If you get to New Orleans and have access to a vehicle I recommend a daytrip to this place. Around 40 minutes outside the city, my krewe and me went in January and it was 65F outside with good sun (on that note, I’d imagine this place in the summer to be absolutely festering, and would have an overpoweringly amazing smell!). We took the trail that I believe was just north of the visitor center; it was where the forest ranger at the center told us we’d be most likely to see some gators in the wild (he wasn’t lying!).
As we went in January, there wasn’t much in the way of flowers or leaves (from deciduous trees). However there were some incredible examples of swamplife plants:
And abound with little lizzies:
Which at first we thought would be a rarity, however there were brown and green ambystomas in abundance as we proceeded along the boardwalk. On that note, there was a boardwalk! I actually managed to not take a photo at all of the trail, which runs around a mile+ into the preserve, and is properly paved. Which I don’t believe is a bad thing, because as we proceeded became clear it sort of kept alligators from proceeding too far to your flank. But you had to keep a watchful eye. The first gators we saw were around 30 feet from the trail, and about 4′ in length; the second gator, around 25 feet from the trail, and 5′ in length; then a baby gator accompanying his mother, also 5′ in length; then gators closer to the shore; then on the shore, about 3′ from the trail, 6′ in length and growling as we approached! Okay, time to turn around!
baby gator! they’re so cute!
still plenty swamp-green in January.
We saw plenty of wildlife; some saw swamp rabbits, turtles, fishes, gators, but what I was really hoping we’d see, a great blue heron! It flew into our field of vision and landed on that pool of moss standing in the water. Wonderful! They’re so blue! As we crossed the bridge over the water it flew away, staying just 2′ above the waterline.
Leaving the preserve we toured the local area:
A fair number of houses and shops in the area are built on stilts. Personally I’ve never understood the point of wanting to live in a floodzone. The point at which you’re wiping your brow saying, “Whoo, good thing we built our house on stilts!” is exactly the point at which you shouldn’t be living where there’s a flood!
The greater St. Louis area where I grew up was heavily hit by the floods of 1993, and I remember six years later driving around parts of the outer county and seeing houses still being rebuilt on stilts, with rubble and remains nearby of the previous domicile, and wondering why would one want to risk losing it all again? Water is such a powerful natural force. Then again, if that’s your home I understand wanting to stay with where you live and what’s yours. And I’d totally consider living in New Orleans even though it’s clearly a floodzone (of course I’d hire the Dutch government to build a levee around my home!). But I digress.
We finished off the day at piggly wiggly, picking up some produce to grill back in New Orleans.
the banana-potato-beer-tire aisle inside piggly wiggly.
All of New Orleans and the surrounding area is full of these hybrid shops and stores that seem to sell a little bit of whatever the management is good at or thinks the surrounding area needs a supply of. Think of a shop that sells incense, but is primarily a brick museum, and is also where you can get passport photos taken. Or a hat store that also sells pet supplies and has free wi-fi. New Orleans is strange and beautiful like that.
Earlier this week I attended a funeral procession for Wendy Byrne, a longtime New Orleans resident and French Quarter bartender (I believe she lived in the Quarter also) who was tragically shot on 17 January by three teenage thugs (who have since been turned in by their mothers and turned over to criminal court to be tried as adults).
I didn’t know nor never met Wendy, but the day before her funeral procession I was drinking with mates at the Rawhide and judging by the passion of the bartender she clearly had an important and outstanding presence in the community. Tragic, but an opportunity to experience a second line which is really integral to the cultural foundation that makes up New Orleans life (and by extension, death).
(Read some official news about Wendy Byrne here and here)
Gathering outside of a pub on North Rampart on the boundary of the French Quarter, people spilling into the streets with drinks in hand to assist with the mourning. Eventually the carriage did a loop, proceeded down North Rampart before turning into the Quarter proper, stopping traffic for blocks on end.
As the carriage proceeds, those immediately behind the carriage are known as the first line, and include family and friends, those closest to the deceased. The jazz band follows behind them and marches while playing, the band typically consisting of various drums, tambourines, trombones, tuba, saxophones, etc.
The second line consist of those that follow behind the band which include those showing solidarity and quite often those who join in attracted to the music like a moth to a flame. Actually, people came up to me after the march had stopped and the band played its last number and asked me what was the purpose of the parade that they just participated in, proving the effect of music on the spirit so typical to New Orleans. It’s pretty powerful stuff.
And incredible to consider a city where a homicide could pull this many people together, many of them strangers to each other, and stop traffic for blocks and blocks on end, effectively shutting down an area of the city, yes to mourn but also to celebrate the passing of one of its residents. Death is inevitable, and while the situation is very tragic and sad, it’s also beautiful that Wendy’s spirit was able to organize this activity and fill the air with such joy.
The spot where Wendy lost her life. Cheers to Wendy!
spotted in Studio at Colton in New Orleans. makes one wonder about the word ‘Be’ and how it became removed. Was it an accident, the wear and tear of time; or the intent of some urban youth (Studio at Colton was a public school prior to Hurricane Katrina, during which damage was inflicted to the building making it unsuitable for learning and teaching) to subliminally deliver a message about the exploitation of working class youth to bolster territorial armies. If you’re familiar with New Orleans you know about the at times overwhelming military presence here, so the bumper sticker has a tinge of irony to it really.
We docked just after 8am alongisde another cruise ship. In fact, we docked with two other cruise ships at port. But the one we parked alongside was from Italy and considerably larger than our own ship. It didn’t dawn on me until later that, like I said, this ship is from Italy. Italy, on the other side of the Atlantic. our ship left from New Orleans and still took 3+ days to get to Cozumel, crossing the Gulf. How long were these people at sea to get to Cozumel? Crikey that’s some leisure living.
Anyhow at the end of the pier Nico and Ian were waiting for us. This was actually the point of the trip. To see these two, and deliver Martina to them for transport en route to Australia.
Wow. The last time I saw Ian was early October when he departed from Queens, NY en route to California on a motorcycle tour. From there he made his way to Holbox and met up with Nico whose been waiting tables out there. The idea was to get Martina to them and flying was simply not an option – too expensive, too much hassle, and clearly nowhere near as much fun as we’ve had here. Holbox is located around the other side of the peninsula, closer to where we were in Progreso yesterday, but nonetheless they met us here. We rented a jeep, and quickly got out of town and went scoping for some waves.
We found some good strong waves, salty water, and fresh beach. We were pretty much all alone on the east side of the island. Granted the water was so strong that we couldn’t go too far out but we spent some time here, had some beers at a local stand, a picnic on the beach with some food that we brought from the ship, and then headed back into town to find some snorkeling equipment and a proper meal.
While heading back we stopped to inspect these two geysers that were spraying water a good 20 feet into the air. Near them were these pools of water that vibrated and filled with air-pressurized water every time the waves hit the rocks, a little bit of water finding its way through the rocks and to the surface. Amazing.
When in Cozumel, eat here! It away from the market area a little, and it’s a total dive restaurant, but it’s so good. The lady-owner cooks everything behind the counter and it’s all really fresh, I mean she doesn’t cut a tomato until you order it. Fresh! And cheap. We all ate bountifully for around $20! I recommend the coconut water!
Before Angie and I headed back to our home for the next 36 hours and we split ways with Martina, there’s another part to this story that lacks a visual counterpart. We went snorkeling! We had around 2 hours before we had to retrieve Martina’s bags from the ship, so we grabbed some gear and hit some beach just south of the ships. We found some access to the water where only 4 other people were scuba-diving. The water is amazing, the fish are amazing, the reef is incredible. Groupers, yellowtails, I think I saw a barracuda even. And this pool of really tiny yellow fish that were totally friendly and playful. Some people back on the boat reported seeing seahorse, 3′ wide starfish, and such. I’m not a skillful swimmer at sea so I wasn’t able to head too far out; any opportunity I get to go back I’d love to take a s.c.u.b.a. class, they sounded affordable and you don’t have to head too far out (just 150 feet from shore) to see some incredible sights.
Home for the next 36 hours. By the time we were headed back to the ship, another ship had docked at one of the other piers, for a total of four ships at Cozumel! Cozumel’s wikipedia entry currently says that there was a third pier before a hurricane in 2005 took it out; should they rebuild it, there could potentially be six cruise ships docked at any point, accounting for anywhere upwards of 20,000 people!
As for the cruise experience, it was something else. There was Maja in the dining hall; Ananais in the piano bar; Rob the Pianoman; and countless countless others that really made the experience worthwhile. Martina, Angie and I clearly had the advantage too, as we were always one step ahead of the pack, and went about things the unorthodox path in order to maximize our experience. Twice even we were asked by others on the boat, “Are you artists?” because it was clear we went about things a different way. We were the first ones off and the last ones back on.
We found out the ship had a crew of roughly 900 people, many of whom go unseen for days on end, and workers are committed to six month contracts. They work long hours and really commit their lives to making sure ours is taken care of. It’s an odd position to be placed in, but it’s people – you talk to them, hear their stories, and they really make it worthwhile. They come from all over – Bosnia, India, Phillipines, Russia, USA – and they’re all crammed into their own deck and at sea for months. It’s an incredibly weird construct that humans have come up with, the cruise ship. With advances in technology you can stay connected to the world via the Internet (for a pretty penny) and there’s now satellite television round the clock; some people ride these things continually, live on them for months out of the year. It’s a world unto itself.
The final day at sea flew by, as we zipped back across the Gulf doing nearly 24-26 knots (en route to Mexico we spent most of our time around 16 knots by comparison). Angie and I were a little silent without Martina and mostly spent the day on the pool deck reading and recovering before we arrived back in New Orleans the next morning, bright and early debarkation began at 7am! Whoop whoop.
Re-entering the Missisissippi delta at night. Some land can be seen intersecting the moonlight, with lights on the horizon from small towns or oil refineries or the like. Welcome home.
(Next: back in New Orleans, some Prospect 1 art, back to it)
While you go on these cruise ships to relax, to really take advantage of the adventure you have to get up!
We docked at Progreso and disembarked at 7am! Angie, Martina and I were on the first shuttle bus to the end of the pier:
there’s a reason why you need a shuttle bus to drive the pier. It’s over 4 miles long! That building on the horizon is the halfway point, and is where the pier terminated until about 30 years ago when they built it further out to accomodate the then-bourgeoning cruise industry. 4 mile pier!
We hit the town of Progreso a little after 8am and were on a mission. There were two “tours” of Progreso available, and we decided on the tour of Dzibilchaltun for it’s Mayan ruins and sinkhole, the Xlacah Cenote (oooooh yeah!). However on the boat they wanted $56 per person and grouped people on an actual tour bus with guideperson and didn’t promise much else other than you would see the sights. We paraded through the market where the pier touched the land and found guides there offering the same tour as the ones sponsored on the boat for $29/person – an alternative tour though that we needed to round up 8 people to fit into a van and didn’t depart for over 2 hours! This didn’t quite meet our desires. We decided to hit the beach and travel further away from the market merchants and see what we could find in terms of transport and offers.
As we were the first ones to hit the beach, we quickly met this guy Jean from Florida who has satisfying become “stuck” in Puerto Progreso, Mexico. We told him what we were looking for, a cheap, authentic guide to the Mayan ruins at Dzibilchaltun. He works a bar down the beach and gets punters to stop by for drinks but knew the locals and looked into the situation for us. He got us in touch with a friend of his, Kiko, and bam we had ourselves a soon-to-be college graduate driving us around the highways of Progreso at 9am!
It doesn’t get any better than this. Kiko offered to turn the a/c on and we were all replied “No no we’re fine!” We were a full hour ahead of those tour busses, and best of all we got the all-inclusive tour, guide, and ticket to the ruins for a bargain $25/head!
Quickly getting into it, the grounds at Dzibilchaltun are f*%^ing awesome!! Do you see that temple in the distance? (zoom in to see it if you can’t) That’s the Temple of the Seven Dolls (even though Martina counted eight!). And during the first equinox, the sun can be seen in the temple corridor, like an architectural calendar. Bloody amazing. A calendar and sense of time all dependent on celestial bodies, 2012 here we come!
But here’s the real reason why we came to Dzibilchaltun!:
Xlacah Cenote! A sinkhole (say cenote, kinda sounds like sinkhole) older than your grandma’s hairdo! Incredible. Crystal clear freshwater, complete with fishies that love to say hi, give a little nibble! The whole of the Yucatan has these underground waterways and sinkholes that stretch for miles, miles, miles. The whole of the Yucatan. The left side of the cenote in the image above is shallow, as in three inches shallow. There are many rocks which provide a natural path to the mid part of the pool which is entirely walkable at around 5′ depth. Then, up in the top-right the deep part of the pool is deeeeep. Around 140 feet deep! And leads to some tunnels that connect to other cenotes all over the Yucatan. This place is amazing man. And the water is a constant perfect temperature.
Now there’s an incredible part to this day and the entire journey that is missing a visual counterpart. Kiko drove us back to Progreso after we were done swimming (like I said, some of the “official” tour groups came along while we were in the water and they didn’t even get in – Loooosers!). We had just under 2 hours before the boat departed so we told him we’d like to grab some food. He told us there was a McDonald’s, “No don’t turn on the air conditioning! NO by food we don’t mean McDonald’s!” We explained that we wanted what he would eat! Yucatan snackery! He took us to this bar right on the beach near where Jean and he work, and introduced us to this Yucatan-branded form of siesta, where you purchase a beer or liquor and get these countless trays – nearly 20 between the four of us – of treats, snacks, appetizers. It was ridiculous, they kept bringing food! Salsa, habanero sauce, tortilla wrapped delights, and in particular these two appetizers, one made from a seed that had the same consistency as a deviled egg yolk stuck inside an avocado, but it was a single seed; and the other made from some tiny seed that Kiko couldn’t translate. The seed is converted into several foods, included a clumpy substance similar to dried out brown sugar; another that is ground up with oil and looks like a darker form of hummus. Whatever those two foods are I have to find out! But seriously we bought 8 beers – I tipped Kiko by buying his beers – and refueled on some authentic cuisines! Yessir!
So getting back onto the boat was the best part. We all sware that we weren’t the only ones on the last bus back down the 4 mile pier, and you can see other people in the background heading to the boat. However we were the last ones on the boat! And as we were meandering back down the pier people all over the boat started waving at us, signaling to hurry back to the boat. “C’mon you guys, we’re ready to go!” As we stepped back onto the boat they quickly slammed the door behind us and asked us what room we were in because they didn’t have time to look us up – they had to trust we were legit passengers – and informed us we had less than 2 minutes until they raised anchor and headed back out to sea!
The day didn’t demand much in the way of activity or excitement really. We all packed our bags and generally just lounged about waiting for the adventure to begin. Martina and I did stock up on “emergency chocolate”, our thoughts being that should the situation become dire we could always survive at sea on a block of Green & Black for a couple weeks. WTF were we thinking! Neither of us were really prepared for what we were about to encounter:
Oh Mm Gee. It got real once in the taxi driving to the pier and we could spot the tail-exhaust of the ship from about 3/4 mile away! The whole ‘cruise industry’ has this thing down to a science: the staff at the port greeted us and took our one check-in bag, it disappeared and was in our room by the time we got there! Angie, Martina and I got our ‘fun pass’ identification cards which guaranteed us to have fun… or else. Us 3 were bunking in a room that had a queen-sized bed and a bed that folded out of the wall. I remember walking into the room, quickly dropping our bags and Martina, upon spotting the nightlights that operated behind plexi contour art proclaiming “yeeeeeeaahhhhhh!!!!” and literally jumping up and down.
We exited, took a random path to start learning our home for the next several days and quickly found our way to the top:
Holy crap.
These things are humongous, and wild. And run like clockwork. Within our first hour they announced our life vest and life raft tutorial which sounds cumbersome but really wasn’t and is necessary, you never know. We did a 180 from the port and started heading downstream to the delta and out into the Gulf. Even considering the tutorial we had enough time to catch glimpses of the city on the horizon and even spotted the neighborhood Angie lives in from the boat:
Bywater area.
On the same token this following shot is of the Lower Ninth Ward. It’s hard to tell in this image but consider this is the same Lower Ninth pictured in my ‘on the Eve of Change‘ post:
Now I’ve never been on a cruise before, I had no idea what to expect. In short these things are designed to pamper. It’s incredible, and pretty ridiculous, in an amazing way. Geez that doesn’t actually tell you anything does it! Okay, your bedroom is “turned down” twice a day – cleaned, changed, made anew; food is limitless, seriously you can eat your body weight daily if your intestines wouldn’t revolt; there’s round-the-clock entertainment in the form of musicians, gambling, bars, game rooms, stage performances, etc.; there’s a gym; multiple hot tubs and pools; there’s a sauna and spa for chrissake!; there’s even… an art gallery!
Clearly when I saw that I knew I was going to have some fun. is that Comic Sans? seriously? These ships were obviously designed in the early 90s! No but seriously there’s a real functioning art gallery on the ship, and yes we saw some people buying art, expensive art, like more expensive than all the expenses me and my party paid for the entire shebang. Times ten. People, are here to have fun, spend money, escape themselves, and be taken care of. and party.
The evening of the first full day on the ship, which we spent entirely at sea, there was a formal gathering and dinner which the captain emceed. Some people, “veteran cruisers” as they’re called, live for this. They came prepared. Not me, I packed two pairs of shorts, flip-flops and my boy scout belt! I didn’t even bring a towel, thinking it’d be so hot all the time I’d air dry when necessary (I forget the interior of places like these are always air-conditioned!); meanwhile these people packed jewelry and a pair of shoes for every day. Outclassed. Still, we had our fun:
Thanks – in part – to the performances, wisdom and hospitality of a one Rob the Pianoman.
If you take the Fantasy ship be sure to look this guy up. He plays at the Cleopatra Piano Bar (duh, he’s a Pianoman!). He made our night on several occassions. This Georgia boy will not disappoint, and his single-handed take on some classic songs (a la Dylan, Van Morrison, the Beatles) is not to be missed!
Next entry: Progreso, Dzibilchaltun, Mayan f*%^ing ruins!
