I just went from being freakishly excited to kinda bummed. I thought I had a great rapport with Al. Al was the world exploring motorcyclist from Canada. I met him at the hostel in Oaxaca (Part 4). He was our roommate. I hooked him up with a couchsurfing reference cos I thought he was awesome. I also fixed the issue with his blog when it bugged out on him. And he acted like he was sooooo grateful. We've even emailed each other 2-3 times. Well, I just read his blog about the trip and apparently his roommate "Shindy" from India was busy chasing boys :( And that is EVERYTHING he had to say about meeting us. Jeez. I'm trying hard to think about what brought that on and I can't come up with anything. I did all the exploring by myself. I just spoke to Ben, Marek and Gary in a group. Oh well, can't please everyone.
The reason I was so mad excited is cos in a week I'm gonna be setting out on the road trip of my life. NYC to San Fran. The whole ride is through the forests and mountains. 12 days of wilderness. I know that right in this moment, I am living the best time of my life. I feel almost overwhelmed by how amazing life is right now. I feel like I don't deserve to be this insanely happy. If I wasn't hanging out with my sis right now, I don't think be able to handle this much joy. But she always makes me feel like I deserve to be spoiled beyond belief. She has spoiled me all my life. Rob would always complain about how Mansha and my parents keep me shrouded from the harsh realities of life.
Anywayyy, I know this blog was supposed to be about Mexico!! Soo... I know how I always exaggerate and use superlative adjectives for everything but Isla Holbox is IT. It's the place of my fantasies. It's the place I wanna bring my sister, my bro, my parents, my future husband. Especially my future husband. It's such a romantic place in the right way. I have never fantasized about the palatial resorts in the Maldives or Bora bora. Instead, I want a real paradise like Holbox. So, after a 3 hour bus ride from Cancun and a 30 min ferry ride, we reached Holbox. The hostel was simply perfect and though they didn't serve breakfast, the kick-ass location, clean A/C rooms, and awesome kitchen more than made up for it. The hostel was right by the beach too! I stayed in Holbox for 3-4 days and what's funny is that I was just supposed to stay one night. I'll start at the beginning though. I don't remember specifically what we did in Holbox each day but I'll just go activity wise. To give you an overview about Holbox, it's an island with a tiny town with more locals than tourists. The water is the PERFECT color and everything looks pretty but not touristy. Everyone uses golf carts to get around but the town part is barely 7-8 blocks across so you can walk everywhere. As soon as we landed at Holbox, we met Anto. He's another Aussie and he became our trip buddy for the next week. He is one badass traveler who works as an exercise physiologist when he isn't conquering the world. He also makes me feel extremely unfit every time I hang out around him.
My first night in Holbox was already a big dream come true. Just a month or so ago, I had posted a pic of bio-luminescent plankton on Reddit. Never in my million years did I imagine that I would be swimming in it soon after. What it is is basically small dots of plankton that glow when you agitate the water. Depending on the moonlight and the amount of plankton in the water and how still the water is, it can look bloody amazing. When you shake the water, it looks like tiny diamonds glittering in the water (plankton pics from Google).
The next awesome thing we did in Holbox was this tour that consisted of three islands. The first island was called Punta Mosquito. Holbox was mosquito hell. I had to toss out my insect repellent at the security check so the first night in Holbox was spent in misery. I had huge welts all over my skin. So "Punta Mosquito" didn't sound too appealing. But the boat-guide was a chill guy and he encouraged us to jump in the water and chase after the gorgeous flamingoes. The island has many many packs(?) of flamingoes and everytime we tried to get close to them, all of them flew away in a big wave of pink. The boat ride itself was so much fun cos the guy was going SUPER fast.
The reason I was so mad excited is cos in a week I'm gonna be setting out on the road trip of my life. NYC to San Fran. The whole ride is through the forests and mountains. 12 days of wilderness. I know that right in this moment, I am living the best time of my life. I feel almost overwhelmed by how amazing life is right now. I feel like I don't deserve to be this insanely happy. If I wasn't hanging out with my sis right now, I don't think be able to handle this much joy. But she always makes me feel like I deserve to be spoiled beyond belief. She has spoiled me all my life. Rob would always complain about how Mansha and my parents keep me shrouded from the harsh realities of life.
Anywayyy, I know this blog was supposed to be about Mexico!! Soo... I know how I always exaggerate and use superlative adjectives for everything but Isla Holbox is IT. It's the place of my fantasies. It's the place I wanna bring my sister, my bro, my parents, my future husband. Especially my future husband. It's such a romantic place in the right way. I have never fantasized about the palatial resorts in the Maldives or Bora bora. Instead, I want a real paradise like Holbox. So, after a 3 hour bus ride from Cancun and a 30 min ferry ride, we reached Holbox. The hostel was simply perfect and though they didn't serve breakfast, the kick-ass location, clean A/C rooms, and awesome kitchen more than made up for it. The hostel was right by the beach too! I stayed in Holbox for 3-4 days and what's funny is that I was just supposed to stay one night. I'll start at the beginning though. I don't remember specifically what we did in Holbox each day but I'll just go activity wise. To give you an overview about Holbox, it's an island with a tiny town with more locals than tourists. The water is the PERFECT color and everything looks pretty but not touristy. Everyone uses golf carts to get around but the town part is barely 7-8 blocks across so you can walk everywhere. As soon as we landed at Holbox, we met Anto. He's another Aussie and he became our trip buddy for the next week. He is one badass traveler who works as an exercise physiologist when he isn't conquering the world. He also makes me feel extremely unfit every time I hang out around him.
My first night in Holbox was already a big dream come true. Just a month or so ago, I had posted a pic of bio-luminescent plankton on Reddit. Never in my million years did I imagine that I would be swimming in it soon after. What it is is basically small dots of plankton that glow when you agitate the water. Depending on the moonlight and the amount of plankton in the water and how still the water is, it can look bloody amazing. When you shake the water, it looks like tiny diamonds glittering in the water (plankton pics from Google).
 |
| This is close to what it looked like |
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| Best case scenario of what luminescent plankton can look like |
The second island , as far as I can remember, was called Punta Iguana. It was basically a very very swampy tropical island with this bubbling (and freezing cold) spring in the middle. We walked over boardwalks, passing by TONS of iguanas and then jumped into the freezing cold water. They also had this really high wooden structure that you could climb and get completely unobstructed views of the tiny island. The coolest part about this place was that we were on the only ones. I was having a ball imagining that we are on some episode of survivor and civilization has never reached the island.
I have no idea what the third island was called but it was tinyyy. It was pretty much just this single wooden house kinda structure and that's it. The boat ride was super fun and our captain was a total ladies man. Clare and I went and sat up in the front and it was sooooo awesome to be bumping around the water on super fast speed.
The next day was the highlight of our stay in Holbox and Mexico in general. So, basically I was supposed to leave Holbox in a day but I figured out a way where I could pay almost a 100 bucks more but still make it to my flight in time. We got unbelievably lucky as against all odds it turned out to be a great day to see the whale sharks. So I decided to stay and I am soooo glad I did. The captain of the boat, Marvin, was a super fun and somewhat too enthusiastic instructor for whale-shark seeing. He also claims that he is Che Guevera's grandson. We drove suppeerrrr fast on his boat and one of the highlights of my boat ride was me standing on the deck of his full-speed boat with Marvin holding on to me. What a crazy crazy rush! I have to admit that I was absolutely terrified of swimming with the whale sharks. These boys were easily over 10 feet long and I kept imagining being knocked out by their tails. Also, Marvin is the kinda instructor who grew up in the water so it was really hard for him to understand that someone wouldn't be comfortable in the water. He pretty much pushed me in the water, kept yelling at me to swim faster and then finally grabbed my waist and just dragged me along with him. However, the minute you see this crazy gigantic majestic creatures under the water, all the fear is simply replaced by deep awe. I got crazy lucky or perhaps unlucky because Marvin pretty much dragged me right to the mouth of the whale shark. He was probably way more confident than me but I was freaking out about being swallowed whole by them. But I dunno how in all that fear, I actually managed to put my hand inside the mouth of the whale shark to take a picture. I thought it would be some super cool sciencey look into the body of the whale shark but unfortunately the underwater camera didn't really have a flash so you can't tell much. The rest of Holbox was just more magical beach.. amazing sea food.. walking around the town for some crazy nightlife fun.. and tons and tons of mosquito repellant.
I have been completely torn about mentioning some other details here. Details about my crazy crush on Ben. But the whole point of writing this blog is to look back and relive some of the memories, and it's not fair to filter memories on the basis of convenience. Especially if it might be used thousand of years later as an important historical source :P So yeah.. I started to have a huge crush on Ben after the beach night from the last post. It's always a pattern with me and it might even be an unhealthy pattern. I am never into an guy until he shows interest in me. And then I become this crazy obsessed person. It was the same with Ben. My whole stay in Mexico was secretly tortured by liking Ben since that beach night. He seemed to be this really serious intense guy, who seemed super mature for his age and cmon, any guy who can write songs like that automatically becomes super sexy. I also had this whole image about how the rest of our stay in Mexico would be this romantic week of getting to know each other so well before fate pulls us apart. Lol. No such luck. I still have no idea about how Ben saw the rest of the week but it wasn't the same vision as me. In retrospect I almost feel bad for him cos he was stuck with this girl adoring him and following him around while he probably wanted to do his own thing. I have to admit that I did let my feelings for him cloud some of the awesomeness of my last week in Mexico but I managed to keep my sanity thanks to Clare. She would listen to my childish moanings and over analysis about every small Ben related thing and somehow manage to not make me look like a complete psycho. Oh well, I know for a fact that everything happens for a reason. And while it was quite an, er.. inconvenience at the time, I've had plenty of lessons to learn from the whole Ben-isode that's for sure.
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