2010-08-23 (Monday) by Gregory Tucker.

In an effort that is purely technical, I am switching from GREGORYTUCKER.us to GregoryTucker.com. This site is staying up while the other one is under construction, but new updates are going there. Please update your bookmarks.

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2010-03-08 (Monday) by Gregory Tucker.

I put up some new photos from this weekend’s Portland Spirit cruise. We had a great time, and the weather really cooperated. I love Portland.

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2009-11-17 (Tuesday) by Gregory Tucker.

As if I couldn’t be any more proud of her, Aya performed wonderfully at the Ice Crystal Classic 2009 competition at Lloyd Center on Sunday and won her division of 4 skaters. She performed all her elements very well, and her program was original and exciting.

In addition we have photos of the competition.

Aya plans to enter the Love to Skate competition in Eugene, OR, currently scheduled for February 5-7, 2010. There are rumors the skating rink will close due to financial circumstances, so some local skaters, including Aya’s coach, are interested in supporting what may be the final event at that arena. Aya plans to continue with the Soaring program at the beta level by adding a backward crossover to the program. In addition she will add a technical program.

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2009-08-21 (Friday) by Gregory Tucker.

After a long day of packing and flying we arrived safely back in Portland. Nothing broken. Nothing lost. The kids are happy to be home.

Reon just lost Rock-Paper-Scissors to Aya, so he has to take a bath first. He is now throwing a temper trantrum.

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2009-08-21 (Friday) by Gregory Tucker.

Continuing with our theme of staying closer to the hotel, we decided to try the Jungle Tour. Several operators offer variations of this tour, which include a 45-minute ride to Punta Nizuc through the ocean jungle (marine plants), a 45-minute snorkel on the reef, and a 45-minute return ride. Our operator, Aqua World, which has a representative booth at the Hilton, offers rides on jet-ski like wave runners. Reon and Aya enjoyed the rides, though not the snorkeling. Michiko enjoyed the snorkeling though not the wave runner rides. I enjoyed both. The snorkeling was the best of the three spots we hit this week. Dozens of large coral heads were protected from boats with yellow-buoyed ropes, and around these coral heads could be found hard and soft corals, tubes, 2-3’ fans, and hundreds of fish. I did see some parrotfish, though I didn’t notice any pelagics during my brief stay there. The facilities at Aqua World were clean and nice, though the urinals were stopped up. We were disappointed that the included “lunch” consisted only of hamburgers, even though the outdoor (covered) restaurant had a couple dozen items on the menu. Tours run every 3 hours. We did the 12PM tour, though the 9AM tour would have been preferred.

For an early dinner we returned to the fish place. This time we tried the Octopus Caviche, which was even more delightful than the Shrimp Caviche. We also tried the Garlic Grilled Fish and the Breaded Fish, which I thought were better than yesterday’s fried fish. The kids also seemed to like them, though Aya didn’t like the Caviche very much. Afterwards we went to the pool and prepared, hot and sun-burned, for the return trip home.

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2009-08-21 (Friday) by Gregory Tucker.

After four hard days of travel, we decided we needed a vacation from our vacation. We decided to stay closer to the hotel. We decided to go shopping. I figured no matter where we went Michiko would be disappointed, but the most European-style shopping area would disappoint her the least. We settled on the La Isla Mall at km 12.5 on the Hotel Zone, about 5 km from the Hilton. Although we arrived after 10am many of the shops still hadn’t opened, including Zara. We walked around a little bit, Michiko looked inside a few stores, and we left in under an hour. We stopped at another mall on the way back. This mall had a coffee shop with free Wifi, where I ordered a coffee and cookies for the kids. The cookies made the kids hyper and restless, but at least I got 45 minutes of connect time for a nominal price.

One of our major goals was to find the fish restaurant Michiko discovered on the Internet. It was only 1.5 km from the Hilton, on the west (harbor) side of the Zona Hotelera, in front of the Royal Solaris Cancun hotel, right next to a Retorno (designated U-Turn lane). The restaurant, if you can call it that, consists of a single permanent covered structure, two tents where they prepare the food, several umbrellas, card tables and plastic chairs. There is no running water, electricity, or gas. The restaurant has no name and no sign in front. Tourists seldom frequent the place, and the waitresses don’t speak English. They accept only cash in Pesos.

In a nutshell, the restaurant was just what we wanted. The food was incredibly simple and fresh. The Shrimp Ceviche was delightful—for me anything with cilantro can’t fail. The fish was light and fresh. We ordered the fried fish, but they also served it grilled with a garlic sauce and breaded. The Fish Tacos were deep-fried and too oily for our taste. The grilled banana was prepared with a milky cream on top that didn’t suite my tastes very well either. But all things considered it was an interesting experience and well worth the trouble finding it.

After a brief return to the hotel, I took the kids to Wet ‘n Wild. The park is about 5 km from the hotel and contains a variety of slides, tubes, and pools. My expectations were low, so Wet ‘n Wild had no trouble exceeding them. The kids had fun, which is all I really expected. Apparently they have a pool where you can swim with a dolphin, but we never found it and the kids didn’t seem to care all that much anyway. Who cares about a dolphin when you have a wave pool?

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2009-08-19 (Wednesday) by Gregory Tucker.

We finally awoke before 7AM and departed shortly after 8AM. The destination for this day: Akumal. Our friend, Angie, recommended Akumal, and it is easy to see the charm. The town is small, easy-going, easy to navigate, and has wonderful opportunities for swimming, snorkeling, and diving. We arrived shortly after 10AM and went strait for Yal Ku Lagoon. Yal Ku requires an entrance fee, but is a nice starting spot for those with children to see hundreds of fish in relative ease. Because of equipment failures and time to change clothes, we didn’t enter the water until just after 11AM. Visibility was poor immediately inside the water of the lagoon, but visibility improved once we spread out a little bit. We saw a number of habitats including sandy bottoms, rocky bottoms, and plants along the shore, though the area contains no hard coral. We did see soft coral and hundreds of fish, mostly local shore and reef-dwellers but no pelagic fish. The area is famous for sea turtles, but we did not see any inside the lagoon, even though we spent nearly two hours in the water. We enjoyed it but we were tired.

At the recommendation of Angie and the local guide, we ate lunch La Vida Buena, which caters mostly to tourists. The restaurant mostly sells a wonderful view of the ocean and a chance to relax for an hour. Although a bit pricy, the food was mostly unspectacular. The Lime Soup was too salty and tasted like Minestrone, and the fish fillet plates were also too salty and contained too much flavoring.

On the way back we stopped at the Aktun Chen park for a swim in the Cenote. The park offers three different activities: walking and running a line in the canopy, walking in a cave, and swimming in the Cenote. The kids chose the latter, and despite my initial reservations I was pleasantly surprised by the experience. The water was clean and cool, and the four caverns were spacious albeit shallow in some areas. I enjoyed it more than I expected, and Aya really enjoyed it more than swimming in the ocean. Aya is still too scared to put on her mask and snorkel, so she swims along with us. I believe she preferred the Aktun Chen Cenote swim because there was more too see above the water and fewer waves. Michiko got out first, then Reon shortly afterwards when he started shivering. Even though I was cold too, I kept swimming with Aya another 15 minutes. Aya didn’t want to leave.

We drove strait back to the hotel and ate dinner at the hotel restaurant Mitachi. Although it has a Japanese-sounding name and serves some Japanese dishes, it is really an American grill. As with lunch, the restaurant was over-priced and unspectacular, but also offered a nice view of the ocean. The sushi appetizer was fine. Michiko’s Ceviche was bland and insufficient. My vegetable tempura was completely wrong (probably the batter and oil were incorrect). However, the kids meals were well-portioned and sufficient for Reon who normally eats off the adult menu. In addition Reon’s grilled chicken plate contained a lot of vegetables—a rare treat for a kid’s menu, and even more rare in Mexico.

Photos are here.

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2009-08-19 (Wednesday) by Gregory Tucker.

On day 3 of our Cancun vacation we decided to visit Chichen Itza, which the 1000 Places to Visit book lists as one of its choices. We originally planned to visit it first thing upon our arrival, but timing was difficult. We arrived late in the evening and expected trouble waking up early on Day 1. Day 1 was a Saturday, which is more crowded than weekdays, and Sundays are completely hopeless because entrance is free. Although we pushed Chichen Itza back to day 3, we woke up late anyway.

We arrived at the city shortly after noon, in time for lunch. We found a small restaurant on the main strip from the expressway to the ruins entrance and we all ordered the special platter, which is a local favorite. The waiter was attentive and friendly, and happy to struggle with communication in English, but the restaurant was otherwise empty of other customers. Michiko also ordered the Lime Soup, which was packed with chicken, tortilla strips, and lime, and I had to watch them devour the soup in a shark feeding frenzy. (I have witnessed feeding frenzies on video and live in the GBR off Australia. This site wasn’t much different.)

At Chichen Itza we decided again to hire a guide. The cost was nominal and he was easily worth the price for putting the city, the ruins, and the symbols in context. The tour of Chichen Itza took around 3 hours, after which we were tired. Unlike the ruins of Coba, souvenir vendors were found throughout most of the compounds. Michiko ignored most of the souvenirs, but finally found a necklace at the jewelry shop near the entrance for US$40.

There is so much that is and could be written about Chichen Itza that I won’t attempt to repeat it here, but I will say (to Michiko’s disgust) that I am almost as impressed with the restoration efforts as I am with the original buildings. Not only did the anthropologists have to rebuild much of the original structures, but they had to document the location of the stones that they found, remove the trees and debris, and piece the exteriors back together around the intact foundations. In addition they had to piece together the relevance and meaning of the objects they found.

On the way home we missed the signs for one of the Cenotes we had planned to visit. We decided to take the local highway back to Cancun, hoping to find a restaurant for dinner. This was a mistake because none of the towns has passable food service, the road was slower and more dangerous, and we got lost in Cancun city. We had to stop at 3 gas stations to ask for directions, but we finally got back to the hotel around 10PM (having never stopped for dinner).

Pictures are here.

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2009-08-17 (Monday) by Gregory Tucker.

After the long Saturday we woke up late on Sunday. With a late start we left for Coba, with the hopes of seeing the ruins of Coba, two cenotes (underground caverns or sinkholes), and the ruins of Tulum. The freeway didn’t exit where I expected (based on our cheap map), so we had to detour about 40km. In addition, we were delayed 30+ minutes by a highway accident. We ate lunch near the ruins of Coba and arrived at the ruins of Coba around 3PM. (I ate the lime soup, Reon had chicken tacos, and Michiko and Aya at the grilled fish. The lime soup was very popular, and Michiko was very happy with the fish and the Spanish rice. Reon also seemed to enjoy his tacos, which weren’t prepared the Tex-Mex way.)

The ruins were wonderful. We hired a guide to show us around the main excavation (300 Pesos). We also hired a bike to take us to the temple (95 Pesos). The entire site has the feeling of a work in progress. In fact most of the ruins were excavated only recently, but many mounds remain to be excavated. Once the guide pointed them out, they were easy to see. According to the guide, only 5% of the area has been excavated, meaning archeologists will be busy for a long time to come.

We could see many instances of plants growing along the excavated buildings. If allowed to grow, the plants will eventually break apart the surface of the buildings and cover the mound with dirt and roots. For the older sites, the archeologists have to remove the trees, plants and debris, record the locations of stones, dig until they hit the foundation, then reconstruct the surface of the building using the removed stones. The basic shapes are probably very accurate, but some detail is inevitably lost. Although the ruins reverted to their stony color, the Mayans probably painted them with organic red bases and other colors for trim. In other words, they were probably rich and vibrant with colors.

Our guide was Mayan, and he was somewhat defensive of depictions of human sacrifices among Mayans. The Mayans, he claimed, never allowed human sacrifices and never performed such rituals. Sacrificial rituals were performed in Chichen Itza, which arise in prominence after the fall of Coba, he claimed, due to Toltec conquest from the north, hence Chichen Itza is a hybrid of Maya and Toltec civilizations. Whether true or not, he was proud of his Mayan heritage, and I agree that Mel Gibson’s Apocolypto exaggerated not only the size of their temples but also the scale of human sacrifice that took place.

We never made it to Tulum as planned, but we did visit one Senote. The rest of the pictures are here.

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2009-08-17 (Monday) by Gregory Tucker.

After arriving late Friday night, we were very tired. We decided to drive south along the shore to Puerto Morelos, home of the world’s second largest barrier reef, for some snorkeling. We stopped along a random spot on the beach and got the equipment wet. Alas, the the quality of snorkeling just off the shore was very poor, so we packed up to search for a dive shop. We found Almost Heaven and booked a boat. We ate lunch at Juicy Rose’s Juice Bar and returned to the dive shop to wait (about 5 minutes) for Paco.

When Paco arrived we followed him down to his shop, where is boat was anchored. We climbed aboard the boat and drove about 15 minutes to the first spot. Aya panicked in the water and clung inside the life preserver that Paco dragged along with us. (It is clear Paco has experience with kids and snorkeling.) That first spot often has shark visitors, but you need to arrive early in the morning to see them–alas we didn’t see any. The second spot was more colorful and presented far more to see. We saw lots of parrotfish, schools of grouper, all kinds of fish I can no longer name, a dozen types of hard and soft coral, a barracuda, and even a small stingray about 1-foot wide.

According to Paco, the community of Morelos was the first in the world to petition for national protection of its ocean reefs. Many residents realized its natural bounty was being wiped out by its residents and its neighbors. Spearfishing had wiped out most lobster and crabs in the area (we didn’t see any). Other communities soon followed, and now Mexico has some of the best protected reefs in the world. Diving is not allowed and snorkelers must wear life jackets, ostensibly for their own protection but really to prevent further damage to the reefs. I admit I was tempted a couple times to take off the jacket and drop 10-15 feet for a closer look, but the ocean was too crowded with other tourists to permit a little harmless law-breaking.

Because my camera isn’t water-proof and has no housing, I didn’t get any photos of day 1.

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