Waving Goodbye

The night air is still, stirred only by the air conditioners and the slowly turning ceiling fans. I can't sleep with the anticipation of our long trip tomorrow. Normally I write the Middle Age Bulge blog in the early morning or evening, very rarely in the middle of the night as sleep seldom eludes me. Dylan and Ben are snug in their beds, exhausted after a vigorous day of battling the waves on the Playa del Carmen beach. They were particularly big today, and strangely, full of debris.

"The lifeguards are very interested in what's happening," observed Heather. "They keep going back and forth talking about it."

The water had been pristine all week with nothing but a few bunches of seaweed popping out of the water from time to time. But today, it was a floating mass of brown comprising about half of the swimming area, immobile, lurking, littered with small bits of flotsam.

The Playa beach recently underwent a $70 million refurbishment after a long period of natural erosion. Over a two week period this January, the waterfront was restored by pumping white sand from the ocean on to the land.

The anchor of their tourism trade, the beaches of the Mayan Riviera are treasured and nurtured. Every morning crews of workers groom and clean this wide swath of public beach, running several kilometres from the ferry dock to Calle 14. The first crew gathers all the bits of seaweed into piles then either trucks them off or buries them in the sand. All the bits of flotsam are removed. They will have an especially busy day tomorrow.

It was so much fun being in the water as much as we could. With the sun reflecting hard off the brilliant white sand and temperatures ranging between 85 - 90 Fahrenheit, we were careful to limit the length of time we spent unprotected from the UV rays. Today was probably the longest stretch, enjoying over 90 minutes riding the waves.

If you're reading this and considering a trip to this incredible area, I wouldn't give it a second's hesitation. We would certainly recommend the unit that we stayed in the past week. Barb and Gerry have been tremendously welcoming (from a distance, as they live in Guelph), Marcelo the maintenance man/security guard was wonderful, and the proximity to everything is amazing. Check out http://www.casamah.com/ and tell them you read read about their place on Russell's blog. They'll get a tickle out of it.

April 9, 2010 - weight and body fat% n/a