I saw the sea of the earth. Angela is telling us stories about her mission. We went to the beach and did snorkeling.
- Caleb
We went snorkeling. We saw flute fish, a black fish with blue dots that looked like diamonds.
- Elena
I found coconuts.
- Augustus
My favorite event the past few days was snorkeling. It was so cool to let go of my life jacket and dive under water and swim around with the fishes. We chased them and succeeded in touching a few. There were so many kinds! There were a lot of dark blue ones, and lots with yellow tails. I saw a blue one carrying a red sea shell, but when he saw me he dropped it. I wanted it, but it was deep. There was a lot of coral, and you could swim down right with the coral and fish. We saw a ray, but didn’t get too close. He looked like he was flying with his wings, and just put one wing up to turn. It was just amazing. I went out three times, and one of those times I gave Elena my life jacket and went without That way I went faster and spent a lot of time underwater. I stayed.out so long the backs of my legs got burnt. We were all burnt somewhat somewhere.
- Angela
When we went snorkeling I was a little nervous. I’m not a swimmer. But all my fears were forgotten when I looked under and clearly saw fish and more fish. Beautiful cool coral and colorful striped fish right below me! I was so excited! We all desperately wanted to touch some of the small, slim fish that wavered near the surface, but they always seemed just out of reach. We had to abandon our life jackets to dive in at them, and still they calmly veered away. I think I managed to barely brush one. There was a lot of broken coral at the bottom, and I dove down to bring one up. We saw long, skinny, grey fish that looked like eels. When I saw the black and white spotted ray I began to scream – instantly remembering how the Crocodile Hunter met his fate. Angela calmed me down, and I watched it fly away.
- Virginia
Wow! Snorkling was amazingly fun and exciting!
- Naomi
We saw lots of fish. There was lots of coral and coral reef. There was a little cave which we went into. The rocks were pink. There were bats in the cave, too. There was another small shore which we snorkeled to. Ginger and Angela saw a ray. On the small beach there were a lot of snails, crabs, and sea urchins.
We made things in the sand. Ginger made a shape of the moon and put white shells on it. It was really pretty. Caleb made a boat and a pile of sand. Angela made a pyramid with a round obelisk on top. The obelisk had a face with a sea urchin as hair. Mom made dribble castles. She also helped make the great wall of China to protect the pyramid. (Caleb also helped with that).
While Mom was making the great wall of China, a little girl came up and started helping. That was cute.
I drew a penguin in the sand.
I made the round table and a chair. For the chair I dug a hole for the legs. It was a comfortable chair.
- Elena
After breakfasting on avocado sandwiches and oranges Edwin took the kids snorkeling in La Entrega while Naomi and I did laundry. Before noon he returned for Naomi, saying the kids were having a great time, it was a super experience and he wanted her to enjoy it. Originally they had planned to snorkel until noon then leave for another town where a church is located but he had found a church here in Huatulco so that reduced the urgency to leave soon and the snorkeling experience urged them to stay. I spent the afternoon goofing off around town, in the zocolo talking with other old codgers who had nothing better to do. One fellow told me they are constructing 4000 new rooms right now, that large areas around town have streets, water, sewer and all services getting ready for a huge boom, this will be the next Acapulco. In fact this is the only place in Mexico that has an internationally recognized environmental seal of approval on their infrastructure, he mentioned the name of the organization. The streets were packed by the ‘over fed and almost dead’ until 5:00 then the ship left emptying the streets except for me and the Mexican tourists.
The main problem is the road here from Acapulco, 300 miles north. It has over 300 topes (according to the internet but only 214 according to our count). The airport is small and serves only local traffic. The only way to get here practically is on a cruise ship, they receive one or two each day during the season, each with its 1300 to 1800 passengers who stay only a day and leave at 5 each evening. Getting here is a problem foreign tourists avoid.
I offered to take a picture of a man and his wife in the park, later as I walked down the street he greeted me from a sidewalk café. We chatted for awhile, he is from LA and was here 10 years ago when the town was a third the present size, extending only a block beyond the zocolo. They were on a 14 day cruise from Ft Lauderdale to LA. Huatulco is strictly a tourist town, 80% are Mexicans and 20% foreigners. Prices are moderate this season, it is cruise ship season; Nov thru Feb will be surface travel season. My LA friend told me that Huatulco has a unique black clay found nowhere else so I trolled the tourist shops for some ceramic thing finding a black wall sconce covering for the cottage in Warner, hope Linnea likes it. About the third day out I thought “I have to buy Linnea something.” Later I thought ‘Well, I can get one more.” Now it is down to “I better leave my money at home or the van will be too full!”
Today is the ‘day of the dead’. Actually they have the first as the day for putting out food for children and the second for putting out food for adults. On Hallowe’en night kids dress up and go about looking for treats, just like at home. They greet the people with the word “Hallowe’en” rather than our ‘trick or treat’, results are the same. In the restaurant where we ate in the evening they had a display offering food and on the floor lay a cross made of flowers, maybe 4 feet long. It is a three day event. They also burn incense so I got some copal incense at the Mercado, not as an offering but because the copal tree is the most lovely smelling of trees as you walk by it and I hope the incense will have a similar odor. They sell it especially for these days.
That evening, after dark, the kids returned out of this world excited about snorkeling. They had seen colorful fish, coral, caves, sea rays and all sorts of things even Discovery Channel does not have. They wanted to go back tomorrow but the combination of time restraint and the sunburns that would have turned into pain restrained them. Naomi insisted that I snorkel, it was so good but I declined. They were all burnt, some more crisp than others. It took Naomi 4 days to recover but it was worth it. So we stayed the second night there.
They were not too tired for Elena to ask where La Michoacana was. When I refused to find it for them, Elena went out, with me following, and asked a person in the Mercado in perfect Spanish “A donde se enquentra La Michoacana?” She didn’t understand the reply but she had done her part so we all went, it was on the corner only two blocks away.
- Grandpa
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