January 10, 2019
A windy moving day
As I said yesterday, today's ride was only 40 km, so it should have been easy. After all, we've done twice that in a day. And in fact, we did arrive in fairly good time, but easy it was not.
The day started out well. We managed to get up and down to the ferry terminal in lots of time. I was a little trepidatious because it was pretty windy again this morning and I remember Steve's bouncy ride last year causing him some grief. The boat we were going over on was not the one pictured here - I wish we had taken a pic because you would wonder too about getting on a vessel of its size when the waves were up!
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Before leaving we took a few pics of the lovely downtown and vowed to come back here and spend a few weeks at least. It didn't seem like we had any time at all to explore this beautiful island!
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The ride over, despite my misgivings, went very well. It turns out this was the perfect boat for this weather - it just ploughed right through the waves causing spray to come up past the window where we sat. I thought it was just a whole lot of fun, so the rolling never bothered either of us - lucky luck us! When we docked though, we had to climb up top and then go down a gangplank - tricky thing to do with our cycling shoes on and the boat rocking at anchor the way it was. Our bikes had been loaded by the crew this time, and as they handed them down, we saw they both were totally wet - of course! We put the panniers back on and headed off towards town, hoping to find a coffee shop for some breakfast. No luck there! We rode up the main drag heading towards the highway and only saw an Oxxo, so juice and muffins it was again today - oh well.
Getting out of Playa took some doing. I think it was about 10 km before we were out of the busy city streets and even then, traffic on the highway remained heavy for pretty much the whole ride. We both compared it to riding along highway 99 at home - not really much fun at all. Added to that, the wind had really kicked up now and we were headed straight into it. About halfway through we stopped for a break and leaned the bikes up on a curb to sit in the shade. Jim's bar bag was open and I mentioned that he might want to close it up in case the wind blew the bike over and sure enough, a few minutes later that's exactly what happened! Good thing he closed it, because he carries our good camera in there!
Eventually we found ourselves in Puerto Morelos and found our way to our Airbnb with surprisingly little trouble. I say that because I have let my phone plan go as I would have had to pay for another month and will only really need it for this last few days. We figured we could survive without using the Google Map function as much as we have been and today we did - hurray! Paper maps (plus taking screen shots of the map while in wifi) worked pretty well.
Our place here feels like the Ritz - the real deal, after the last two places we have been. It has a nicely equipped kitchen, two bedrooms, lovely lighting, ac and out back a washing machine with room to hang our laundry out! At the place in Akumal the washer did not actually work and left our clothes half done. I think a couple of my shirts have been ruined by having soap left on them, which makes me sad as one of them is my favourite purple blussa that I bought in Campeche.
After we unpacked we headed off to find the beach, about 4km away. It is pretty nice - surprise! We found a place I had seen online to sign up for a snorkelling trip tomorrow morning. This one will be in a boat out at the reef (supposed to be the second largest barrier reef in the world) so hopefully all will go well! That done we enjoyed a bit more beach time before heading back to our place for a rest, shower and dinner. We are here for 3 nights before heading up to Cancun for 2 - then its Cuba! Are we just a little excited about that? You bet!
Today's ride: 40 km (25 miles)
Total: 964 km (599 miles)
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