Jake and January's Excellent Adventure

Arriving on Thursday afternoon in Cancun from cold, snowy, go Sox, mind-your-own-business New England couldn't be any more of a sensory reversal. Instead of dropping r's they're now rolling by you in every possible direction. E.g. the bottle of water we bought outside the terminal was muy carro  at $4 USD, but it didn't matter because it was so unbelievably hot we would easily have paid twice that.  After getting royally screwed by the rental car place (an apparent right of passage in these parts) we braved the perils of unfamiliar traffic laws and speed limits listed in km/h and made our way south. "100km/h just seems like so much, but it actually isn't," January remarked at one point. The view from the balcony. Our apartment is in a gated "neighborhood" in the jungle, a few minutes drive down a dirt road off the main highway that runs along the eastern edge of the state of Quintana Roo. We have a large balcony overlooking the tree lined foot pa...

So this is it, y'all...  We're leaving tomorrow at 4:30am to catch a flight from Boston to Cancun. From there we'll rent a car and drive about an hour south along the edge of the Yucatan Peninsula to a little flat we are renting in the town of Akumal, our home for the next three months.  Most people come to this part of the world to lay out on the beach, soak up the sun, go clubbing, and drink liver-decimating amounts of tequila, all of which we intend to do. (Okay, we'll probably go easy on the clubbing and tequila.) But in addition to all the relaxing stuff, we will also be taking three technical scuba diving courses that will put us on the path to becoming certified cave divers. More on that in later posts. Gathering the 150lbs of dive gear we are bringing on this trip. This is Jake, by the way. Chances are I'll be doing the majority of the writing here, though hopefully January will be contributing every once in a while, too. Over the course of the next few mont...