Category: Mexico

Here are some photos from our whale shark trip. They are not very clear, but actually look much better than the printed originals. I used Picasa from Google Labs to clean them up. Click on them to see a larger version. Be sure to check out the original post that was posted August 16.

The first picture is his mouth. If you look under his mouth you can see a set of snorkeling fins. This can give you an idea of the size of the creature. Then there is a fin to the top right of the photo which gives you perspective again.

The water was very murky. I have been scuba diving where you could see well over 100 feet. Once I was in 120 feet of water and you could easily see the details of the bottom of the boat. The day these photos were taken the visibility was 20 feet or less. When you got far enough away from the fish to take a picture or even really see it from end to end the visibility would make it hard to even see that there was any animal there at all.

When I first jumped in the water I stuck my head in and looked for the shark. All I saw was mouth. A little disconcerting to say the least. The boat dumps you in at the front of the shark so that you can swim along with it. If you are not a strong swimmer, then you would miss the opportunity to see it. So getting out at the front, and therefore the mouth, you get a chance to see the whole fish.

It is amazingly difficult to get Internet access if you are not staying at a hotel with a connection. We live in México where there are Internet cafes on every other street corner. We recently took a trip to the Rio Grande Valley of Texas.

We stayed at a friend’s house who did not have Internet access. I had heard that certain restaurants had free wireless. The ones I tried were devoid of access. I tried convenience stores. I tried running around neighborhoods looking for open connections. I know it is illegal in some places to use a person’s open connection, but it did not matter as I never found any.

The only connection I found was at a Texas Information Center. But they were only open from 8:00 am to 6:00 pm. Our whole purpose for being in Texas was to do some serious shopping. This is our once a year trip to the border to get high dollar items for much cheaper than we can get them locally. So, the Information Center’s hours conflicted with our best times for being out and shopping. We had less than 48 hours to get all we needed.

Someone suggested the Library. We asked several people who had no clue as to where the library was. I looked up their address in the phone book and then could not find anyone who knew where that road was. It never occurred to me to call the Library and ask. That is so old school. You look stuff up on Google Maps…if you have Internet access.

Needless to say, after going a week without access because we were in a remote camping location in México, I was looking forward to being in the US where access should be fairly simple. I was sorely disappointed. For now, I will stick with the ease of access I have here.