Beach Bumming our way down the coast

After being on Isla Mujeres for a couple days, we decided we had snorkeled all that could be snorkeled and were going to go down to Cozamel.  Cozamel is world famous for scuba diving, so Brannan was excited to get down there. We took a bus down the coast to Playa del Carmen, about 1 hour trip from Cancun, and then a 45 minute ferry ride out to the island of Cozamel.

On our ferry ride, we were entertained by a local band that played all the stereotypical classics, such as "La Bamba" and La Cucaracha"

Leaving Playa del Carmen behind us

Cozamel is a cruise ship port, so there were always 2 new cities ships docked every day while we were there.  The whole main strip of the ocean front was crazy commercialism: jewelry stores, clubs, cars, clothes... everything you could want to buy if you were coming ashore for a couple hours.  But if you walked down towards the ferry port where we came in, the shops were owned by guys in flip flops and the restaurants were more authentic.
And if you went past THAT, you got to Mexico!  We stayed in a hostel that was just past all the shops, and the surrounding neighborhoods had people going about their regular lives.

Our hostel had hammocks! (sigh...)

The main strip at sunset, with the cruise ships getting ready to head out to sea

After the cruise ships left the streets looked like this by 6pm:

H-- Hello?....*crickets*

We took a diving/snorkeling tour while we were there.  Brannan went diving and I rode along in the boat and jumped out to snorkel around while the divers went down. (I got scuba certified while we were in Thailand, but decided that it made me way too anxious and I just didn't like it!)  While snorkeling, I was going along a reef that dropped off like a cliff. Waaaay down below me next to the reef I saw 4-5 sharks! And later, I was swimming along behind a tour group. One of the guys dove down and picked up an octopus which was squirming in his hand while he brought it up to show his friends. When he was taking it back down to the bottom, it inked a huge black cloud all around him!  I was laughing through my snorkel tube.
But Brannan said he saw some really big crabs while he was diving.  So that's cool too. 

We found that Cozumel had some beaches on the other side of the island, but we didn't have a car at this point. So after getting our scuba fix, we left for the mainland a few days later.

Back to Playa del Carmen for some Beach Nachos, and other stuff. Mostly nachos.

Oh and Nutella churros.

We ended up staying in a hostel that was owned by an American guy about our age from Washington. It was so fun to hang out and talk to him and the other people staying there. Everyone seemed late 20's early 30's and were from all over the world, so we got to talk about cool places they had been, and about their home countries.

We were told to go see the ruins at Coba, so our hostel owner helped us book a tour that took you to some cenotes (underwater caves) and to see Coba.  Best. Day. Ever. First we went to 3 different cenotes and swam around for most of the morning. I'll let the pictures say the rest.

This one was called Tortuga (Turtle) Cenote because the island in the middle looks like a turtle.

Right behind our heads is a cave entrance that our guide took us into with a flashlight. We swam through this dark cave single file and came out around the corner. So cool!

These cenotes were "old" because they were all opened up like a big swimming hole. "New" cenotes have smaller openings in the ground and are huge underground caverns filled with water.We'll get to some of those later in our trip. They all have freshwater in them because it comes up from underground. Super refreshing on a hot, humid day.

Next, we went to Coba to see the Mayan ruins. This was one of the only ruins left that you can CLIMB on!  How awesome is that.

We walked around and looked at some crumbly old buildings first,

Then we rented some bikes and rode them about a mile through the jungle to the grand pyramid

That is one steep sucker

What a view!

It was an awesome and exhausting day. But it was all worth it because on the bus right back to Playa, they played 80's rock music videos for us on the TVs. Rad.