Seamail No. 4

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Seamail No. 4 September 16, 2002

Bienvenidos a Seamail No. 4!

I will attempt to write this email with no apostrophes. For some reason, between my laptop and the internet café they all get turned into hyphens or equal signs or some other character and it is really annoying.

Well, it has been awhile since our last seamail, and it may have to be longer because we have been having a lot of trouble with our email. We are not getting all of our messages, and we usually cannot send any at all. So, if you have written to either of us in the past two weeks and have received no response, you may want to re-send those emails in the hope that we may get them the second time around. It seems to be a problem here in Mexico, because people from the US have been able to get into our accounts and send a few emails for us...it is strange, but there is not really anything we can do. All of our old email accounts have the same problem, so sometimes we really have no way of sending mail.

Since Seamail 3 we have not done a lot of traveling outside of Puerto Morelos, but what we have done has been noteworthy. We ventured into Cancun for the first time since our stay at the hostel there, only this time we went into the Hotel Zone (where you would go if you vacationed in Cancun). It was pretty surreal to get off the bus there and have all of the signs in English, pretty much everyone speaking English, and everything being Americanized. Sort of a culture shock between our sleepy little town of Puerto Morelos and the equivalent of a bustling American city. We did a lot of walking and learned not to even look at any of the >markets= (where they sell copious amounts of silver jewelry, serapes, and cheesy souvenirs) unless we really wanted to go in because people will come out and hassle you to come in. There are also travel agency kiosks everywhere, and it does not even matter if you look at them - they hassle you anyway. One guy started following us as we walked past his station, asking where we were from, and by this time we had our fill of these guys. Jerad decided to mess with him a little and started speaking in German....the sad thing was that the guy still did not give up. He knew one German phrase and just kept talking as we walked away. Having had enough of the >big city= we went to the huge Commercial Mexicano grocery store and then went back to our quiet town.

The other trip we took was to Isla Mujeres, an island just north of Cancun. We had to bus into Cancun and then catch a bus (it was more like a sketchy modified VW van) to Puerto Juarez. From there we got on a ferry that took us on a short 15 min ride to the port. The ferry from Puerto Juarez is more out of the way but much more affordable than any of the others, which means that there are fewer tourists and more people who are going to/from the island because they need to - for instance, one guy was carting a huge refrigerator onto the island.

We took a taxi to the south end of the island where there is a sea turtle farm - Tortugranja - they had thousands of turtles there, but we decided not to name the first one we saw Hampton, because 1. It was pretty much impossible to decide which one we saw first. And 2. It was not a real sighting. We=re going to save it for a sighting Ain the wild.@ Jerad actually saw a baby one on the beach earlier but I missed it, so maybe it doesn=t count either). Each April they capture sea turtles offshore (80% females, 20% males) and keep them in a corral where they swim and eat until November. Their area is restricted so that the females must nest on a small, protected section of beach. The eggs from the nests are collected and allowed to incubate in the sand within a fenced area. When the baby turtles hatch they move them to a series of large tanks and keep them for three weeks. This time allows their shells to harden, making them harder for predators to eat. Kids from the local elementary school come once a week and release the baby turtles, sometimes 3,000 at a time. While the center has been in existence for 20 years, they have only been farming for 7, and they have been raising about 10 turtles since that time which will stay at the center for life and reproduce there. Our guide through the farm was very helpful and I was able to ask him and another guide a lot of questions pertaining to my project. One regret, though, while I was asking all my questions and taking pictures Jerad was relaxing by the beach and happened to save a baby turtle! One that had been released the day before washed up on the beach (still alive) where he was sitting and he picked it up and took it to a guide who put it in the tank with others which would be released soon. I missed all the excitement...oh well. The rest of the island was very nice as well - we spent the rest of the afternoon exploring the town and shore.

Other than that, we have been saying goodbye to some of our new friends who are taking some time for themselves during the slow season. The guy who helped us get scuba certified, Russ, took off for Puntarenas and Chetumal until December and our neighborhood baker, Diana, flew off to the US and Italy until mid October. We still have some people here that we know and hope to meet more soon. Enrique, the other scuba instructor, is going to be helping me some with my project and in return we are going to help him with his daily snorkel tours for Cancun tourists. We are also hoping to get in touch with some people from the National Park office, which manages the marine park that protects the reef.