, , , , ,

On the Road With Lifetime Collective: Holbox, Mexico Part Two

, , , , ,
DSCF8065.jpg

While swimming on a trip off the Caribbean coast, I asked myself, “Do I mention the two, large, shiny grey sharks directly below me in case chaos ensues… or keep it to myself so I don’t ruin the moment for the mothers and children swimming around us? Nah, don’t say anything. We’re fine.”

But that's another story, click here for the rest of that Holbox story on Medium.

Below is a quick recap of some of the other highlights and the rest of some of the images that didn't make it into the Medium post. 

Where We Stayed, What We Ate, Things We Did

Hotel Puerto Holbox — There are plenty of boutique hotels on the island that sit with beachfront access. We found staying to the west of town was quieter since the central area and east of it has more main streets, which means more pedestrian and diesel golf cart action. It seems slightly more peaceful on this side of town. Plus, Freddy's your boy when you stay here. He'll take care of anything — including chopping up some fresh coconuts for your rum.

Check them out on Trip Advisor here or their own site here. 

Los Peleones — This second storey spot is currently #1 on Trip Advisor for restaurants in Holbox, with a certificate of excellence for 2013. While it's not the cheapest place to find food on the island, it's by no means expensive for the service and food you get. Our plates were somewhere between $120-150pesos each. Beers are $30 while mix drinks are the standard $60-80pesos. We had some quality, homemade pasta and as attentive service as you'd ever want.

Follow them on Twitter or Facebook (personal page, not a brand page).

Cariocas Pizza — This was the first dinner we had on Isla Holbox. The place was packed, but they seemed to manage the rush well, even after a misstep with our order. The owner is from Napoli and must've brought over his mama's Italian recipes, because what they were serving on those pies was a damned fine marinara sauce. If you like pizza, which you do, go here.

Raices — We ate here two lunches in a row. It's a small palapa bar on a quiet part of the beach just out of town. Their fish ceviche could just be the best ceviche I've ever had. I'm not going to pretend I'm some kind of culinary expert or anything, but I eat a lot of ceviche. A lot. You get huge chunks of freshly caught fish, a great mix of lime, onions and peppers. Ask for the fresh chopped habanero for an added bonus.

I'd go back to the island just to eat here, but don't expect anything fancy, just good ceviche, a run-down palapa, cold beer and a view of the ocean.

The view at Raices Restaurant and Bar. Holbox, Mexico.

Golf Cart Rentals —  We rented ours from a spot next to Hotel Casa Barbara. The owners were mellow, just hanging outside with their friends on some plastic chairs. We didn't have ID and only half of what we needed to rent up front. When we suggested we'd go to a bank machine first to get the balance, they waved us off and just said, "See you in four hours. It's okay."

So basically, without ID, any proof of having funds or even so much as taking our names, we got to roll out for about $8 an hour. Not like you can really take off anywhere with their cart on this mini island. Good people, there are dozens of places to get carts, but go on and rent from them.

Vroom, Vroom. Golf Cart rentals on Holbox, heading out to Punta Mosquito.

 Pedro Rodriguez — This guy was the only person who ripped us off over the whole trip. At first he explained it was because we were late at night taking a taxi "after 11pm" that caused this higher-than-normal tariff. Taxis are about $30 pesos anywhere on the island unless you roll with our boy Pedro. Expect to pay more.

The next day he was the taxi that showed up at our hotel to take us to town and didn't even recognize us. This made for a good laugh when he again overcharged us, making up a different excuse that this side of the island is more expensive. Watch out for the sharply dressed, older cabbie with a moustache and gentleman's fedora. He's anything but. Pedro Rodriguez, we will meet again in this life or the next!

Punta Mosquito —  This is about as far east on the island you can go without getting wet first. There's a river that connects to another part of the island that's easy to cross by a short swim. Head out here on bike or with your golf cart. Bring a blanket and some cold drinks, it's a beauty for sunset — but bring some repellent too, once the witching hour hits you're going to be dealing with insects. 

 Tortas, Tacos and Late Night Gambling — I don't know how frequently the evening fair happens around Holbox, but it was on every night we were there. We grabbed street food to walk around with that was pesos on the dollar and delicious.

 


There was an arcade set up, foosball tournament and your other typical fair games: Test your pitching aim, shoot at targets with a wildly inaccurate bb gun, attempt to pop under-inflated balloons with dull darts. You know the scam, but you pay to play anyhow, because maybe tonight is your night for that big pink bunny. It's not.

However, there's one glimmer of hope within the usual cash grabs. A modified version of La Loteria (Mexican bingo) that involves the dealer rolling a set of oversized dice with Loteria symbols on each side. You place your bets on Loteria cards laid on the table, much like roulette. Shake, and read. If your symbol is called, it pays 6:1.

We took our first roll and we won big. $60 pesos big. Katy and I rode that high until the devil played us out. It was a hell of a ride, and there are two valuable lessons I learned that night: Never bet on the devil and always bring more change.

 

Take a look below at some more pictures and hit us up through the contact page if you have any questions or are thinking of heading to Holbox. If I remember some more items, or feel so inclined, I may update this page as a little Holbox resource.

More Photos of Holbox

, ,

On the Road with Lifetime Collective: Holbox, Mexico

, ,
Holbox before sunset, Mexico

In early August the lady and I headed over to Isla Holbox for a trip. We wound up documenting it for Lifetime Collective's On the Road series and the first instalment is now live on their blog. It will be a two part series, so head over there now and read Parte Uno!

Here are some pictures that aren't in the Lifetime post, with a handful or two more to come next week. Check out the current post to see more photos.

,

Weddingpress: Handmade Notebooks

,
mikee-letterpress-alignment.jpg

Now that the chaos that is The Wedding​ is over, we're going to start posting up some of the details of how the whole damned thing shook down. To say "it was an amazing day" would be a lazy way of putting it. It was the kind of day you wish you could have made longer or hit the loop button on just to do it all over again. Since neither were possible, we'll just be posting some of the finer points here over the next little while.

Make Notes

About two months before the wedding date, we flew up to Vancouver for our last-ditch run to ​get some things done for the wedding. "Things done" included Katy's final dress fitting, organizing shipments of goods and decorations to be brought back down to Mexico, and a wild handful of other items that took most waking hours.

One of those items was a shift on the National Press letterpress in Chris Swift's basement, our brother-in-law, graphic designer and all around good guy. We decided to hand make 80 notebooks that people would receive as a part of their welcome kits (post on that to come). The book would be called, Make Notes​, with the subtitle, To Remember the Best Days.​

It's a more upbeat version of a cheers we've been using almost exclusively for the last decade, "To remember better days. It won't always be this way."

A toast that eventually became shortened to, "To you know what." ​

​Chris had some plates made of our wedding logo for the letterpress, which Tyler Quarles hand designed. The logo would be used in a scaled down version at the base on the back cover of the notebook to tie it in with the rest of the kit. 

First step is to set up the plates for the front and back covers in separate runs, and press them on the card stock you see in the images above.

After that, there's a lot of stacking, folding, stapling and clipping of corners. To round all of the corners of these booklets, the clipping tool could only take care of five pages at a time, which Katy spent several nights doing. With 80 booklets that are 24 pages each, that's almost 400 clips in an already tedious process of duplicating book after book after book.

​To spare you the step by step on how you can burn hours upon hours of your life hand making notebooks, I'll just include some images here so you can see the process. If you are a designer or some kind of bride/groom-to-be, and want to know how to do this, feel free to use the contact form here and say, "Hi!"

All photos were taken by one of the closest friends a person could hope to have, Tom Nugent. ​

Here's your gallery, click the first image and use the Left​ and Right​ arrow keys to navigate through the process.

, , , ,

A Visit to Valladolid, Colonial Yucatán: Parte Uno

, , , ,
​One of the many coloured walls and courtyards in Valladolid, Yucatan.

The elusive Valladolid. A trip here had been put off for various reasons. Guests, work, this, that. Dammit, we'll make it if we have to bring every excuse with us. Finally, the snap decision came and we took a four day trip over last weekend to Valladolid. The room at Hotel Aurora was booked and the bus left at 6:30pm.

6:10pm — Still at my desk. Work is holding me up. Something had to get done and I couldn't and wouldn't have wanted to be off the radar during the 2hr40min bus ride from Playa del Carmen to Valladolid. "Sorry, we're going to have to postpone, even if just another day."

6:12pm — Flying V! Miracles do happen. I could abandon station at my desk. Katy's a girl scout and was at the ready with everything, organized and sitting at the door, waiting. Waiting. I shouted, "We're making moves!" slammed the laptop shut, tossed it in the bag, jumped into my shoes and headed to the front door, "Wait! Beer." 

We threw five Tecates into a cooler bag, hastily over supplied it with ice and ran. 

6:16pm — Waiting near our place for a cab, tapping our feet. There are always cabs, always. There were cabs, but they were all full. Call it dinner rush, high season or just shit luck. Every cab that went by had heads in seats. Four minutes is an eternity when you're this determined to make ground and get out of Dodge on a timer.

6:20pm​ — A cab! He argues about the rate. We don't care. Take the money you son of a bitch, just drive!

6:26pm — We pull into the ADO bus station and Katy hauls ahead to get the tickets while I pull behind with bags in tow. Run you fool! ​Despite what ADO's listing said online, the bus to Valladolid is leaving from the other station some 10+ zig-zag blocks away. Mother F—

6:27pm — ​"Taxi, taxi. Vámonos! Rapido!"

6:31pm — Pulling in, she asks, "Have we missed it?"

"There's a good chance of that," I said, "But go, run, I'll deal with this guy and the bags. Get the tickets."

I can see Katy's at the ticket counter behind a family making sense of some map. I run past the ticket guy, using my pale skin to throw him off with the scent of touristic confusion. Now past security (a loose term), I'm able to stop the driver from getting on the bus and closing the door.​

6:32pm — Thank whichever Saint it is that makes this place consistently behind schedule, even if sometimes only slightly. The bus was loaded and the driver was eager to get going, but accommodating. The two of us take our seats, look at each other and without having to say it, she knows I mean, "Beer!"

That's the best a can of cold Tecate will ever taste, if such a thing could be said about Tecate. Five empty and a bus ride down, Valladolid, arrived.

​Arriving at Hotel Aurora, Valladolid, Yucatan

What is this place?

Founded in 1543, this little gem of a colonial city is relatively small with a population of roughly 46,000. However, the area included in the population count is 945km², which is far larger than the fifteen square blocks in size that the town feels like.

When you walk around Valladolid you feel like you're in a small town. Some intersections are busy with traffic directors signalling lines of cars left and right, but, others are quiet cobblestone streets. Streets that let you stumble around in the middle without risking the strike of a car, give or take. 

Mercado Municipal

The Municipal Market. An authentic Mexican meat market run by men in butcher aprons, cowboy hats and moustaches. A vegetable market with elderly Mayan women as the main proprietors. Possibly husband and wife on either side of the meat/produce division, tending to their respective talents.

The women organize their vegetables, fruits and spices. Watching as you pass by, pointing out their colourful displays. The men work with cleavers and their hands. Behind them, signs identifying their specialty and name. "Ask for Tony, ask for Luis."

Ruben and Manuel looked to not only be the most applied in their work, but had the best cuts and variety. Luis seems to be your man if you're interested in poultry and abandonment.

Each sign is hand painted and appears to hold sponsorship by Zapaterias Ivan, a shoe store in town. Ivan the entrepreneur, or: Ivan the conglomerate.​

​Outside of the market is a strip of other small shops, shoemakers and a couple of dated, mini arcades. The market is not a polished star on a map, it's where locals come to get their fixings. This isn't a tourist attraction, although we're clearly tourists and attracted to the sight of butchers and organized chaos. That's the thing about Valladolid at this point in its history. It isn't a tourist attraction. The entire town functions on an economy outside of tourism unlike that of nearby Tulum, Playa del Carmen or Cancun, none of which would likely exist without.

It's a real piece of Mexico, only a short distance inland from the Caribbean coast. A collection of businesses and families otherwise unspoiled by price hikes, taking tourists for what they're worth, hawking wares at passersby and all of the other trappings.

How long can a magical little world like this exist without the tourbus of a visitor's economy finding it? It may not be long. Looks like local tour group and makeshift Disneyland, Xcaret, has already got its sights set. Included in their tours around to local ruins, cenotes and other archeological sites is a lunch stop in Valladolid. The tourbus stops midday out front of a restaurant that, aside from it being a little too polished, you'd otherwise expect to be local. It's an Xcaret manufactured colonial courtyard, and it's the only place like it in a town of authenticity and beauty. Out come the fanny packs and Birkenstocks.

Not that we can say much, we're not locals. We're tourists, just the same as the Tommy Bahamas walking around. Although, something about group travel, timed stops and planted attractions takes the heart out of a place, you know?​

Aside from that, at the moment, the rest of the town is yours to wander and feel lost in a different world, even a different time in a way.

More to come...

To shorten the length of each post, I'll end this one here. We have at least one or two more worth of content about dining, drinking, antiquing and general wandering.​

 
, , , ,

How to Move to a Foreign Country and Acclimatize in Five Easy Steps

, , , ,

We moved to an unfamiliar place. We didn’t know the people, we didn’t know the streets or the landscape. In less than three weeks, we feel totally acclimatized and at home. Now I’m going to tell you how you can too!

1 — Drink. Lots

drink-up.jpg

Within the first week, you’re going to want to pretty much be a complete write-off. Aside from being the first thing you’ll want to do when you hit the beach, there is a psychology to it. Drunks move around from spot to spot more frequently and are far more talkative. It’s like hiring a more inquisitive, motivated version of yourself. All you have to pay them is liquor while you sit back and enjoy your new surroundings.

“If you’re one of those ranting, slurring, fall out of your chair drunks: skip the move all together and stay where you belong. You’re going to get eaten alive.”

Your new drunk employee will attempt to meet more bartenders and local patrons of the holes you’re going to crawl into. BFFT. Best Friends For Tonight! After relaxing for a week (or two, depending on your dedication to research) while your other-self does all the work is when the magic of the human mind starts to happen.

When you come to, you will know the lay of the land and have the beginnings of a small circle of friends. It will feel almost as though you have lived here in another life… because you have. Your drunk life last week. After your first cloudy walk around town, your brain will start filling in all the pieces, and your path to dropping, “I’m a local” to anyone and everyone that will listen has now begun.

This is the most crucial step of all: Taper the binging off immediately if you plan to actually survive.

2 — Walk it out

Don’t take taxis. We all know what passenger syndrome is. As a passenger, you rarely remember directions to your best friend’s house, let alone explaining the way home to a cabbie through a whisky-thick language barrier. Any distance a taxi can take you is too far, anyhow. Learn your location in a gradually growing radius. First get to know where you’ll be the most.

walkitout.jpg

Do they have rickshaws where you’re moving? Even better. Now you’re not physically doing anything, but you’re travelling slow enough to take in the streets. You’re also helping the lowest end of the local economy. Oh the places you’ll go! (Or won’t go, see below.)

3 — Don't Go to Gringo Joints

locals.jpg

You didn’t move to another country to hang out with more alcoholic Canadians, Americans, or whatever. Hit up the local spots.

“But how will I know if it’s a local spot?” you ask.

It doesn’t take math or science to know that everyone is staring at you and your plaid board shorts as you walk into a bar. I told you not to buy plaid shorts. What’s better, if it feels like they’re all making fun of you, it’s not just a hunch, they are. Suck it up. You’re pale as all hell, wearing a funny hat, Oakleys and you ordered a Piña Colada.

4 — Get Dark, Quickly

katy.jpeg

There’s not much you can do to expedite this other than by spending real time in the sun. Avoid pre-game tanning beds. A tan should always be earned, never purchased. If you’re getting as drunk as I’ve recommended, chances are you’ll pass out once or twice in the sun and speed things up a bit.

Don’t go lobster. “Burns peel, tans are for real, bro,” said someone in Cancun/Miami/The Okanagan.

Staying crisp is going to do one of three important things for you:

  1. Mixed with just the right amount of your perfect grasp of the local language it can bring down the cost of taxi rides.
  2. Mixed with a mean glare and tattoos from neck to toe, it will help back the merchants off from bothering you with their zipline tours and shoddy wares.
  3. Probably nothing, but you’ll look good! Good as hell.

5 — I’m a Local

Don’t ever use this. You’re not. However, now you’re a bit closer to feeling like you belong and can maybe even slap a few high-fives to your new besties (read: someone you’re pretty sure you met last week) on your way around town.