Tropical Torpor Sets In

This morning at 6 a.m., Katya, Peter and I met our two guides for the turtle walk along the beach.  (On our way to meet them, we saw a large mongoose, a predator of turtle eggs, scurrying across the sand.)  Marta is a volunteer from Madrid who is fluent in English; the other guide--whose name we did not understand--was staff but only learning English.  Together, they gave us a great tour.  We walked along the same stretch of beach Peter and I had explored yesterday, but along the way, we learned about the green and loggerhead turtles that nest here and how the staff and volunteers identify a nest.  (I also learned that the turtles I have been swimming with are green turtles, not loggerheads.)  Sometimes the female turtle will make several attempts and give up entirely on some nights until she finds a place that suits her.  She may lay as many as a hundred eggs after digging a hole about two feet deep. Then she leaves them to incubate for 50-60 days on their own while she returns to the Sargasso Sea.  Although the lights of the development disoriente the turtles when they hatch so that they may not make it to the sea without human assistant, Marta told us the resorts are beneficial because the night guards notify the Ecological Center when the see a turtle nesting so that staff can come to mark the nest.

After our tour, the rest of the day, we were quite lazy.  Katya, Peter and I walked north along a rocky shore where we saw lizards, a beautiful woodpecker, some derelict houses (given the value of shorefront property here, a puzzle) and a shipwrecked boat upright on an eroded limestone shelf.

Lizard on a rocky part of the shore

The reef along the Yucatan Peninsula is part of the second largest reef system in the world, after the Great Barrier Reef, so shipwrecks have occurred for centuries.  In fact, Akumal was a small native pueblo accessible only by boat until the 1960's, when some wreck divers started to develop the area for tourism.  Akumal first attracted international attention when explorers discovered the wreck of the Mantanceros, a Spanish galleon that sank here in 1741.  We have seen five encrusted cannons in the water when we have been snorkeling, and several of them are mounted in front the casitas where we are staying.

Cannon from the Mantanceros mounted in front of Las Casitas

The rest of the day was laid back.  Matthew worked some on his online Calculus course, Katya took another walk on the beach, I snorkeled in the bay--spotting a large parcupinefish in a crevasse and loving the array of colorful fish and coral that delighted me as a swam along the reef--and we all took siestas.

Instead of just walking to a restaurant this evening, we drove for about five minutes up the road to the  Buena Vida restaurant on the waterfont of Half Moon Bay.  We sat at a varnished, roughly hewn wooden table under a palapa right by the water--no floor, just soft sand under our feet.  We made it in time for the end of happy hour (so Peter and Matthew had two drinks!) and the food we ordered was good.

Katya with her temporary pet hermit crab named Poseidon

As patrons of the restaurant, we could use the hammocks, the swimming pool, the lounge chairs and giant bean bags on the beach and the hammocks.  Katya found a comfortable hammock where she read while Peter, Matthew and I explored the reef in front of the restaurant, which we didn't find as appealing as the one in front of our casita.  We liked the restaurant so much, however, that we sat on swings at the bar and enjoyed another drink apiece before heading back.

Katya relaxing in a hammock near sunset

Peter and I went out snorkeling with a light in the dark, but we did not discover much that we had not already seen in the daytime with the exception of a large squid.  The large black spiny sea urchins had come out of their hiding places and were slowly wandering over the reef in search of food in the dark.

Tomorrow morning we will visit the ruins of Tulum early and then spend the rest of the day doing very little.