¡Viva Mexico! Day Five: Thar she blows!

Over the weekend to celebrate our birthdays, Margaret and I went to the Oregon coast. (I know... how decadent to go from the Atlantic coast to the Pacific in the space of 5 days, but we've got to get all the travel in we can before May 7.) We were staying in a small coastal town and the two seafood restaurants near our B&B were the Sea Hag and the Blow Hole. We'd already eaten at the Sea Hag on a previous visit, so for my birthday dinner, I thought eating at a place called "The Blow Hole" would be pretty memorable. Sadly, though, the name was more memorable than the food. For example, the house dressing was "Marionberry hazelnut honey mustard." What kind of combo is THAT?

Well, speaking of blow holes, let's continue on to day five of our Mexican adventures, shall we? This was the day that we were going snorkeling on the reef off the coast of the Yucatan. We were pretty excited and both Margaret and I were feeling pretty good, so we didn't think that we were going to have any problems. In fact, I felt good enough to have quite a bit of breakfast, including cereal, yogurt, and a maple-pecan flavored milk box. There weren't any newlyweds all over each other on the bus out to the boat launch, so the trip was pretty uneventful. When we got there, we were all fitted with snorkel gear and we boarded the boat and headed out to the deep reef portion of the trip, which consisted of two dives--a deep and a shallow dive. The water was great and when I first got in, I felt fine. Now let me preface this next part with the fact that I never get car sick, sea sick, air sick, or motion sick, but something about looking underwater as I'm slowly rocking and watching the sea grass wave back and forth COMPLETELY nauseated me. Oh my gosh, I felt sick, but I toughed it out as I'd paid for the frickin' tour, I was going to ENJOY it! And what we saw WAS enjoyable. We saw tons of fish, a big sea turtle, a giant spotted lobster, and annoying Americans who didn't listen to the guide and kept stepping on the coral and sea fans ruining the ecosystem. Despite all the cool stuff we saw, I was EXTREMELY relieved when the guide brought us back to the boat for the trip to the shallow dive. I'd hoped that once I'd gotten out of the water I'd feel better.

Will snapped this picture en route to the shallow dive. And while it isn't my most flattering photo, it captures how I felt PERFECTLY! I briefly considered not going on the second dive but again I thought, "I PAID for this, for the love of God, I'm doing it!" I was okay for a bit, but maybe ten or fifteen minutes into the dive, I couldn't stand it anymore. I couldn't even concentrate I felt so nauseous. I decided I'd finally gotten my money's worth and could head back to the boat. Well of course by this time, we were 200 yards from the boat and I had to look forward to a long slog back feeling completely sick. (Okay, here's the part where you'll see why I brought up "The Blow Hole" in the beginning of the post.) Just as I'd started back to the boat, I started to throw up... and up.... and up! I guess between all that motion and all that dairy I had for breakfast was a losing combination. In hindsight, I was glad that I was so far from the boat and the group that no one saw me in my shame. After my stomach was completely devoid of contents, I actually felt a lot better and finished off the dive with the rest of the group. (I was really intent on getting my money's worth!) I found out later from a co-worker into diving that throwing up in the open ocean is called "chumming the fish" although I didn't have the wherewithal to stick around and see what kinds of fish my humiliation had attracted.

By the time we got back to shore, I felt fine and was even able to eat the provided lunch. Which, by the way, was great. They even offered drinks. We all ordered virgin piña coladas, which were excellent. Ours were the first to be made, but when we went back for seconds, we could tell that the blender hadn't been rinsed out, as it tasted a wee bit alcoholic. But just enough to settle my stomach.

After the lunch and with a buzz that only non-drinking Mormons can get from alcohol residue in a blender, we headed back and spent the rest of the day by the pool recovering from the dives. That night, we got the final gift from that fateful trip... Up to this point in the trip, Margaret had been religiously slathering herself with sunscreen, but only on her front, since she couldn't lay on her stomach as she is great with child. As she was getting dressed for bed, she noticed how the backs of her legs were hurting and discovered that there was a way for her to lay on her stomach... floating around snorkeling. After two straight hours of exposure without sunscreen, she got so sunburned on the backs of her legs that she was miserable most of the night. Oh well, now she has extremely tanned backs of her legs!