Getting to our first destination, Isla Holbox, was quite an adventure in and of itself. First we took an airplane to Cancun, then an hour long bus ride, followed by a 20 minute boat ride and then a 10 minute ride in a golf cart, finally arriving at our little palapa beach house. The beach was gorgeous.. white sand, clear blue water. The town is super small and most of its traffic consists of golf carts and scooters. The first full day we took a boat tour of the area. They took us to a few small islands – one inhabited by flocks of nesting birds, one with a freshwater swimming hole and another with a beautiful shallow shore where we could laze around and cool off.
The second day was the big whale shark day. We rented a private boat so that we could be greedy and not share our swim time. They drove us out about an hour into the middle of the ocean and cruised around until the guide found a shark. Next we pulled on our snorkel gear and waited on the edge of the boat until the driver cut-off the whale shark and the guide screamed “Go! Go! Go!”. Okay, now when the tours were advertised I thought “swim” with the whale sharks meant that they would swim so slow they’d be almost stationary. I don’t know why I assumed that, but I did. What they really mean is “chase the poor creature by swimming as fast as your little human body will take you”. So we obeyed our guide and jumped in the water. From the boat, the sharks look really long and sort of wide, but not that intimidating. But once you get your eyeballs under the water, its an entirely different thing altogether. They’re monsters! Not aggressive, just enormous!
Left: Shark mouth, Right: Kel's head
The first sight took my breathe away and I felt sorta stunned, but then I heard the guide’s voice prodding at us and I started swimming as fast as possible. This whale shark was not all that stoked to have us around and kept making turns. Every time he turned I’d see a tail as tall as myself sweeping in my direction. It was terrifying. I had no idea I’d be so scared. Once he had swam beyond our sight, we jumped in the boat and took off after him again and repeated the process. It really didn’t get any less terrifying. In fact, with a crappy, leaky snorkel mask, it got worse and I thought I was going to drown. Kel said that he looked at me and I had the fear of God in my eyes and said, “I need to get in the boat NOW!”. I asked the guide if it would hurt if his tail actually hit me and he said in his thick Mexican accent, “I promise you, it will hurt much more than Mike Tyson’s punch”. Which is hilarious, but also was the last straw. There was no way I was getting back in the water.
So with me completely pussed-out and the guide prodding us along since we rented the boat out for ourselves only, Kel made dive after dive until he looked exhausted. The guide found a larger shark and after cutting it-off, yelled at Kel to jump, practically into its mouth. The boat driver thought it was hilarious because he knew Kel would be pissing his pants (I think I would also like to mess with tourists if I had their job). Even with jumping almost into the big guys mouth, Kel said it was a lot less scary because he was more docile and you could just swim around him at a nice pace.
Next we decided to look for some manta rays. We’d passed a few earlier and they were gigantic! Their wingspans had to be around 10 feet across. Kel swam for a bit and then convinced me to give it another go. I’m no dummy. This time I made sure to put the death grip on my guide’s hand. He wasn’t getting away from me. So he pulled me around in the water for quite a long time looking at this amazing creature. It was completely surreal and even though I was still terrified, it was amazing! At one point he pulled me over the top off it so that we were swimming in parallel, then the manta ray pulled up and skimmed the surface right in front of me.
If you ever get the chance, I highly recommend taking one of these tours. It was one of the most amazing experiences of my life! The guide got some great videos (below) of Kel, but I’m in only one.. you know, because I had his hand in the death grip and all. Thank God Kel’s brave or we’d have no proof!
When we got back from the whale shark tour we rented a golf cart and just cruised around the island, looking for adventure. We found mostly burning garbage and biting horseflies but there was a fair amount of beauty and a cool local cemetery guarded by tons of iguanas, as well. Every night we ended up at a bar near the town square where we’d sit on the 2nd floor, drink pina coladas, listen to bad 80′s music and watch the people interact. It was kinda wonderful.
The next day we were off to Playa del Carmen…
(To be continued)
See a slideshow of photos here. They look a lot better in the full-size mode.
And below are some of the better videos.
