Kevin's Life

This morning (Monday Feb. 26) I woke up with blisters on my feet again, so I decided to take it easy.

Had breakfast at the Yukatan, then headed down to the Hacienda to get some more cash from the Scotiabank (!) banking machine. Looked around at the shops there for a bit, then went back to the main Tulum lobby.

I then decided to check out the other parts of the hotel. I took the trolleys down to the Akumal lobby, then the Coba lobby. Checked out the shops which had a few different things from the Tulum lobby shop, but didn't buy anything.

I did buy a t-shirt the other day from the Tulum shop. A nice purple T-shirt with mayan images on it. I wore it yesterday. During the walk to the caves yesterday, I noticed my sweat was purple. It turns out the purple dye in the shirt was not colour-fast. Oops. When I got back to my room I rinsed it in the sink a few times to get rid of most of the extra dye. However, when I did that I noticed a small hole in the shirt. This morning I returned it and got another one, so there's another round of washing and rinsing in the sink ...

Here's a picture of one of the T-shirt patterns.

Apparantly these are dyed by hand in the cottage industry for souveniers on the Mayan Riviera. They put wax on the shirt, dye the unwaxed parts, and keep repeating this process for all the different colours.

I met Martha the maid today. She pointed at my warner brothers pocket watch and said Mui Bonito. I think she likes it.

In the evening I went to the Captain Hook pirate show.

The trip down was interesting. The trip should only take about 1.5 hours from my hotel to the show in Cancun. We were supposed to pick some people up at the Barcelo hotel, but they never showed up. We wasted about half an hour there looking for them. We then picked another couple up at a different hotel. I thought cool, someone to talk to. When I asked where they were from, they said Espania. They knew a little English, I knew a little Spanish. There were lots of conversations like "Where are you from" ... "Two weeks" ... "Enjoying Yourself?" ... "Barcelo Hotel" ...

Then, when we got to Cancun, we ran into a huge traffic jam. About three miles of cars moving at a walking pace. Policia everywhere. I thought there was a big car accident. It turns out one of their big fairs was letting out and it was just traffic control.

The show itself was great. Steak and Lobster dinner on a "real" Spanish gallion. Now don't get excited. This wasn't a layed back dinner cruise. Hey, it's PIRATES. They have two ships, the Red ship and the Green ship. Each holds up to 250 people, although when I went there was only about 125 per boat. They look like spanish galeons, but they are actually diesel powered, not sail powered.

At first I thought ¨What did I get myself into?* They had us all cramped onto the deck / atage. Disco music blasting, strobe lights and disco ball flashing. lights in the rigging. People in tacky pirate costumes. The first thing they did when we got on board was run us to the back of the boat for a picture with the other pirates. Whoa!

Once we got going we were introduced to the crew. The Captain, his first mate, the little person named "Tattoo", the girl named "Mermaid", etc. The captain told the story about this other guy that used to be his best friend, but he stole our captain´s ship. Meanwhile, our captain stole the other captain´s wife (Mermaid).

During the story, he got angry at one of his mates, so they strung him up (some cool wire work lofting the guy to the rigging). The fun continued with drinking games, a game for the kids, etc.

While this is happening, they take the audience in shifts for their steak, chicken, and lobster dinner. All the while cruising the bay off Cancun.

Eventually, after everyone had something to eat, the two ships came together to battle it out. Cannon fire, pirates swinging from ship to ship on ropes, huge sword duels, everything you expect from a pirate show. Here's the enemy ship coming in to attack.

Afterward, we declared victory, and danced on the dance floor until the ships got back to port.

The whole show took about 2.5 hours, open bar the whole time. Was a lot of fun. Worth the three hour drive from the hotel to the show in Cancun

You can read about the Captain Hook show t at http://www.capitanhook.com/. More on that after I get back tonight.

The towel buddy today was a lobster.

When I got back to the hotel tonight about 12:30, I realized I forgot my key in the room. Doh! El stupido touriste. But they had the door open quickly. A good nights sleep, then off to Chichen Itza tomorrow.