Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Back from Cancun

Well, flew in and out of there, overnighting on way back. You can keep it. Humid. crowded, just plain nasty. (I wuz coerced)

We were actually on an island just off shore for a few days. Mujera or some such. Good weather (constant breeze), nice swimming beach, good food, good people - just too damned many of them. That's all the good I can say about it, but then I have attitude...

Our fellow travel couple arrainged - 6 weeks earlier- for a gas golf cart to get around- island is narrow, but about 4 miles long- all of it built up. All the good carts were already reserved so we ended up with a junker. Good thing no one smoked, or we'd have gone up like the Hindenburg. Ours was not the only one. Betwen the fumes- gas and exhaust - and the noise, I had a low grade headache much of the time we were there.

I took my darkest glasses for wimmin ogling, so they couldn't track my eyes. More useful for the bright sunshine - as only about 5% were worth the effort of moving the eyeballs.

LBP would have been in Hog Heaven.

Yeah, I set the whole post up for that line.

Not far from the truth there buddy.

Fortunately, there are outliers. Mine was still fit in her 40's. Working and teaching belly dance will do that.

I could maybe do that area just to fish for billfish once.

Have zero desire other than that. Lifes a mountain. Not a beach.

What do a pallet of bricks and a fat chick have in common?

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Wait for it......

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Sooner or later, they're both gonna get laid by a Mexican.

Little , to no interest in going to Mexico

We go to Cozemel, much better place in my opinion

We’ve driven our camper down Baja the last two years. It’s great. The fishing at Los Barriles is out of this world. Don’t bother with the Yucatan.

Been awhile. It is commercial and crowded. Beautiful beaches. The hotel architecture is impressive. Cheap labor and lots of drug money? Chichen Itza and Tulum nearby are impressive, especially considering the jungle has hundreds more such sites buried still. Xel-Ha snorkeling is quite an experience. They got tequila down there too and some fantastic restaurants. Some of the girls are way beyond cute. I'm done flying but the smaller fishing villages down toward Cozumel are more "unspoiled?"

You were on Isla Mujeres, which translates to "Island of Women."
I drove down there when I was young, and took the ferry to Isla Mujeres and rented a room there for 3 weeks.

I found the name to be accurate, I met a lonely stacked blonde from California, we had some good times out on that beach under the moonlight.

On the drive back home to Georgia I did come down with amoebic dysentary, a really nasty ailment. After I got home I was sick for 10 days. Mexico is a nasty, dirty country.

Another vote for Cozumel. My wife and I have been going annually for a decade. Great place, food and friendly people.
Never heard of any crime or issues; mostly due to being 13 miles off shore from the mainland. Great spot for scuba and snorkeling. Only bad thing I will say is they let too many cruise ships dock. Gets crowded in town in afternoon.

After my difficult and dangerous drive to Cancun, several years later we flew down to Cancun, and we rented a car at the airport. We drove down south 100 miles to Tulum and spent a week in a little rented hut on the beach. It was great! Nice and quiet, fantastic skin diving in the clear waters of the Caribbean, and we went swimming in the clear water ponds inland, called cenote. No drug activity there in the Yucatan.


Here I am having a beer in a little bar and grill there in Tulum. Pretty cool, to be drinking a cold beer and a parrot hops up on your shoulder.

The last time we went to Tulum was 1993.

However, just last week an American woman was killed in Tulum, an apparent innocent victim of a narco gang shoot out. Times have changed in Tulum, I won't be going back. Plus I don't need another case of that amoebic dysentary.

https://news.yahoo.com/la-woman-killed-mexico-shooting-013117913.html

Any place you have to run around without a shirt on is to hot for me.

I started going to Tulum in the early 90's. After having been all over MX, Tulum gave me the best access to more nature. The fishing there is incredible. I did DIY flats fishing up and down that coast for many years. The Sian Kaan preserve was an incredible experience. Never hired a guide or captain. Always DIY. I wade fished/flats fished there almost every year, sometimes twice a year, for a couple decades. The last time I was in Tulum was during elections. Federales with M4s and M60s mounted on trucks were everywhere. Had "The Wave" down. A real estate caught a .45 to the back of his head the day before we got there that trip. The pass entering Sian Kaan by the Boca Paila bridge is not only a great fishing spot, it's an incredibly private beach spot, if you're not interested in fishing. Best area I found in MX for big permit. Just can't find a good enough reason to go back now. Thankfully, I've BTDT.

If anyone wants a change of pace I will happily be a tour guide for Panama

Tulum had a Maya pyramid, about 90 feet high right on a cliff overlooking the Caribbean. About a dozen of us gringos would sneak in at midnight, and climb up the steep side, sit up at the top of the pyramid, drinking beer, and looking down at the bottom of the sea in the moonlight, you could see the bottom 200 yards out with that clear water.

Fantastic! Our US indians never built anything close as spectacular. And you could drive several hours up to Chichen Itza, one of the most spectacular pyramids in the world. I climbed the Chichen Itza pyramid four times and it is really high.

Some fantastic stuff to see down there, alas, I won't be going back.

Ditto! That's why i live in the rain forest.

While you always “have a shot” at catching a billfish in Mexico after several long boat rides that never raised a billfish but did catch dorado, rooster fish and ono I would say to save your money and chase billfish somewhere else. I’m currently in the research phase for a trip next year to anywhere in the South Pacific that has a lot of fish and little pressure. I want to tie into some big billfish but I’m hoping to tag and release but I know that in depressed economies the locals will want to keep it and I’m ok with that if it’s going to feed the locals. I just don’t have any desire to kill big fish if I can help it, unfortunately sometimes the bigger fish don’t make it after the fight.

I think we spent as much time cutting illegal longlines that stretched for literally miles than we spent on the troll. Those longlines were absolutely awful and totally indiscriminate killers. I saw everything from sea turtles to birds and all kinds of fish that were dead on the hook. I’ve read about illegal longlines in National Geographic and other fishing publications since I was a kid but the first time I saw them for myself I was shocked and incensed. The Mexican “police” are sure concerned about whether the gringo has his fishing license but those retards turn a blind eye to the devastation and destruction the longlines cause. I’ve encountered longlines while fishing everywhere in Mexico from Mazatlan to Puerta Nuevo/Puerta Vallerta they were everywhere….actually I don’t recall seeing them around Cabo but in Cabo I always fish inshore from a Panga after I realized that fishery is not fished as hard as billfish and in a 4 hour trip I was literally tired of fighting fish and after 4 hours of fishing under the Mexican sun this PNW boy was ready for the shade. I think in roughly 3 hours of lines in the water I landed 5 roosters, 7 yellowtail and 2 yellowfins. I lost a few more but that was some really good fishing.

I won’t say never but I don’t plan on going back to Mexico again. I’ve been all over enough to have scratched that itch and my fishing focus is elsewhere now.

Working on a trip there for next year.

If it ain’t cooked in Mexico, do not eat it. I had that [bleep] the first time I went. The fruit and salad type food looks so good, but that’s usually where you pick it up. I’ve never had it since, over 30 years ago.

Mexico is like S Florida, the only reason it exists is for fishing.

Hard to beat Cabo for striped marlin. Short ride to the Golden Gate Bank and a shot at dorado and billfish nearly year ‘round.

I can’t believe you survived. Definitely took your life in your hands going there.

I’ve been a few times. It was better when I was younger and single.

Tell me about Panama, please. I would like to know more. I was there a couple of years ago, but spent most of my time inland on a service project. What little I saw of Panama City and the beaches looked pretty good - and so did the Panamanian women.

Can't climb most of the Mayan pyramids anymore. I've climbed many of them multiple times, including Nohoch Mul in Coba. If you were in Tulum, you were very close. Too bad you didn't get to climb that one. It's the highest Mayan pyramid built in the Yucatan. They just dug the jungle off of one side a few decades ago. I've got pics of me on top of most of them in the Yucatan, but the pic from the top of Nohoch Mul is by far the coolest pic. Hundreds of miles of jungle in the background. You've been to some cool places down there, Simon. Most people will never see this stuff.

Aces, agree on almost all of what you stated. Thankfully, I'm a FL boy, so the heat was endurable. But, I will tell you that it is still much hotter there than here. It's right on the equator, and that makes for a whole different kind of heat. Although, the Yucatan is a great place for sailfish, most other billfish aren't that prolific. Cabo is a much better choice for say marlin, tuna, roosters etc. Never popped a marlin in Cabo (man, I've tried), but have absolutely hammered the tuna. The people at my resort soon learned to love me. I prepared huge amounts of sushi and grilled fish and gave it away at the pool every sunset.

And yeah, MX police suck. I could tell stories for the next hour about run-ins with their crooked asses. And trust me, They're ALL f'n crooks and thieves. At least the ones I had contact with. I've had them fugk with me at 3 am fishing off a jetty (with a big fish on the line!), telling me I'm "trespassing", trying to shake me down for a bribe.

Like you, my window for Mexico has passed. Too much indiscriminate crime now and ripoff aszholes. Multiple times having to tell a ripoff aszhole he was about to be picking his chiclets off the ground. Over the years, these aszholes got more and more aggressive. I can fish for most of the same or similar fish right here in FL or the rest of our country. Right now, one of my holy grails is to fish some mountain lakes or streams out west. As far as travel outside our country goes, I'm much more enamored with Europe. The history alone is enough to have sucked me in. But, when you add the food and culture, I'm hopeless. Lol.

I've done a couple tours in Mexico and I'm through as well. I like Costa Rica much better anyway.

Mexico in the 80's was heaven on toast. I would have moved there in my late 20's but I discovered Belize where they had British law and spoke english. Took me 26 years to come back home! I could write a book on the fun and adventures. Just waiting for a few mor to die so I can write it.

local dirt: They won't let you climb the pyramid at Chichen Itza? Damn, that's a shame.

No. Not any more. At least that's the way it was last time I was there. They said somebody fell down and died. Who knows if that's true or not.

Yeah.................... OK.

I was gonna say that you can eat a pallet of bricks if you HAVE to.

It is very steep. If you tripped and fell it would be a very bad day.

Drunks fell off and died. It was easy to climb but a little steep coming down....

Interesting story (at least for me):

One time when I was there (Chichen Itza) back when you could still climb it, there was an older gentleman running up and down the steps, back and forth, back and forth. I think he was a marathoner or long distance runner of some sort. He certainly looked the part.

I always thought the view from the top of the Tulum ruins was really cool, looking out at the ocean. I used to rent a 2br2ba house from an American couple from Colorado just north of Tulum until they sold it. Perfect spot.

Acccording to stories about Tulum, there were 2 lamps set on either side of the opening in the reef to guide mariners in to the city at Tulum.

BTW, if you didn't go sailfishing north of Isla Mujeres, you missed one of the hottest spots for sails in the world.

There is a cenote at Chichen Itza. A freshwater spring, a round hole in the ground 150 feet across. The water is 50 feet below, and is 40 feet deep. Archaeologists have found jewelry from a Maya girl who was 12 years old, along with her bones.
Things got rough in Maya Land, 800 BC, maybe a drought, they dressed up a 12 year old Princess and decked her with fine turquoise and silver jewelry, and shoved her into the cenote.

Well, I bet THAT fixed the situation, right quick.........

I just did a couple weeks in Ambergres key Belize. Pretty much like México, but no cartel crap, at least on the island. Diving was meh, but at 80 every day, and 80 degree water I’m not complaining compared to MT in February. I ate a lot of local chow, never got sick, but I did keep my blood alcohol level up to fight off any bugs just in case.

Oh, and they have croc’s there. Some crocs are over 12’, we had a few big ones in the lagoon next to our condo. I thought when they said crocs they meant caiman, nope.

Norm, there are big crocs all over MX. Almost every place I've ever been in the Yucatan where there was water, there were crocs... Including salt water crocs where I used to wade fish for permit, bonefish, snook and tarpon on the flats around the inside and outside of the Boca Paila bridge. They never bothered me, though. They stayed up around and in the mangroves, and I stayed out on the flats. I thought that was a great arrangement.

10-12' is not abnormal. Some of the biggest I ever saw were right behind the restaurants that back up to the lagoon on the hotel strip in Cancun. Those are some big ones there. They swim over from the islands inside the lagoon at night because the restaurant cooks throw them munchies for entertainment when business slows and/or they're bored. The women with me weren't impressed. 😂

LocalD….I appreciate your input since while I’ve fished Mexico maybe 8 or 10 times I’m far FAR from being in the loop on quality blue water fishing in Mexico. I know that being on the equator or in equatorial waters is different from anything I’ve encountered yet. Like you said I expect heat and little to no breeze but if the fishing is good then I’ll suffer through. 😀

I’m not predisposed to hot weather and humidity and while I might feel like I’m melting faster than Frosty in Hades I’m willing to suffer for the sake of the adventure. I’m looking forward to working on my tropical tolerance level…..it’s tough work but if the best I can do is to complain about being in an area that has such beautiful surroundings then I don’t deserve the privilege of traveling as much as I do. As I’ve gotten older I realize how fortunate I am in so many ways and that tempers the old ass hole attitude I might’ve had when I was young and dumb. I’m now thankful for every opportunity I get to do the things I once dreamed about…..well..except for Mexico…I had that friggin’ place and not for the scenery. 😉

All my best to you!

ISLA mujeras isn’t all bad. The wife and I went out fishing with a small boat….twin 50s I think it had. 8-9 miles from the dock. We hooked 10 sailfish in 6 hours freelining sardines on 20 lb test mono while drifting. Landed 6. It was a hoot. I can probably dig up some pics of that trip

Hardin, you did it up right, sir!

Aces, as usual, you're absolutely right. I'm thankful for every visual I can still punch up in my head to remember and enjoy again. Mexico was an awesome experience.