Seamail No. 3 part 2

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....continued

We also took a trip to a town further south than Playa last week, called Akumal.    Akumal boasts being the first tourist destination in the Yucatan, and also is the site of an ecological center with various projects including those involved with turtle conservation. Akumal was instantly appealing because of this center, and because the albeit tiny grocery store had lots of food from America which we can=t get here. Then we saw the prices on everything in the store, and figured out that it was the only store in the area, and that they only internet café there was at least 6 times more expensive than any we've been to so far. The beach there was beautiful, with talcum powder-like sand, and huge rock formations over which the surf broke very impressively. Liza had a short meeting with the man in charge of their turtle conservation program, and found him to be helpful, though not really helpful. He evidently knew little more about x'cacel, the beach Liza is concentrating on here, and which is only 7 km away, than she was able to gather from reading articles about it in her research. We did find out that there is another small ecological center there though, and plan to make it there eventually. The real exciting part of the day was a lecture we went to that night at the ecological center about the K-T event. For those of you who don't know, the K-T event is the event believed to have caused he extinction of the dinosaurs and marks the ending of the Cretaceous era and the beginning of the Tertiary era. Current evidence seems to point that the K-T event was caused by an asteroid that hit the earth on the northern coast of the Yucatan, and the lecture focused on the evidence that points to this conclusion. It was fascinating. Anyone with even a passing interest in geology or natural history should look into it. I think that's enough history though. This is supposed to be about our trip.

Much of our daily excitement here aside from scuba diving is provided by finding new food in town. Last week, Liza found a place called Mama's bakery, just around the corner from our apartment. It's owned by an American lady from Kansas City, who bakes banana bread much like my mom's.    In fact, I'm suspicious that they might have the same

recipe. Incidentally, her whole wheat bread is much like my mom's too. Also, yesterday we came across a place that sells fresh tortillas. It's a shack on the side of the road, but you can watch them feed the dough into the machine, which churns out tortillas. It all seems very clean, and basically anything that's cooked to that high a temperature gets rid of bacteria and such. We've heard it called a tortilla factory, but giving it that name hardly lives up to the definition of the word factory. At any rate, they make delicious tortillas, and we got half a kg of tortillas (about a pound) yesterday for 30 cents. Last night we fried them with lime and salt and made possibly the best tortilla chips we=ve ever eaten. Our daily diet usually consists of guacamole in some form or other, as avocados are very cheap and it's easy to make.    We eat a lot of rice and beans, some pasta, lots of tuna, and lots of eggs, cheese and yogurt. Fresh lime juice gets squeezed over just about everything, and has become my favorite condiment here. Salsa also goes on almost everything. The hotel restaurant down the road has the best nachos ever, and is cheap. Hola Asia is still our favorite. And tonight, we're going to try Palapa Pizza, which we've heard lots about.

Well, as they say, that's the news from Lake Wobegon, though Port Wobegon seems more appropriate. We've loved hearing from many of you in response to our Seamail, and though they've slowed down a bit from our initial barrage, we are trying to settle into a pattern for sorts.    The goal is to write one at least once every two weeks, so look forward to it. If you haven't done so, check out our trip journal and pictures at: http://app3.airtreks.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/TripJournal.woa/wa/TJDA/showAuthorDetails?ref=AIRTREKS&authorID=liza.mueller&wosid=NO

unfortunately, it seems that we can only post one picture per journal entry.    We'll see what we can do to increase that in some way.

For now, take care. And think of the turtles.

Love,

Liza and Jerad

post script: My music pick of the week! And what an important music week what with the mtv music awards! I might say it's the white stripes because they did well at the awards, but I don't have their cd, so until I get it, which will probably be never, it's Beck's Odelay. That cd makes me so happy, and I told Liza the other day, that I think Beck did a serious service to humanity when he released that cd. No, I don't think that's taking it a bit far.