307.

In the photo below you’ll see some blurry jungle and in the distance a resort taking on the form of the classic Mayan step pyramid. From the highway it looks quite convincing and I had to double check a map of Mayan ruins to make sure it wasn’t an authentic (and huge) site.

The jungle and a Mayan themed resort.

After about an hour we emerged from the jungle and into the bustling city of Cancun. In both population and land area, Cancun dwarfs Playa. For 10 minutes we sped along on the busy highway heading towards el Centro in Cancun. Playa is very dense and urban, and Cancun is more of the same, but on a much larger scale. After we exited the bus in downtown Cancun we walked around a while to take in the city. After checking out some apartments and houses for rent, it became clear that we can live much closer to the beach in a nicer area for a good deal cheaper in Playa than in Cancun. When we had finished checking out a few blocks of the city, we started scanning for an R1 bus to take us out to the hotel zone. Unfortunately, we had meandered off of the main route for the R1 and couldn’t find one. Feeling generally comfortable with the city, I decided we should just start walking the general direction of the Hotel Zone and hop on an R1.

We walked quite a ways and never saw the right bus… Eventually, after we were soaked in sweat, I figured we might as well hail a cab and just pay the price for our random exploration. We hopped in a cab, told him the name of the hotel, and enjoyed the air conditioning.

The hotel zone in Cancun is truly mesmerizing. The streets are lined with beautiful landscaping and arching palms, and the dual view of the lagoon and the Caribbean is breath taking. The resorts in Cancun are goliath in comparison to the resorts in Playa and Isla Mujeres is easier to see than Cozumel (as it’s much closer!) The ride into the Hotel Zone is undeniably beautiful and we felt like tourists all over again. Of course, we were dropped off at the wrong hotel and ended up walking a couple more kilometers, but eventually we made it to the hotel.

While the avenues, landscaping, resorts and views are magnificent in Cancun’s hotel zone, I wouldn’t say the same for the beaches. I was really disappointed with how washed out the majority of the beaches were; even non-existent in front of several hotels with the water crashing against sea walls. In Playa the beaches are very wide throughout the coast and only rocky in a few areas. Fortunately, this was the only disappointment in the entire trip.

The girls needed some time to get ready for the night out, so my uncle and I decided to go and check out the area around the hotel, searching for a place to have dinner later and also find a nearby watering hole. Rather quickly, we found both. We snagged a menu for a nice Cuban restaurant and settled in for a few drinks at a bar offering 4 Coronas for $6 USD.

Dinner that night at the Cuban restaurant was fantastic, if not a bit pricey. The atmosphere was good, the food was superb, and we received 4 four drinks from our visit earlier in the day. The plan for the rest of the night was pretty simple, we had tickets for Coco Bongo, a favorite show of my aunt and uncle and a first time affair for both Laura and I. We had an hour to kill before the show started, so we sought out another local bar with drink specials.

The show at Coco Bongo was incredibly fun! The doors open at 10:30 pm and the show lasts until 3:30 am, with a disco open afterwards for a few hours. For the course of the show, it’s an open bar, and they are not stingy with the drinks. We stayed until the end of the show at which point we were exhausted. Earlier in the day, the streets of the hotel zone were largely empty, but at night, the place comes alive and the streets were packed with people at 3 in the morning. The nightlife in Cancun is far more energetic and busy than in Playa. In Playa, the nightlife slowly starts to die down after 11 pm, as all of the local shops on 5th avenue close down, leaving only the bars open. There are still plenty of people to be found until 3 am in Playa, but it pales in comparison to the density and energy in Cancun. I think that I’m actually thankful for that!

Coco Bongo

The next day Laura was a victim of la cruda and we had to catch our bus back to Playa. It was wildly fun 24 hours in Cancun and I’m sure we will make more trips back in the future. The best thing about the whole ordeal, was that it functioned as a stark transition point for us. We were in full tourist mode heading to Cancun, but when we arrived back in Playa it was different. The tourist veil had worn thin and it finally felt like we were ready to start our regular life here and life is good.