Mexico – Page 38 – My Thought Spot

Underwater photos of whale sharks

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.

Whale Sharks!

Boy are those things big! We drove to the island of Holbox on Monday with a couple of friends. We played at the beach and basically bummed around on Monday evening. After the six hour drive, it was kinda nice to just bum. The mosquitoes about carried us off. And they said it is not even mosquito season right now.

Boats on the beach The hotel where we stayed was right near the beach. Not on the beach, but I don’t think walking a block was asking too much to get there. The water was very warm right near the shore, but as we got further out, it cooled off. You could walk out a long way before there was any significant drop off in depth. With the water calm as it was that evening, it was a great place to just swim. I enjoyed swimming until it felt like my arms were going to fall off. The visibility was pretty poor so we had trouble finding one of our snorkel and goggle sets when it was lost in 3.5 feet of water.

Tuesday morning we met with our tour boat. We took a 2 hour trip to where the whale sharks should have been. They don’t stay in the same spot from day to day, so you just have to get close to where they were seen yesterday and then putt around till you find them. There were 14 boats at one point looking for the whale sharks. We found some, but they did not stay at the surface. So we all spread out and started looking. Finally we caught up with a couple that stayed at James and David ready to jump in. the surface and let us swim with them. They were huge. We did not have the biggest ones to swim with. The one I got to be with was about 15-18 feet long. Some from our group were with one that was about 20-22 feet long.

We had some underwater disposable cameras. I will get those pics up soon. I hope they turned out nice. We did not have very good visibility to get good pictures. Also, you could not get far enough away from them to take a good picture and understand their size. I dove down to get a picture from underneath the shark, but when I got low enough to take a picture, I could not see the whale shark. It was just too murky.

Great trip. If you get the chance, then it is worth the time to do it. I don’t know what the going rate for the trip is as our friends that we went with do promotions for different tours and hotels. They got their trip free by going with this company and we paid about $65 (USD) each. The company we went with, Monkey’s Tours, were very professional. I imagine they are the most expensive tour company there.

Gnats and Telephone Poles

I ran through several clouds of gnats last week while running in south Texas. They certainly don’t go down very easily. They tend to get stuck in the back of the throat. Ick!

One day last week I got to do something enjoyable, besides get my protein fill of gnats. I noticed while running that there were telephone poles in regular succession. I was able to do some speed work by sprinting from one pole to the next and taking the next pole at a relaxed pace. They certainly were not 200 yards apart and therefore did not fit with my current interval plan, but it was something I could do without being at the track.

Today while running along a beach in Ciudad del Carmen, México I could have done the same thing with trash cans. It was amazing to see the number of trash cans they have right along a particular area where they obviously host quite a number of events. There was a section where the trash cans could not have been more than 20 yards apart for close to a half mile long.

Back to the land of Internet

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.

Road Trip!

Headed out of town for two weeks. A trip is always and adventure here in México. Sometimes more than others. This will be two weeks on the road with some stopping in between. All in all we will be driving about 8 days.

I am going to try and keep up with my running. May not post as often, depending on how the Internet access goes.

I am armed with a few books. I have my Ultramarathon Man that arrived on Tuesday night. It won’t last long. I am already 1/3 into it. Coast to Coast was not one of the books that fit into my wife’s suitcase coming back. It will come back with my son about the time we get back from our road trip. But, I also got a stack of Linux magazines that my wife brought home that should keep me somewhat entertained.

I will give a full book report on Ultramarathon Man when I get it all read, but let me just say up front, Dean Karnazes is not stable. I don’t know if he knows this, but he is obviously a textbook ADD/ADHD case. Good for him that he found a way to channel that. Too bad it took him till he was 30 to find an outlet.