Some of our staff at group tours recently had the opportunity to vacation in Cancun, and we want to share our experience with our readers to give tips for your next Cancun vacation!
Read Vacation in Cancun: Day One and Vacation in Cancun: Day Two
We woke early and found our travel companions in the lobby. We were all geared up and ready for our big fishing excursion. We had made arrangements the previous evening to meet Raul, who would be our cab driver for the day.
Raul pulled up in his little white Nissan which is typical of the cabs in Mexico, and was very excited to see us and start the 40 min drive south to the little fishing village of Puerto Morelos. Along the way, Raul, who spoke nearly perfect English, regaled us with stories of other residents and workers that he knew in the hotel zone. He was very friendly and didn’t mind the silly questions about whether or not the food at McDonald's in Mexico was any different than the one in the states. His response, by the way, was “I don’t know. I have never been to the USA but my kids LOVE it!” which tells me that, it is probably very similar. If you have never been in a cab in Mexico it is an experience all its own. There seem to be traffic laws and speed limits, but it appears as if no one is under any real obligation to follow them. Even with Raul, who in comparison was a very careful driver, there were several nerving moments.
We arrived in town soon and pulled up to the Hacienda Puerto Morelos. We said our good-byes to Raul, who agreed to come back for us in a few hours. Around to the rear of the hotel, we found Aquanaut Dive Adventures with whom we had arranged our fishing tour before we left home. My wife and I had met the owners during a snorkeling outing on our first visit to Mexico and had become fast friends with them. Our panga, which is a traditional Mexican fishing boat, arrived after a few minutes of waiting, and we were off into the ocean just like that!
The sun was high, the water was beautiful and the salty spray was splashing in my face. I loved it. This was a realization of a dream of mine and I was excited to be able to share it with my wife. Life was good! …at this point I looked over at my wife and realized that she was actually becoming quite sea-sick. She, being a few weeks pregnant, was told NOT to take motion sickness medication (even though, when we got back they gave it to her for morning sickness). Needless to say, it was not going well at all. She was willing to tough it out some so we continued trolling. After one small bite from a sail-fish, my wife was too sick to go on and our travel companions were bored of trolling. Our crew suggested that we take her in and come back out. This is was just the ticket for her and even though it was a waste of fishing time, they were happy to do it and allow the rest of us to make up the lost time.
We quickly made it back to shore where we learned that my co-worker's husband was also very sea-sick and had had enough. Now it was just me, my co-worker and two crewmen. My co-worker had taken motion sickness medicine and she was doing great. I had not taken anything and as we cruised back out past the reef to rougher water I continued to feel at home. Every passing swell reaffirming my pride in my Galway Irish heritage. I was “born to fish.”
Bottom fishing was more interactive and action-packed than trolling, so we switched to bottom rigs and bobbed some 80 feet over the reef below and waited for a bite. I was enjoying the breeze and truly loving being on the water and then I noticed far off on the horizon storm clouds building. The storm was in itself, wonderful. I was enjoying watching it until we noticed that it had turned toward us. It was too late to move out of the way so we gritted our teeth and waited for the rain and rain it did! It was rain like I had never experienced before. It poured down on us in great sheets. It had such an impact on the water’s surface that it seemed at times that it was raining up. It rained so hard that we could hardly see one another sitting 3 feet apart and we couldn’t hear anything but the downpour. As quickly as it started, it was over and we, being drenched from head to toe, got back to fishing.
Fishing, in theory, seems easy but it is much more taxing than one would imagine. The gear is so immense that reeling it in, which we had to do a lot because we kept losing our bait, was a laborious task. After two or three times reeling in from the bottom of the ocean, our arms were so tired that we were done. We did manage, with the help of our crew, to catch a small grouper and some sort of coral fish, but that was it. The crew was willing to go back to trolling for half an hour, but we were not exactly comfortable using the “Marine Toilet” (fishing tip: Marine Toilet= NO toilet on the boat, but they are happy to pull you back into the boat when you are done) and we were very wet and very tired so we decided to call the fishing excursion done. We headed back in to meet up with our respective spouses. The crew was very apologetic that was not able to catch anything, but between the sick passengers and the rain, one could hardly blame them. Although I did not land record mahi-mahi as I had dreamed the night before, I was still very pleased with our excursion.
We spent the rest of our time in Puerto Morelos having lunch, visiting with our friends that own the dive shop and shopping at the little markets around the town square. Raul came to pick us up right on schedule. The rest of the day at the resort was spent with everyone resting up from an eventful day.
