Monday, January 29, 2024

Isla Mujeres

Isla Mujeres

Isla Mujeres means “Island of Women”. It was given the name by Francisco Hernandez Cordova, who discovered the island in 1517 and found many carved statues of women made by the Mayans to honor Ixchel, the goddess of childbirth and medicine. Although the island is only twelve miles from Cancun's Hotel Zone, it has a more laid-back, local vibe. We’d been to Isla Mujeres once before, on our first trip to Cancun in 2012. Since we were with a tour group, we didn’t have as much time to explore as we would have liked. This time, we thought we’d take the Ultramar ferry to the island so that we could set our own schedule and see some of the things we’d missed.

Secrets the Vine

Secrets the Vine

After a very early flight to Cancun, Ron and I arrived at Secrets the Vine at 10 in the morning. Fortunately, we’d planned ahead and packed bathing suits in our backpacks so we didn’t have to wait until our room was ready for vacation to start. Within half an hour, I was lounging by the pool with my first mojito, where I spent most of the next four days.

Secrets the Vine is an all-inclusive, high-rise hotel in Cancun’s Hotel Zone. Our room was on the 18th floor, which was actually the 11th floor. That was because the first floor of guest rooms, the 3rd floor, was called the 10th floor so that all the room numbers could be 4-digits. Confusing… Regardless of floor number, it was a nice room with two queen beds, a mini-bar, complimentary robes, and tons of storage. One thing we found weird about the room was that the wall separating the sleeping area from the shower was made out of glass, and so were the walls around the toilet. The glass had strategically-placed opaque areas, but it still wasn’t very private.

Wednesday, January 10, 2024

Fire and Ice - Iceland Lighthouses Part 2

Grotta Lighthouse

Another Iceland post by guest writer and sister, Mary Wagner. You can read Mary's first post here.

This is definitely NOT the usual fare for this blog: Iceland in December and January! But there are still good reasons to visit. If you love Christmas, it's about as Christmassy as it gets, with lights, decorations, festivities, stories, masses in their historic Churches. One Icelandic custom is to give books for Christmas Eve gifts, then on Christmas Day everyone stays home in their pajamas, drinks cocoa, and reads. So perhaps the actual week of Christmas isn't the best time to visit, but the weeks prior and after can be pretty amazing.

This trip we took in two lighthouses, Akranesviti and Grottaviti. We arrived at Akranes at sunrise of our first morning, which by the way was 11:11 AM, and watched the clouds changing color over the bay and Reykjavik in the distance. The Akranes lighthouse is open for climbing, and has the only non-spiral staircase I've ever seen in a lighthouse. There are actually two lighthouses on that landspit. The smaller structure is the original lighthouse, built in 1918. As you walk from the visitor center to the lighthouses, you pass the racks for drying fish, as Akranes is an old fishing village, and in the air you will catch a faint whiff of smoking fish.

Thursday, January 4, 2024

Manatees at Tampa Electric's Viewing Center

Manatee Viewing Center entrance

Florida manatees can’t tolerate the cold, so when the water temperature in Tampa Bay drops below 70 degrees, they seek out warmer water. The Manatee Viewing Center was created in 1986 when employees at Tampa Electric’s Big Bend Power Station noticed large numbers of manatees gathering in the warm water of its discharge canal. In 2002, the center became a federally designated manatee sanctuary.