I hope you appreciate how hard I’m working at trying to keep on top of things on this cruise!

So, I THINK today is Monday. Therefore Costa Maya. Which isn’t Costa Maya, per se, that’s the name of the area – it’s Mahahual, specifically. The Captain tried very carefully to pronounce it correctly last night, but I remain unconvinced.  So far, his pronunciation has been pretty bloody awful, so I’m going to assume he got this wrong too!

I didn’t sleep a wink last night. No idea why, because it was quite rough, so I should have been lulled quite easily, but no. I think I finally passed out at abut 6am. Which was 5am because the clocks went forward. AGAIN. So we are now at GMT -5. I think. Probably.  Maybe. At the moment, I just trying to focus on keeping track of which way is up. Anyway, although a tad yawny, I do feel quite rested, because when I did crash, I was spark out for over 7 hours. Dad got up, dressed and left the cabin and I never knew. He’s getting quite good at it! 

Talking of which, until I shared a cabin with Dad, and indeed until last night, I never knew a human could get hiccups in their sleep. Now I know. It’s quite funny, but then I find other people’s hiccups funny all the time, so it’s even cuter when they’re asleep!

So, welcome to Mexico.  White sandy beaches? Tick. Turquoise waters so clear that you can see down to the bottom? Tick. Water so blue it’s almost glowing neon/ mercury bright?! Tick tick tick. Palm trees so plentiful, it looks like the entire coastline has a green Mohawk haircut? Tick. Sunshine so bright, it makes the water sparkle? Tick. Purpose-built concrete cruise ship pier that is over half a mile long (each way), with no stopping points, shade, seating or buggy service? *sigh* Tick. It’s all very pretty, but we’re not going to be able to explore if Dad has to walk a mile just to get there and back, however refreshing the breeze may be. 

Mind you, we are moored next to the Mariner of the Seas, the Carnival Breeze AND the Oceania Sirena, so that’s an extra 3,500-4000 passengers on the Mariner (who will also be alongside us in Cozumel tomorrow), 4,400 passengers from the Carnival Breeze, and 803 on the Oceania Sirena (no, we’ve never heard of it either – and it’s not really moored, it’s anchored off (probably because the bigger stuff takes priority these days!). Plus about 2000 of our own. Plus crew from all of the above! 

Costa Maya is very flat indeed. From the canteen on Deck 12, we cans see for about 20-25 miles at sea, and, moored here, we can see the best part of that over the land and trees as well. There is precious little here that sticks out above the trees, except a large thing that looks like a Mayan temple, but has what might be flumes sprouting from it. There may be more stuff on the other side of the pier from us; I’m sat with my back to it and twisting around is not something my back approves of, right now. So I’m stuck look at bright blue water and trees as far as the eye can see.

For a place so beautiful and with such bright white beaches, it seems astonishingly undeveloped. This is a Good Thing, because it remains utterly beautiful. Other places that were once this lovely suffered from very badly-planned and badly-designed development, rendering them ugly and virtually worthless – Acapulco, I’m looking at you, right now. There, you now have to literally drive out of the town to a different bay altogether to get to a beach that doesn’t have a skyscraper hotel between you and the water, and you have to pay because their beach is “private” to residents only. This, here, however, is how it should be done.  

The history bit

 The Mayan culture has first signs of agriculture and settlement dating to around 2000 BC, and their descendants today number around 6 million, and still refer to themselves as the Maya. There are 28 surviving Mayan languages still in use.  Hieroglyphic-style writing has been found dating from 300 BC, although only three or four books survived the Spaniards. They used fig tree bark to make paper, which was more durable than papyrus. All of which was ended when the Spanish took over, by force, in 1697. Although, to be fair, the Aztecs had already done a pretty thorough clearout of Mayan texts, together with inventing a new fake history for their own books, to make them look like the rightful heirs to the area. The Spaniards started book burning in the Yucatan area first, including that led by Bishop Diego de Landa in July 1562, stating that the books contained “nothing in which were not to be seen as superstition and lies of the devil”, so they burned them all. He was amazed at the level of distress this caused to the locals. Really?! Talk about not reading the room!

There is a continuing debate about whether it was the Olmecs or the Mayans who invented zero. The Olmecs were further inland, but both used a seashell symbol in their Long Count Calendars to signify zero. 

Update on the reef: Our route away from Belize City meant traversing over 20 miles of channels between the coral, which meant the pilot had a very long shift! The Mesoamerican reef stretches over 700 miles along the coast of Central America and over 500 square miles, from the Yucatan Peninsula to Honduras, passing Mexico, Belize and Guatemala on the way to South America. It is home to the world’s biggest fish – the whale shark – and the one of the largest population of manatees. In places, it is only 900 feet from the shore, in a couple of places, it meets the land. If you’ve heard of the Blue Hole, made famous by Jacques Cousteau, it’s here. Come and dive, but make sure you eat Lionfish before and after. The invasive species is killing the reef and everything on it.  Simon Reeves was right about that.

Happy birthday, Eastenders! 39 years old today!