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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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.