Since the age of six, I've dreamed of visiting the Caribbean. Even then, most of my dreams were inspired by the great blue beneath. I remember watching footage of Jacques Cousteau fining over pristine coral reef before chilling under swaying palms eating post-dive BBQ on the beach. In May 2016 I set out to make these dreams a reality when I visited the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico.
Despite having just been diagnosed with SIBO (check out the link for a full explanation of this digestive condition) and wondering how the hell I was going to cope with the myriad of amazing foods on offer, I decided to bite the bullet and take a risk on travel to see how I would cope.
I'm not going to lie, it was challenging. As a relatively poor person and a budget traveler i'd managed to afford this two week trip by snapping up a last minute flight deal with Thompson Holidays. If memory serves, I got a return flight from Manchester to Cancun for Ā£277. An absolute bargain and at cost because I was available to fly 3 days after booking. The activities of the trip were funded by my final savings from a previous salary job I'd worked on before I got sick.
It was the beginning of the Mexican summer and it was going to be pretty scorching. In retrospect I don't think I'd realized just how badly the heat was going to effect this pasty white Brit with the fatigue I suffer from this SIBO condition.
The Journey to Paradise
It all started, as these things tend to for me, on a grey rainy day at Manchester airport. It was a dirrect flight, so after the three hours checking in and general airport stuff, I boarded my virgin Atlantic flight to Cancun and set sail into the sky on my journey to paradise.
Watched a few movies on my laptop
Ate some crap foodTried, and failed, to sleep...Read a book...
and the plane landed in Cancun.
I had been awake now for around 16 hours and was starting to feel the jet lag but there was no time for slouching. I found my way to the bus terminal and jumped on the next coach to Playa del Carmen, thank the gods it had aircon. I'd noticed the heat/humidity upon leaving the airport and had already started to overheat. I know from experience travelling in Thailand that it takes me at least a week or two to acclimatize.
The plan was to get down to Playa, jump the ferry over to Cozumel and find my AirBnB via a taxi where I would sleep the jet lag off in one big stint. I'd worked it out that I'd arrive in Cozumel around 6/7pm mexico time so I could just sleep a decent 12 hours through until morning and reset the body clock.
Big cities really aren't my thing so I'd decided to skip Cancun altogether and I actually never saw any of the city apart from the airport and motorways š
Playa del Carmen was a really vibrant little tourist village. Stepping off the coach, I wound my way through the busy streets down the hill to the ferry terminal.
Suddenly I saw the ocean open out and the sea breeze hit me in the face. I walked along the beach in a jet lagged dream, breathing in the the fresh air and the smell of sun lotion.
The sun was less intense now as it was late afternoon. The sea looked so inviting with it's turquoises hue and foam flecked waves but I wandered on to the ferry terminal and my final destination. This first taste of the Caribbean will stay engraved deep in my soul forever.
š By now, I was pretty much high as a kite from lack of sleep and as the ferry slipped out into the waves the sea breeze picked up. A band started to play on the deck and Bob Marley and other sixties classics featured heavily in the playlist.
I drifted in a soporific dream land. Watching from the bow for dolphins riding the wake of the boat. None appeared, but the game passed the time and the music fed my soul.
The ferry arrived in Cozumel around 6pm. The heat, crowds and lack of sleep conspired with my condition to make me feel really ill at this point. I found a taxi as quick as I could and showed the guy the address on my phone. I've got no Spanish which proved a detriment in this instance. The cabbie dropped me at the wrong spot. It was only after he'd gone, I checked google maps and found that I was two streets away from my destination.
Eventually, I found my way to the place and after chatting a little with the owner unpacked and crashed out for a full 14 hours with a fan blasting right on me.
The AirBnB where I was staying was a room in the owners house (cheap as chips). I have to say though, that I would caution any fellow budget travelers that you never know what you're going to get in this scenario. The courtyard was chilled and the room was basic but functional, but I'd describe the owner as surly, at best, and a bit of an asshole at worst.
As I was struggling with symptoms of my illness, the heat was killing me so I spent a lot of the first day both in my room and out in the shade of the courtyard. The owner didn't seem to appreciate this as he was working on building a website and was in the house himself most of the day. On the plus side there was a pool which I took advantage of those first few days to cool myself down.
The Main Event - Scuba Scribe Diving Palancar Reef
Unfortunately, my underwater camera went to pot during this trip so the images I have are limited and of a poor quality. I have only used the best of them in this post.
All in all, I spent three days diving on Cozumel comprising of two days with 2/day and a final third day with three dives. I'd planned this as the beginning of my trip from the start as I'm so passionate about scuba diving that I knew the underwater world would help with the struggle of dealing with the SIBO symptoms. This plan really worked!
I progressively became better at handling both the heat and food as the days progressed and by day five on Cozumel was even feeling well enough for a beer or two š
The reef just off shore of Palancar beech is quite pristine. There is a mix of multi-colored hard and soft coral, but the majority is hard coral. Clouds of butterflyfish hang above the reef sunbathing in the shallower sections while many loggerheads turtles call the nooks and crannies of Palancar home.
Parrotfish peck at the coral, creating a constant crackle as background to the clatter of bubbles as you expel air through the diving regulator. Many multi-colored whip coral float in the current, drawing psychedelic slashes across the pastiche of slow light that permeates the underwater world.
Two marine life encounters stick in my mind when thinking about diving Cozumel. The first happened on day two of the second dive when I happened across a large nurse shark at rest on the sand at the base of an outcrop of coral. I nearly swam right past this gentle shark species as it was so well camouflaged.
I think the sound of our bubbles might have woken it up as after a minute or two of observing this shark, it swam lazily away into the turquoises distance.
My overall impression of the reefs surrounding Cozumel is one of bustling life.
Palancar reef is the type of dive site where you're not likely to see anything massive and impressive, although I have heard that the occasional bull shark visits. But if you like to watch the behavior of many fish species interacting with the living landscape of coral, you're not going to go home disappointed šš š”
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