Huevos Hitler

Today, in our first and only full day in Cancún, Emily and I did exactly what everyone comes to Cancún to do: we went to the beach. We had an easy morning, waking up slowly and easing into our day, and then we set off to catch the bus out of downtown and over to the coast.

We got dropped off somewhere along the long strip of hotels that makes up the Cancún coastline and started walking south looking for beach access. We eventually found it and as we made our way over a short pathway, we caught our first glimpse of the beautiful Caribbean Sea. The water here is just breathtaking. The first few meters are relatively shallow and the water is a light blue, which then shifts abruptly to a deeper teal as the coastline drops off and then shifts again just as abruptly to a deep blue. It's stunning. We walked down the coast, feet in the water, until we found a nice little spot to drop our stuff and hop in the water.

Once we finished our maritime fun, we headed out to find a place for lunch. We walked back up towards whence we came, since that seemed to be the spot for most of the restaurants. We took a peek at Señor Frog's (we figured, if you're gonna do something, do it 100%--including tourism), but we passed up the uninspiring menu and walked across the street to a smaller cafe that was much cuter and much more enticing foodwise. Little did we know what we were to find offered on the menu there:

Huevos Hitler!

WTF? Who came up with that name? I can't even remember what was included in the dish. Fried eggs and some other stuff, but none of it with any discernible relationship with their namesake. You may be disappointed to learn that neither of us ordered the Huevos Hitler. Understand, though, that no one likes to invite irony into their life, and consciously ordering such a meal would have tempted the fates far too much for my taste. Anyway, the food we did order was good, and lacked interesting labels, which was fine with us.

After lunch, we started walking far south towards the aquarium, seeking a fun activity that included air conditioning. We made it to the shopping center where the aquarium is, but it turned out to be the sort of place that specializes primarily in letting tourists swim with (sad, enslaved) dolphins and feed sharks. That wasn't quite what we were looking for, so we decided instead to catch a movie. Three hours of A/C for about 10 bucks seemed like an excellent deal today. We saw some Liam Neeson movie called Taken, where Neeson plays a badass searching for his kidnapped daughter and destroying everything in his path in his effort. But the particular movie choice wasn't really important--it was nice to just be inside for a while.

Finally, we went for one last stop at the beach, with the sun setting away from the Caribbean and some shade to keep us cool. As we walked towards the water, we were distracted by a large group of people standing in a semicircle and peering at something obviously very interesting. Emily and I poked our noses and saw the highlight of the day: sea turtles. Dozens of little baby sea turtles. A man was collecting them from a hole in the sand and putting them in a bucket for later release. As we looked around, we noted that the hotel (or someone) had set up a whole enclosure with little signs set up all in rows marking where sea turtle eggs were being kept (one woman remarked to me that her husband thought the enclosure with the signs looked like a graveyard for tourists eaten by sharks).

The way it works with the turtles is this: the hotel (or whoever runs this thing) collects the turtle eggs not long after they're laid to protect them from being stepped on and hurt by all of the people who use the beach. They put the eggs into the enclosure and mark them by date and turtle type. Then, when it's time, they dig the eggs (now baby turtles) up from the sand and collect them. They keep them overnight and then release them into the water the following night. It was an interesting operation, and the sea turtles were very cute (we'll post pictures soon).

That was basically it for our afternoon. We spent a few more minutes on the beach and then got on a bus and headed back downtown (and had a minor adventure finding our hostel again in the dark). But now we're here, and we're hungry, so we're off to dinner.

And this is Emily typing: I would like to add that while Michael has been entertaining you I have been stuck here with a guy who is now smoking watching a highly conservative talk show about how college kids have no morals and are sex maniacs while trying to decipher a copy of The Lord of the Rings in spanish, so I hope you all feel special and truly fully enjoyed this post.