Vacation: Traveling on Wednesday

Wednesday morning we woke up at the butt-crack of dawn, and my husband started to panic. He'd apparently nodded off to sleep with quite a bit left to do. This is not uncommon, as he is one of the biggest procrastinators I've ever met, so I'd set the alarm accordingly. He dashed around, and then we went down to campus for him to get a few more pictures and data to take with him on our trip. He'd apparently also volunteered us to pick someone else up and take him to the airport, since he was on the same flight we were. There's nothing like a few added errands to have to run in the morning before leaving to add to the stress level. And that, my friends, is par for the course, and the reason I set the alarm clock for 4:30am for an 8:40 flight.

Regardless, the driver's license-voter's registration card thing worked great, so we got in and through security without a problem. Since we had lots of miles lying around, my husband had upgraded us to first class for the trip, so it was very nice. It's especially great to have red wine on your international flight with your microwaved cheese pizza. But whatever. It made for a comfortable trip, and we weren't all that tired when we arrived in Cozumel.

In the airport, there were tons of people trying to sell us stuff like tours and tickets to events and rent us cars and it was kind of crazy. We got sucked into listening to one guy's spiel for twenty minutes, but we didn't buy anything from him. We just took the map that he had just marked up. We took the shuttle to the hotel, and found ourselves a decent way out of town. The hotel selection was made because he had a conference there for a few days. As we waited to check in, we were given frozen blue drinks, and I became immediately convinced that we were staying in one of those excessively touristy places. This is unfortunate, because it's so hard to actually experience the culture you've visited this way. It just ends up being like all the pictures you see in travel brochures of excessively suntanned men and women lounging in chairs by the pool, drinking things with umbrellas in them. No one really lives like that, and that’s what we enjoy when we travel – seeing how the typical people in the area live.

But, I can make the best of any situation, so once we were settled into our room, I put on my swimsuit, grabbed my goggles and a book, and went down to the hotel’s beach. I swam around, following the various fishes I saw for thirty minutes or so, and then reclined to a lounge chair on the beach, reading my book. It was tough, but someone had to do it.

My husband had met up with a couple of the guys from the conference, and we all went into Cozumel, and filled out forms at the dive shop we’d be using for the next few days. Once they decided we were suitably waivered, we ate dinner there in town. I do love Mexican food, and my mole was nice and spicy.

And that was Wednesday, and we slept well.