Our Trip to Cozumel…Part I

The American Airlines jet pulled away from the terminal at 7:05 in the morning destined for Dallas, Texas. I had managed to wedge myself into the middle seat of row 25, while Pam sat in her cramped middle seat on row 33. This was just one of the many new twists in air travel I was about to learn flying for the first time since COVID—when flying in “basic economy” being married does not guarantee you a seat next to your beloved. The second twist made itself known a few minutes later when the pilot came on the intercom with news that the flight path was being changed for unknown reasons and there would be a delay while everything got sorted out. And hour and twenty minutes later while still motionless on the tarmac at RIC, the pilot announced that we were free to proceed and that he would do his best to make up for lost time while aloft. Unfortunately for the bewildered couple from Short Pump, the delay cost us any chance of making our connecting flight into Cozumel. By the time we landed in Mexico, my body had to be painfully unfolded like a rusty pocket knife. A fellow passenger informed me that AA had refitted their planes a while back to make them even less comfortable for normal sized humans. Sweet.

Perhaps United Airlines would be an improvement, I thought as we settled in for our return flight from Cozumel six days later. For starters, our jet was an Airbus and gone were the pigmy seats. I had the legroom of old and was sitting on the aisle along side Pam. All would be well. Alas, a series of unfortunate circumstances conspired against us, turning what was supposed to be a 7 hour trip into a 14 and a half hour odyssey. My back of the envelope calculations inform me that on our two voyages to Cozumel and back we spent a total of 10 hours and fifteen minutes in the air and another 13 hours being buffeted about from one interminable line to another trying to make sense of a steady stream of screens, flashing lights, an impossible to understand signs pointing us forward, backwards and sideways. In the midst of one particularly Byzantine cattle call Pam says to me, “Question: would you rather fly to Cozumel or drive up 95 to Maine?” We smiled at each other. 

But, how was the actual trip, you ask?

Wonderful.

Whenever you travel somewhere then get home and start looking at all the pictures you took, you realize that photography is very hit and miss. Pictures distill your memories into frozen, one-dimensional images which you are glad to have but just don’t quite communicate what you were hoping to capture. So the best you can do is pick out the best of the lot and offer context which is what I will now attempt to do.

For most of our time at The Occidental this was our vantage point—the dwindling beach on the Caribbean Sea, the body of water that separates Cozumel Island from the mainland of Mexico and the Yucatán Peninsula. By the time we left some of the palm trees were holding on for dear life as the rough seas battered them relentlessly the last two days.

While most of the guests preferred the pool that was just beyond the stone wall behind us, we loved our spot just feet from the crashing waves. The place had a magnetic pull on us all week.

The resort seemed to have been cut very delicately out of the jungle. Each walkway was surrounded on all sides by thick vegetation including this bunch of bananas we passed under on our way to breakfast every morning.

Pam and I discovered that we very much like the all-inclusive concept whereby you can eat and drink anything your heart desires, anytime you want. This is especially nice when the view from your table looks like this…

Another advantage to resort living is the fact that every single time you leave your room in the morning, you return to a beautifully clean and freshly made bed. If only the help around here was as efficient.

While this tiny little patio might not look like much, it came with the advantage of jungle-insured privacy and a near constant delightful breeze…

On one of the rare occasions when we managed to pull ourselves away from the beach, there was a rented Jeep involved. With it we decided to explore the east side of the Island where there exists no electricity and no indoor plumbing, but lots of great shacks serving adult beverages and native cuisine, not to mention breathtaking scenery of rocky beaches. They were right about the shacks and the breathtaking scenery…

This blog has gotten a bit long, so I will wrap it up here and finish the rest of the story another time. Bottom line is that we had a great time just being together in a beautiful place with nothing to do.