Punta Laguna Nature Reserve

Halfway through our diving days, we took a day off and arranged with Avelino at Mayan Traveler to go to Punta Laguna Nature Reserve which is the "gateway to the Otoch Ma'ax Yetel Kooh National Protected Area, home to spider monkeys, howler monkeys, and many other types of animals and plants." 

We started off with a Mayan Ceremony to welcome us to the Reserve, wish us safety in the jungle and good luck in finding the monkeys. The Reserve is operated by locals and our guide was the son of the elder who did the ceremony. 

We managed to spot families of both spider monkeys and howler monkeys but there were so many trees I didn’t bother trying to get photos and just took video instead. A couple short clips turned out pretty good which I posted to Instagram stories and will try to get around to making a youtube video to add here later. 

Leaf cutter ants, which come out at night, make these "highways" through the jungle. 

An air plant

Avelino then gave us a choice of where to have lunch, and we chose to go to a Mayan community. The hot, freshly made tortillas, egg salad with a spinach-like green in it, squash and freshly mashed habaneros was delicious! A really nice change from a traditional restaurant. 

Tortillas don't get any fresher or hotter than these ones!

From top to bottom: egg salad, squash, freshly mashed habanero sauce. Only a drop of two of the habanero was needed to spice things up!

Our dessert was local organic honey on a tortilla. 

There were lots of fruit trees and vegetables grown on the farm. Papaya, lemon, lime, orange, squash, and much more! 

A beautiful bird of paradise.

Avelino was good about stopping suddenly for Andrew to take photos of birds! 

Avelino also arranged our transportation to and from Cancun. We would highly recommend him. He was quick to respond to all our inquiries and was well organized and on time. 

Diving at Akumal (First Half)

We made the right choice of dive companies here in Akumal. There are two big dive shops which seemed to be quite busy and have full boats of new people daily. We chose a smaller company that seemed more personal. Blue Experience Diving also got the best reviews and a nice website (much to Andrew’s scepticism – “Anyone can make a nice website!"). It’s run by a couple, Eduardo and Sarah who were both excellent and personable guides. The largest group we were with was 6 divers including either Eduardo or Sarah, but more often 5. Nice small groups of returning people we had time to get to know a little bit. 

This area is known for sea turtles and we’ve seen at least one on all but a couple of the dives we’ve done. And some of them are HUGE! The largest I’ve ever seen for sure! Most of them are green turtles but there’s been a few Hawksbill as well. 

The dive sites are only a 5-10 minute drive from shore so it’s nice we head back to land for the surface interval. 

We now recognize how spoiled we’ve been on previous dive holidays with gear being set up, put on the boat, tanks changed for us, etc. Here, we put on all our gear in the dive shop and carry it out to the boat. Carry empty tanks back between dives, carry new tanks out to the boat, and then carry it all back again at the end of the second dive. Which is probably good since I’ve been slacking off my workouts on this holiday! 

Anyway, here’s a few (ok, a lot of!) photos from under the sea. 

Akumal, Mexico

We woke up in the middle of the night (2:45 am to be exact) to get to the airport to catch our first flight. We only had an hour layover in Vancouver so when the plane leaving Victoria was late, we started to worry. Landing in Vancouver, we speed walked for 15 minutes to our next gate, from one end of the airport to the other. You literally could not have gotten two gates further apart from one another. But, we made it! 

We overnighted at the Hilton Garden airport hotel since we knew we’d be tired. They had a reasonably decent gym so I did a morning workout. The gym overlooked a very nicely designed circular pool and atrium. 

We’d arranged for a private service, Mayan Traveler, to drive out to Akumal, about an south along the coast where we were staying for the next 10 days for scuba diving. Caribe Akumal Hotel is a very small, older resort and we had one of the bungalows which was very nice. We had no neighbors the whole time we were there, so it was also quiet! 

There were five restaurants within just a few minutes’ walk so we rotated between them. We spent a lot of time at the Turtle Bay Café and Bakery because the wifi was significantly better than at our hotel – not to mention they had good coffee, smoothies and excellent ice cream! 

Cat in her usual spot at Turtle Bay Cafe and Bakery

This glass of lemonade could have doubled as a dumbbell it was so heavy!

Shadows on a wall

Peaceful beach at night

Peaceful beach first thing in the morning. It got quickly got very busy with snorkelers during the day.

We saw this coatimundi near the dive shop one morning. It had stolen a tortilla from somewhere for breakfast.  We also saw a couple agouti but only Andrew managed to get a photo of one. 

This industrious little squirrel was stealing twigs from a palapa, presumably to build its own house somewhere else.

The grackles were noisy!

So were the woodpeckers but we didn't see them as frequently as the grackles.