Morning all:

Non stop flights are great! Cincinnati to Cancún seems like a jaunt to the mall. OK, a bit of a stretch, but not that far off. Still, it is amazing that yesterday, by six-thirty in the morning, Marcia and I were enjoying ourselves swimming and being batted about by the ocean waves. That later we enjoyed café con leche and a cubano sandwich for lunch while still in Mexico, and then found ourselves home, scrounging around a near empty refrigerator, looking to try and assemble something resembling dinner is difficult to comprehend.

Since I traveled because I had business, going in a bit early to relax was a great idea. We met up with friends and spent last Saturday on a nearby island. Rather than sitting about we chartered a small boat and were taken to a nearby reef for a morning of snorkeling. Later our “captain” (what do you call someone who runs a forty-something year old 18-foot boat?) fixed us a great lunch with of fresh fish cooked over a roaring wood fire as the center piece of our excursion.

There is something really special about enjoying a great evening dinner in a restaurant accompanied by a band playing wonderful latino jazz music. Nearby we could hear the waves breaking and at some point happened to look down to see a crab go scurrying by on the white-tiled floor.

Our last morning in Cancún we spotted a mound with a marker that warned that turtle eggs had been re-buried there. This is the season that sea turtles the size of a kitchen table lumber ashore during the night to lay their eggs. Since the beaches are used all day long the various hotels have assembled teams of trained staff that watch for the turtles and then remove the eggs as soon as they are laid. They then re-bury them in an out of the way place—120 eggs in this case. The new mound is marked and dated and the five-month gestation period starts. Once hatched these same teams help secure a path for the young turtles into the ocean since, being a favorite food source for crabs and birds, only about thirty percent would otherwise make it. This was our ecology lesson for the week.

This whole weekend the temperature will be in the lower to mid nineties with high humidity. I think that this is a “welcome home” gift. Not only that, but the afternoon before we left, our 40-foot tall and very dead Buckeye tree was cut down. Since Jason and his neighbor can use the wood I will be busy hauling it out of the yard and stacking it. Rolling section after section of the trunk uphill to the driveway pad will be something I have dreamed about—a nightmare that is. But, first I had best take Shang for a walk. On second thought, first I’ll refill my coffee mug.

Make it a great week.
Cheers,
Dirk