Travel around the Neighbourhood

Travel Journal #16

Many places around the world are about to slowly start lifting restrictions on the movement of people as we transition into a new normal. We’ve been in lockdown on Cozumel since March. Much like everyone else, we are stuck at home waiting to see what happens next. We are basically only leaving the house for walks with our dog Maya. This has at least given us a reason to go outside twice a day, and we’ve tried to make the best of these adventures around the neighbourhood.

We hope that you’ve enjoyed our travels around the galaxy, today we’re hoping you might enjoy traveling around our neighbourhood. As the days turned into weeks and now into months, we’ve lost track of time a little bit. It’s hard to believe we’re about to hit the milestone of two months under quarantine. Much like everywhere else in the world, Mexico has had a mixed response to the pandemic.

Today we want to leave politics aside; without worrying about what other people have done in response to the pandemic and instead focusing on what we have done. If you’re here for the short answer, not much.

Welcome to Corpus Christi (Cozumel)

We live in a pretty fancy neighbourhood (for Cozumel standards) so it’s been pretty quiet as many of the expats listened to the suggestions of their respective governments and went home.

The island quickly put up a closed sign on the island and has forced people to remain at home to prevent community spread. So far so good right now, we think.

On the island, restrictions on movements were very strongly suggested with mixed enforcement. We were only supposed to stay in our own neighbourhood without crossing into other areas for essential reasons, which we obeyed. We live close to the grocery store, so it’s been easy to stay close to home.

As of now, you’re not allowed to go to the store with more than one person from your household. We’ve gone to the grocery store every 8-14 days to resupply. The few times we’ve needed somethings specific – tamales, masks or take out – we’ve had it delivered. We’ve recently found a local market that is delivering veggies, which we’re going to try this week, which will give us one less reason to go into public places.

The Beaches are… closed.

The beaches here are currently closed until at least June 1. A few times now, we’ve gone on longer walks in the general direction of the beach and accidentally ended up there around sunset. While probably technically outside of our bubble, we’re not breaking any rules. Exercise is still sort of allowed here.

Masks are mandatory during lockdown on the island. We’ve had a curfew on the island during many stages of the pandemic, which started at 10pm, moved to 8pm and was as early as 5pm. That was for a week during the projected peak on the island. It’s currently back to 7pm, which means we should soon be allowed to go for sunset walks again.

We’ve probably walked along every street in our neighbourhood, so repetition will motivate us to expand our adventures as soon as we’re allowed. It’s expected that tourism will sort of return on June 1st, with an emphasis on domestic/local tourism. We will be at the beach a few minutes after the open again, as we’re curious to see how the underwater world looks after 2 months without visitors.

Pandemic in Paradise

Waiting the first wave of the pandemic on a tropical island has been a great idea so far. We’ve been productive around the house and explored our neighbourhood as far as we’re allowed to.

The problem with paradise is that it gets quite hot in the summer. We went nearly two months with no rain through March and April. We’ve now had 3 or 4 days of deluge, which is great for the plants, the underground water table and for our own sanity. Some days this means it cools off and some days it means a new wave of humidity. It’s resulted in some incredible puddles.

The heat has meant that we’ve become morning people in order to exercise outdoors. We’ve been going out for short runs at 7:30am before it gets too hot.

We’re lucky that we a) have A/C in the bedroom so that we can sleep at night and b) live in an apartment with a patio. Our garden has received a lot of love lately, and it’s starting to bloom. At the very least, our garden has kept us a little bit more sane during the pandemic.

By the time we’re allowed to travel again safely, everyone will have a long list of bucket list places that they’re going to want to visit. Open borders, something that we’ve never thought thought too much about, have become a daily concern for us. One thing we’ve realized is that travel is a privilege and not a right.

We’ve done our best to be productive around the house, and we haven’t been out to take too many pictures. The digital folder is overflowing, so we’ve decided to share some of our favorite pictures from around the neighbourhood.

Norma & Rob travel around the neighbourhood