We just spent awesome two weeks in Yucatan Peninsula and Riviera Maya by the Caribbean Sea in Mexico. Characteristic to Yucatan Peninsula is its unique geological formation comprising of numerous cenotes (sinkholes filled with water) and underground caverns filled with stalactites and stalagmites through which you can walk, swim or paddle. This magical underground world was fabulous and it felt like being in a fairy-tale world as we paddled and swam through these beautiful endless caverns filled with clear fresh water.
Yucatan is also known for its Mayan culture and ancient archeological sites such as Chichen Itza and of course for its underwater life. Great Maya Barrier Reef, the second largest coral reef in the world, stretches 200 miles along the eastern coast of Yucatan peninsula and provides an excellent site for snorkeling and scuba diving. After hours of snorkeling and watching diving exercises in the pool, we couldn't resist testing diving ourselves. I had never tried scuba diving before but after a short demo in the pool I felt ready for a one-day course that included the basics in the pool and then diving in the sea. It was exciting to sit in the boat and wait for my first dive but everything went very well. It was amazing and a lot easier than I had thought. The coral was really beautiful and full of different kind of colorful fishes. I even got to see a sea turtle!
As much as I wanted to explore everything there was to see I also intended to train there as well. The problem was that running was restricted only to an enclosed area around the hotels if you didn't want to end up running along the highway or get lost in the jungle where it was barely impossible to get through without a cutlass. That was a bit of disappointment to me (as I had imagined running along imaginary footpaths in the jungle) but fortunately I found a nice 10km cycling route around the well-cared hotel and marine area. After the first ten rounds or so the route got quite familiar to me and I got to know nearly every stone and bush around it. I even learned a long list of boat names and got to know the gardeners that took care of particular streets or corners of the golf course. They also learned to know what time I was expected to pass them every morning and started to cheer me. It all made me feel more and more like a runner. You know exactly the route you're running, the distance of every street, the time you use per a distance, and the pace you are running. There's no room for feeling or imagination, the watch is accurate and tells everything you need to know. There's some attraction in it but I have to admit that I was happy to get home and get some variation in my routes again.
Another problem (when it comes to training) was the warmth. The only possibility to run was early in the morning. Evenings would have been fine too if it hadn't been that dark. Fortunately there were plenty of alternative training forms you could do during the day or evenings: swimming, aqua gymnastics, water polo, beach volley, ping pong, dancing, tennis, spinning, zumba, step, aerobics, treadmill, cross-training and gym. So even if I did only one "real" training per day I actually got a lot of all forms of recovery training as I attended daily to aqua gym and dance lessons, swam, played tennis and ping pong and took part to spinning, zumba and step lessons. Four to five trainings a day unnoticed and as a bonus I got more flexible hips after two weeks of all forms of Latin dances. That was so much fun and I really enjoyed it! Also zumba lessons in Mexico are far from what they are in Europe. If you want to do zumba, you should definitively do in the Latin America at its origin. I still need to work on my shoulders to learn to dance like they do (very unlikely).
Highlights of the trip in addition to scuba diving and stalactite caves were flying along zip lines, riding with dolphins and swimming with sharks, stingrays, and manatees. Manatees were brilliant. I cannot imagine any uglier creature than that. Did you know that they can weigh up to 590kg and swim so slowly than they get covered all over with algae?
