Thursday

Thursday was New Year's Eve. We woke up relatively early and headed into town for our snorkeling trip to Isla Contoy, a wildlife refuge about an hour North of Isla Mujeres by boat. Brian, Kristen, Christina and I headed up there while Mom and Jim stayed back to enjoy a relaxing day on the Isla.

It was fairly windy that day, so the boat ride out was a little choppy. We left Isla Mujeres behind and followed a string of shallow reefs North until a new island approached on the horizon. The first thing we noticed was the start contrast from Cancun and Isla Mujeres. There were no buildings, no boats, no sign of humans at all. As we approached the island, the captain put out a fishing line to catch our lunch. Christina offered to help with the fishing, so she took a seat at the back of the boat with the line in here hand (no fishing pole). After about 10 minutes of trawling, she had a few bites but no catches. Luckily, there were already a couple fish that had been caught that morning, so we didn't have to worry about starving.

We docked at the Isla Contoy research station, which is on a breathtaking white-sand beach with crystal clear water and lots of fish. Just stepping off the dock, we could see many schools of brightly colored fish. As we got settled in on the beach, we looked in the water and saw this big black object approaching the beach. We went to get a closer look and realized that it was a huge manta ray! Turns out that the tour boats feed it every day, so it knows when to show up and make an appearance.

We went snorkeling right from the beach and saw all sorts of fish and one huge starfish. Out near the rocks that were supposed to have the best snorkeling, the water started getting murky from the waves, so we stayed out in the middle of the bay. The snorkeling was about on par with the beach right by the house, but the scenery was absolutely amazing. We spent time walking around the nature trails and climbing to the top of a large observation tower. Lunch was bar-b-cue fish and rice, followed by more snorkeling.

On the boat ride back, Christina tried her and at fishing again to no avail. The other guy who tried had caught 2 barracuda, but Christina just didn't have any luck. The wind had picked up in the afternoon even more than in the morning, so the ride back was a bit harrowing.
Back on Isla Mujeres, Christina and I went shopping and purchased a Mayan mask that was similar to the one we liked so much at Chichen Itza.

After shopping, we headed back to the Casa for a siesta before the New Year's festivities. We all slept for about 3 hours and headed back into downtown. We had dinner at an authentic Italian restaurant owned and operated by a full Italian staff. It felt a little odd to be eating pizza in Mexico, but the food was very good. We finished dinner around 11:30, so we set of in search of a place to ring in the new year. To our surprise, all the beach bars were closed and the only place where things were open was the tourist avenue. They were having a celebration in the town square as well, but we decided to head to a bar on the main drag.

We were enjoying our 2-for-1 drinks (seems to be a common deal on the island), when around 11:50 some fireworks started going off. Thinking it was the New Year, people started cheering in the streets, only to discover it was a false alarm. We waited a few minutes and I looked down at my phone and saw that it was officially 2010. There was no countdown, no watching the ball drop. It was a couple minutes after midnight that the fireworks started in force and continued for quite a while. We wandered down to the town square so see what was going on only to find it relatively quiet. By that point, we were all pretty exhausted, so we headed home. The golf cart lights had stopped working that night, so we escorted them home to avoid an accident. Turns out the cart maxed out at about 29 km/hr. It took some discipline to stay that slow on the moped, which I knew could easily top 60 km/hr :-).