04.09.2012 – 04.09.2012  33 °C

Early start this morning for D and I as we were heading off the boat and going dune buggy riding in the jungles surrounding Cozumel, Mexico! The boat docked about 8am-ish and I was surprised to see that we were docked next to another Carnival boat! Two in at once.. you can imagine the people wandering around the dock area!

Actually, the dock area surrounding the boat was pretty good… I was expecting some daggy shacky style shops but was very pleasantly surprised to see bucket loads of regular shops and restaurants surrounding the dock. We signed in for our tour and had a small amount of time to wander around and check out the shops. Plenty of buskers dressed up in Rio style “carnival” costumes and a couple fo random pirates… all trying to wheedle another dollar out of you for a photo opp!

Anyway, we boarded a small mini van with the other tourists who were taking our trip and headed out into the Mexican jungle in order for us to board our dune buggy style beasts and hit the mud! We’d been warned to bring a spare change of clothes and gosh I’m glad we took the advice cause when we arrived back I only had my hair that was not covered in mud (because I was wearing a helmet)… no kidding we were covered in mud.

Ok, so we were given our helmets, we put our stuff into lockers, I bought myself a bandana to cover my mouth and nose (and thank goodness I had that on) and we headed out to our buggies! D took the first go at driving, we buckled ourselves in and our engine was started… Bit of background on the buggies… not much in the way in comfort! No power steering, suspension, gears and the harnesses are fairly caked with mud meaning not always working…. Hmmmm… To be fair, its pretty much what I expected so it wasn’t as if I was surprised or anything. Our group drove in convoy with the passenger using hand signals to identify what the driver needed to be doing.. ie raised fist means brake, raised hand means slow down etc.

We started out and immediately went thru a big puddle of mud. It was at this point I decided I probably shouldn’t have worn my white, water proof sneakers. The water proofness was good, the whiteness not so good! First puddle down and already we are both splattered with mud!!! Doesn’t bode well for us to be clean at the end of the trip! D drove our buggy hell for leather so not only were we muddy but we were also jolted over the innumerous holes.. Way too much fun!

After about 30mins of continual jolting and mud splashing we arrived at our first stopping spot at a watering hole, in this case an old Mayan Cenote. This particular island was used as a fertility island for the Mayans so presumably no human sacrifices in this cenote!! The water hole itself had a very overpowering sulphuric odour…. Holy dooly… Too strong for this little black duck. I sat on the side line whilst others jumped off a cliff into the pool or in D’s case a float thru the cenote. The smell was pretty overpowering and there were plenty of little bats flying around so didn’t really make me want to get my feet wet.

Straight after our interlude we jumped back into the dune buggies and hit the road back towards the starting point. It was my turn to drive and my gosh it was hard work! Driving a car that has no suspension and no power steering is not easy when you are hitting big bumps every few seconds and getting the wheel jerked out of your hands. Lets put it this way, by the end of my driving section I had lost skin on both thumbs and had blisters on the palms of my hands… Soft or what? 🙂

I got to drive two of the highlights of the trip (and I have to admit it would have been better if D was doing the driving as opposed to me) I got to take us over a sand hill (and sort of drive on a 45 degree angle) and drive us over a jump.. Sandhill first.. By the time we had driven to the sand hill I had been driving for at least 15 mins and had already developed the blisters, so not feeling super confident. We get to the sand hill and the guy told us (we worked this out later because we didn’t understand him at first) that we needed to drive on the left hand side of the sand hill.. I attempted to follow the car in front of me but as soon as I hit the sand, the wheel jerked out of my hand and we came to a sudden stop on the top of the hill. Front and back wheels off the ground and us stuck… The two guides had to pick up our car (with us inside) and try and ease us off the hill… I can only imagine how hard this was for those two guys.. Meanwhile D and I were trying (without any luck) to move the wheel out of its locked position.. With both of us pulling as hard as possible we were unable to move the wheel.. Looking back on it, pretty funny but not funny at the time!

Ok, so we get to our next major activity, the jump (after another 5 mins or so of jolting along). Rule was turn this corner and then gun the engine as hard as you can until you get over the jump. The ladies in front of us (who were insane) made this look easy so I thought how hard could it be??? Hmm.. To start with I couldn’t get us around the corner.. D’s telling me to turn the wheel and I knew that I had it turned full lock and was still running into this fence.. Too funny! Another of the workers put me in reverse so I could get around the corner.. Let me tell you its pretty embarrassing when you can’t even get your buggy around a corner…. 🙂 Anyway, I finally got us going, I gunned the engine as much as it would go and we went sailing over the jump…. That sounds so prosaic… It was more like a big jolt over the jump and a huge bounce on the other side!!! Woohoo!!

We stopped just after the jump and all hopped out of our buggies to check out an old Mayan cave that would have been used during Hurricanes. Not much to see (it was just a cave) but it did give me a chance to stretch out my poor old limbs!! 🙂

D finished off our driving (thank goodness.. my arms and hands couldn’t have taken much more) and the last bit of our trip was the best part.. We got to this huge mud puddle (deeper than the buggy itself) and we went straight thru it! The mud coming up over the buggy was like a wave of mud. The buggy and us were absolutely swamped by mud. It was so fierce that both D and I had to take off our sunglasses just so we could see where we were going. I will probably never be this muddy ever again in my life, but oh, HOW MUCH FUN???

We finished off our time at the ATV base by trying to wash out the mud. Every one of us tried to get the mud out of our clothes.. I ended up just chucking mine in the bin (D did the same)… No matter how much washing I’m thinking you may never get the mud out of these clothes. They are ones we were happy to chuck out so no damage done! I do have to say that when we got back to the ship it did take me a good 30mins of sitting in the base of the shower trying to get the mud out of my swimmers and shoes! (Even funnier when you realise that the power went off for that whole time on the ship so I washed out everything by the light of my torch!)

Our day ended up with us watching another comedy show downstairs and hitting the bed a bit early.. So tired but such an exhilarating and SUPER FUN day!  (If anyone is wondering M spent the day on board the boat reading her book and relaxing…. Once you read my blog for tomorrow you’ll understand why I say that maybe I would have been better off doing the same thing!)

Song of the Day– Bob Marley, One Love