We cruised back up the Yucatan coastline for a stop in Cozumel. After breakfast, we watched another cruise ship ease into the dock right beside us.
Brandon had booked an excursion to swim with dolphins, and the rest of us didn’t feel like doing that, so we decided to explore the town a bit. We headed off the ship.
I think the square mile right by the cruise ship dock is nothing more than tourist shops. We walked along the main drag, looking down alley after alley filled with storefronts.
We stopped in at many of them, admiring the way some of the displays claimed the items were “handmade by local craftsmen” when I’m pretty sure they were shipped in bulk from China. Luchador masks were a popular item, and I tried one on while I thought of my wrestling stage name. How about Revenge de la Rojo?
There were some cool stores where the goods were definitely handmade. Pepper bought a really nice leather fanny pack (is there a fancy name for those?) and some earrings. She collects earrings much like I collect ties: both of us probably have far too many, but it’s okay. I stumbled upon a cool hat that says COZ and it felt appropriate.
Both of us enjoyed using our pidgin Spanish as we chatted with the store owners. My Duolingo training hasn’t exactly made me an expert, but I could understand many of the signs and notices, and was able to have halting conversations with patient vendors. At one point, while Pepper was haggling with a vendor– a girl who looked to be about fourteen– I noticed a mural painted on a nearby wall. The closer you look at it, the stranger it gets.
We spent a few hours wandering the streets, and Pepper and Kricket were starting to complain about the heat.
We decided to head back to the ship for some food (of course) but it was a long walk back. We went along the shore, where there were some odd statues. It all began with a Derpy Fish, which I encouraged Kricket to emulate.
From there we passed the Happy Octopus…
The Bucktooth Snail…
Another (identical) Derpy Fish…
And even a Dancing Turtle…
Our last stop before the dock was a statue of General Rafael Melgar, who was famous for… something, I guess.
As we headed out of Cozumel toward Texas, we noticed a massive ship in the distance. It’s a bit hard to tell the scale in the photo.
Looking closer, we noticed it was the Icon of the Seas, the largest cruise ship in the world. She has a capacity of almost eight thousand passengers, with a crew complement of over two thousand. This happened to be her maiden voyage. On the left of the photo above, there are three other cruise ships. One is a Carnival ship that had followed us from Roatan (and is actually visible in the selfie of me and Pepper in that post). That means a total of six ships had docked in Cozumel that day! There were almost certainly more than twenty thousand people who left those ships to do some shopping or take excursions or explore the area. It must be a crazy life to work and live in Cozumel and have those ships pull into dock.
Late night snack tonight: deviled eggs.