A visit from Gouda

Location: Cozumel, Mexico

Date: January 24 - February 5

There is nothing more exciting than showing your friends and family your work and home when you live abroad. So when we found out that My uncle and Aunt were definitely coming I did a little dance in the living room. Not only would they be able to see us, being happy, in Cozumel we could also be a tourist ourselves. 

We picked them up in Playa Del Carmen where we stayed the night to do some ruin watching the next day. Coba and Akumal were our points of interest. We rented a car and off we were.......

It is called  "Pavement lunch"

Coba is a large ruined city of the Pre-Columbian Maya civilization, pretty impressive! The Ancient Pyramid which unlike Chichen Itza's Kukulkan Pyramid, is still open for the public ( sigh yes we did it!) to climb its 120 steps up to the top of the site. The views from the top of the pyramid is absolutely amazing! To honour our Dutch heritage we decided to rent some bikes to cycle around the area. We planted the folks on a "special" bike which we off course have captured on film!!!!

The ruins of Coba are impressive but the best part is climbing the Ancient Pyramid, which is btw at your own risk. But so worth it. The view from the top is STUNNING!

After having soaked ourselves in Mayan history we decided to take a dip in the water near Akumal where you can find a lot of turtles. It is amazing how at ease the turtles are with humans. Off course we were fully prepped and warned to not touch and grab. When we mentioned we are dive instrutors the answer of teh lady ( ozzie i think) in the dive shop was "well that doesn't mean anything nowadays" .... which left us kind of frazzled thinking she might want to do a dive with me seeing how strict I am with people not touching the environment.  Anyhow, we changed in our snorkeling gear and headed to the beach with the mission of finding "Las Tortugas". We were absolutely awarded for our effort as soon we spotted the first tortuga.. and another one.. and another one :) 

At the end of the day, it left us tired slightly rozy but oh so fuzzy when we jumped on the ferry heading to Cozumel.

The next day we were still off so we explored Cozumel. We rented this absolutely fabulous shitty car which looked to cool to be true. We did not have a handbrake so we started carrying bricks around to place behind the wheels when parked. But hello I mean doesn't that ooze adventure????? Ok maybe Remco's swearing when trying to change gears did ruin the romance of it a little bit however the noise of the engine sometimes made it impossible to hear him anyway ;).

On Cozumel we road tripped' a lot and our tradition was to meet up after a day of work for us and relaxing on the beach for R&R at the money bar for happy hour ( i mean we are still Dutch so we are taking full advantage of a 2-for-1 deal!!!). So during these 2 weeks.... MUCHO SOL!

We visited the Mayan ruins, explored the west end of the island ( but mainly its bars), drove all the way around the island, had beautiful fish at Roberto's, amazing mexican food at Otates and tried every other restaurant we could think of. Yes i know... tough times huh!!!

We also managed to go back to Playa for a visit to Chichen Itza ( or chicken pizza as the ever so funny tour guide tried to made us laugh... ). 

Chichen Itza was one of the largest Maya cities and it was likely to have been one of the mythical great cities, or Tollans, referred to in later Mesoamerican literature. The city may have had the most diverse population in the Maya world. Unfortunately due to an incident in 2006 the major temple is no longer climbable. OUr tour guide was amazing and explained the tradition of the "plok Plok" game ( very important game to the Mayan people), the meaning behind all the sacrifices made ( if you are born in the first 10 days of August you are basically declared "god - food". Should I be scared now?), but also the traditions and how the people lived back in those days. I can tell you it was very interesting and we absorbed all that information with pleasure!

However to all good things comes and end and soon it was time to say goodbye :( it was so good to show them what our lives look like at the moment. They even had a chance to see us at work. It was also nice to have that welcoming feeling after work. It is kind of like coming home and have your mom cook for you )

We must admit , we do miss our daily sol at happy hour :) CHEERS!

More pics can be found here !

AYoooooooo

Marijke

Just do it.....

Location: Cozumel, Mexico

Date: February 22,  2012

All the people we meet here through our work coming to vacation on Cozumel are jealous of our jobs. They also complement us for quitting our (well paid ) jobs in England and trading the nice house, car and social security I for....... Living and working in an industry we absolutely love but doesn't offer all the above. "how can we do that" they ask us.. it is simple.. you just do it :) 

Seeing sharks, turtles and even eagle rays is just another day at work. We have the privilege of swimming in such a beautiful surrounding and share it with others as well. We teach people who are new to diving to become comfortable in this world we absolutely love. We meet lots of new cool people that share our love for diving and that we have a blast with on the boat and off the boat.

Off course there are downsides to this job as well. It is not well paid and your running costs are high ( think about the money we spend to become instructors, our gear and insurance ) We work an average of 11 hours per day for an average of 10 days in a row (I know our next day off will now be next Sunday which will make it working 14 days straight), Doing 3/4 dives per day. It is exhausting but it doesn't make me hate my job. It does make me appreciate my bed more hahah lol. 

We have had family come over which was absoulte AMAAAZING it was so cool to show them what we do ( and why the hell I look so tired when skyping hahaha). Soon I will write something about their visit as we were able to play tourist as well.

Ayoooooooo