Highlights from Mexico, Part 3

On the third day we went on a boat tour to Yelapa with stops for snorkeling, kayaking and a look at some pretty spots along the way.

Though we had purchased our tickets in advance, we were still required to wait in several long lines before we could actually get on the boat and go somewhere. My suspicion is that all this line-waiting was just a way to hold us captive while people tried relentlessly to sell us things. They had a sea lion propped up at a podium that you could go take a picture with and there were people carrying parrots around that they would put on you and take your photos which you could then purchase later. When the parrot guy approached Eric, Eric looked straight at him and said, humorlessly, "I don't like birds. Take that thing somewhere else." He did.

(At least part of the problem was that a cruise ship had backed into one of the cement docks that they usually use to launch their boats. It looked pretty badly damaged, so I give them the benefit of the doubt on this one.)

Our guide was Julio, and he mostly called himself Julio Iglesias. He spoke like a combination of a game show host, an MTV VJ and Borat and spent a lot of time chattering to us over the boat's speaker system. He was energetic and relentless, no - shameless, in his attempts to make sure we all had as much fun as possible. We did. In fact, just listening to his turns of phrase in English was enough to make you smile.

"How are your feelings doing!" he would shout over the speaker system to find out how we were feeling.

There were many highlights of the trip. Snorkeling was not one of them. The place they took us to snorkel does have fish, but the tour boats all seem to be in the habit of feeding the fish to get them to come play with the tourists and as a result the water is filthy and full of food scraps. It's quite disgusting. Further, there weren't really that many fish and there were that many jellyfish so we figured 90 seconds of snorkeling was about the right amount of time, and bee-lined for one of the three kayaks the boat was carrying for the 50 people on board to share.

We scored a kayak and determined that the only logical thing to do was to try to land on the small beach near the only private residence within sight - the only place we had been instructed NOT to go. We touched the sand there, saw some movement on the porch of the house, and hightailed it back out to sea as it was not out of the realm of possibility that we were going to get shot. Back on the boat, Julio Iglesias told us that house belongs to a bunch of narcos and he was probably not kidding.

Once we got to Yelapa, we walked around there and swam in a waterfall pool which was really, really cold and totally awesome. ("Refrescante!")
This child made a face at us as we walked by, so we took his picture.

The group with us on the tour was a colorful bunch. It included a gross couple maybe on their honeymoon or maybe just really gropy, a nice family that also lives in San Francisco and who gave us an awesome recommendation for a restaurant in town, and a woman who shared with me that she had delivered her oldest daughter (now 19 years old) when she was at just 26 weeks of pregnancy - exactly how pregnant I was at the time. Not cool. There was also a mishmosh of other typical American families (one father pointed out a dog in Yelapa laying in the sun and said "Look, it's a Mexican lazy dog.")

In order to make the long boat ride back from Yelapa as much fun as possible, Julio Iglesias hosted a rocking dance party in which he got the whole crew to come up and dance, and then got a bunch of the passengers dancing as well. The four hours of open bar prior to this impromptu dance party surely contributed to the healthy participation.

All in all, it was pretty solid as the "tropical boat-based day trip adventure" goes.