Cruising Part 4 - Cozumel (the wet half)

Getting to Cozumel, we saw a tremendous sight.  Sure the city is cool, but parked next to us was the current largest-ship on the planet, the Allure of the Seas.  When our ship was new, it also held that title for awhile, but this bad boy was longer, taller, and TWICE as wide as our ship.  Our cruise director didn't want any of us to have ship envy, so he devised a rather fun plan... but more on that at the end of the day.

In Cozumel, Josh & I really wanted to explore & make the day great for ourselves.  There were lots of reviews online about places to go, but we didn't want to get herded around with the other tourists for our last day of adventuring.  Our first stop was to go downtown:

Before leaving home, we found a few Geocache locations. We still had the geo-coin that we'd picked up in Ohio & we wanted to hide it some place far away.  We found the No-Name bar downtown, a place that looks pretty plain on the front, but then opens up into a gorgeous sea-side patio.  Our clue was that the cache box was "hanging in plain sight" which made it pretty easy to find in this rustic mailbox.

While we were there, we met a man, Tim, from Houston. He'd retired & planned to travel the world, but never got past Mexico.  We asked him where the best places to snorkel are & he sent us up the road to a place called Playa Azul.

The resort seemed exclusive, but following Tim's instructions, we just walked right through:

We got our own little cabana, for FREE!

And the water looked promising....

There were SO many shells on the beach there that it was kinda uncomfortable to walk:

 The snorkeling at Playa Azul was a little disappointing. The wildlife was really neat, but there wasn't much coral or rock formations to see. A taxi driver told us that much of the coral had been ruined due to recent cyclones.  Many of the resorts are trying to help it regrow, by putting out coral starters (You'll see some in our other pics).

My favorite fish of the day was a medium size fish with a leopard spot pattern. When I first noticed him he was bright blue like the water, but when he noticed me he sped below some rocks & turned brown & black right before my eyes!  I don't think I'd ever seen a fish change color in front of me before. At the next beach we saw another of the same fish, only it was yellow at the time. : )

The resort was nice, but not enough to keep us for the day. We grabbed a taxi & headed for the other beach that the locals talk about, what we thought was "Monivar" in the thick Spanish accents we heard, but what turned out to be:

 Money Bar! Ha ha ha.

Here they'd made their own start of a coral reef in a circular pattern.  It was a good start, but I'm sure it will be great in another decade or so.

This is one of the coral starters, and look who's inside:

 An eel! Eek!

 Granola from the ship made us very popular with the locals.

Since the snorkeling had been so devastated, we decided to call it a wrap on the wet stuff & went for a dry adventure next - the ruins of San Gervasio