gentino family

This will be my last post of the trip, since our final 2.5 days were very similar in rhythm: early morning coffee on the balcony and pastry at Le Jardin. Then we walked the 1 1/2 miles to Punta Coco, a gorgeous, quiet beach on the western tip of the island. That’s a fun walk, because part of it is in the sea. The walks were hot, but worth it for the near-empty beaches and crystal-clear water. David brought his snorkel and looked for fish and rays. I tried to read my book but in the end just sat in the water. It was really the only thing to do…

Before I tell you about our third day on the island, I’ll explain our food situation. For budget and health purposes, we made the decision to eat out two meals a day and eat one in the casa (this was one reason we wanted something with a kitchen). Yes, it is possibly to eat cheaply on Holbox … the tacos you saw from yesterday were $10 for the two of us; you can find a $1 cup of coffee, and the tortillas we bought were incredibly inexpensive. But the $1 coffee does not taste good, and if you want to veer from those couple of things to more unique dishes…

One of the activities Holbox is famous for is swimming with whale sharks. Before we left home, David and I knew that was something we wanted to do. However, we got a reality check when speaking with Marco the evening we arrived. While we were there, the sharks were about three-hour boat right straight out into the ocean. So that made a 7-8 hour day in a tiny, cramped boat with no sun covering. And then there wasn’t a guarantee we’d see the sharks or get near enough to actually swim with them. We were also told, “Many people get seasick on these tours; it’s not unusual for them to…

David and I call our first day on Holbox the “trial and error day.” Mostly error, it seemed, since it just takes time to figure everything out. As we’d discovered the evening before, far fewer people spoke English than we expected, so that also made things . . . interesting. We set out around 8:00 to find some breakfast, and were pretty much the only people on the island to do so. We’ve learned that nothing much gets going until 11:00 am there, although breakfast cafes and coffee shops do open at 8:30. Before we embarked on our trip we’d divided the research; David looked up options of activities for…

I’ll be honest, one of the big reasons we chose to travel to Holbox (pronounced “Holbosh”) island is this incredible Airbnb, which was also very affordable. The pictures we saw online were stunning, the reviews glowing, and the reality even better than we hoped. Let me show you around! This view is from the door to the compound, where Marco lives with his mom. The small building to the left is a tiny art studio; Marco’s home is on the right with our Airbnb studio apartment on the second floor. The house you see beyond the pool is a vacation home their friends had built.   Here’s our side staircase…

David and I have been day-dreaming about our 20th anniversary trip for years now, wondering what we might want to do, getting input from friends. We actually had a trip to Costa Rica planned for our 10-year anniversary — when all the plumbing broke in our house and had to be replaced for about $2,500. So we pivoted and instead we went to Flat Rock, NC. It wasn’t at all what we’d planned, but God gave us a lovely trip. However, toward the end of this decade of marriage we promised ourselves that, Lord willing, no matter what went wrong with the house or the cars or whatever, we were…