Palmengarten and Mainz

 September 27-28, 2021

The morning of my second day in Frankfurt I went with Sarah to the Palmengarten, a botanical garden adjacent to her university. It was huge, and was basically a zoo for plants, with walking paths between designated plant areas.

The lily pad pond right at the entrance had a heron to welcome us.

The palmenhaus looked like a fancy building from an old mansion, and was filled with tropical plants.

The grounds also had a lake with paddle boats  and waterfall with a little tunnel behind it to walk through. And a swan.

There was a butterfly house with tons of butterflies, of course. The ones with eyes really liked the fruit, and we found the coolest little butterfly with mostly clear wings.

The Tropicarium building was interconnected giant glass hexagons, each with a different biome represented. There was a couple types of rainforest, mangroves, cloud forest, savannah and a thorn room, which was filled with cactus.

This one was named 'mother-in-law seat' and we both found that amusing.

We grabbed a sandwich at a sidewalk bakery, then Sarah headed to meetings and I ventured out on my own. My destination was an art store way up in the north of the city, so I navigated three train lines to get there. I found a couple things I couldn't live without, and on the way home found some really cool owl art.

 

I detoured to walk through a park and go see the old opera house (which was lovely architecture) and along the way found a castle tower next to a skyscraper, which is pretty much Frankfurt in a nutshell.

My third day I went grocery shopping with Avery, bought a long sleeve button up because I didn't bring one somehow, then took the train to neighboring Mainz. I didn't feel like waiting for the right train, so I took a mostly-right one that dropped me across from Mainz proper so I started with a bridge across the Rhine River.

My plan was basically to find the buildings with the spires I could see as I crossed the river, and I did so.

Christuskirche Mainz

Kath Kirche St. Peter

Through another beautiful main square

And to the Mainzer Dom, the main town cathedral. This is actually one of the short ends of it, but I thought the prettiest.

On my way out of town towards a different train station back to Frankfurt I found another lovely church, and the cutest little alley sized street.

Another couple successful days in the books.

Day 1 in Frankfurt

September 26, 2021

After a year and a half of global pandemic lockdown, I finally got to hop on an international flight again. The destination: Frankfurt, Germany, to visit my friend Sarah who is here for a year working on her thesis.

My 10 hour direct flight was uneventful, and not full so I was able to lay across an entire row for a couple hours of snoozing. Sarah and Avery (her husband) met me at the airport, so I didn't even have to figure out buying a bus pass on my own.

After dropping my stuff at their apartment and brushing my teeth, we headed for the old

 part of town.

The streetcar from their place in Offenbach (a suburb of Frankfurt) dropped us on the south side of the Main River, and just across was the old town.

The bridge we crossed is a popular spot for love locks.

Really popular.

The Altstad (old town) was filled with quintessentially German buildings. Lots of hues of brown and red, very close together.

Group selfie in front of the building where the Holy Roman Emperor was crowned back in the day. We didn't notice Mickey until later.

It was about lunchtime (and long enough since my last plane food) so we went to a favorite sausage place of Sarah and Ave's, and I had currywurst and fries for my first German food. The verdict was very delicious, would eat again.

It started raining so we went back to the apartment by way of a bakery, and I decided on apple strudel. I've got a whole bingo list of pastries to find while I'm here, and checked this one off first.

After a short nap for jetlagged me, we went back out for an evening walk. This is the Hafenplatz, a small waterway off the Main once used as a port.

A crane is still standing from the days of unloading boats and you can climb to the top platform.

Dinner was a döner kebab sandwich and some apfelwine, an apple cider type drink, for the three of us. Absolutely delicious, and I'll definitely be coming home with a traditional diamond patterned apfelwine glass. Apparently the pattern is supposed to make it easier to hold on to the glass when you have greasy fingers from the sausage you just ate.

All around a satisfying first day in Germany. I have picked up a few key words and phrases which will hopefully help some when I do t have Sarah or Ave with me, though mostly I'll rely on their English skills. But I can find the bathroom and say thank you.

Time for bed and some actual hours of sleep and then I'll see what tomorrow holds.

Cenote Diving in Mexico

 March 6-17, 2020

In what we didn't know was going to be the last hurrah of travel in 2020, Shay and I visited Mexico to go dive in the cenotes (sinkholes) along the Maya Riviera. We flew into Cancun, and took a bus to Tulum where we were based for the diving.

Cenote diving is technically 'cavern' not 'cave' diving and doesn't need any extra certifications because we were always within sight of light. Somehow when reading up on it, I interpreted this to mean we'd always be in some sort of direct sunlight, and that was definitely not true. It just meant that if we turned off all our lights and turned in a circle, we'd see the glow of the exit and be able to swim towards it. So it basically seemed like we were cave diving to me. And it was amazing.

The cenote openings were often unassuming holes in the ground.

Each cenote was different. Some of them had small surface openings and the tunnels extended far under the ground around it, some were big holes in the ground with minimal tunnels, one was kind of just a big deep hole. Some were filled with stalactites and stalagmites, others had bigger rock formations. We had a great guide, Pascual, who told us about each cenote before we got there, some history and what the dive would be like. We had three dives each day, either doing two dives in one cenote or moving locations between dives.

I managed to get some decent photos out of video screenshots, so here is a little phototour through the cenotes we dove. 

Day 1- Dos Ojos and Nicte Ha

We did two dives in Dos Ojos, one upstream loop and one downstream one. The water was incredibly clear, and Pascual said based off a light study that was done, if there was enough space the water would have 600 ft visibility. The only limiting factor was how far our flashlights went. The glowing blue exit we could see from inside the cave was gorgeous, and there were stalactites and stalagmites everywhere.

Our third dive was Nicte Ha. There were lily pads and other water plants growing in the middle of it, and the dive was a loop down tucked under the edge of the whole thing, so we had a great blue-green light coming in from one side the whole time.

Day 2- The Pit and Dreamgate

The Pit fit my preconceived notion of what we'd be seeing, it was basically just a big hole. It's an incredibly popular dive, so there were lots of other divers to contend with. Partway down it has a halocline, where salt and freshwater stratify. If the layer hasn't been disturbed you get some really cool optical effects and can see the divide really well, but there were way too many people and bubbles going up and down for us to see that. Going through it your vision goes all fuzzy and you can't clearly see with the mixing layers. On either side of it you're fine. There was a small hydrogen sulfide cloud at the bottom, a milky layer caused by decaying plants. We went back into a small cave area on one side and got a really cool view back into the deep blue main area with stalactites hanging down from the ceiling of the opening. Unfortunately my camera decided it didn't want to work on this dive.

Dives two and three were at Dreamgate, which was easily my favorite cenote of the trip. It was a maze in a large cavern back into the dark, and was just full of stalactites and stalagmites, and other limestone formations which were absolutely incredible to look at and swim through. Parts of the cavern were giant, and swimming through or past them makes you feel incredibly small. It's a little surreal to be essentially hovering in the middle of something that's big enough your brain has trouble comprehending it. There was an open air section in the middle so we popped up to the surface and floated in the dark for a couple minutes, listening to water drip around us in the pitch dark.

Day 3- Angelita, Carwash and Casa Cenote

The big selling point for Angelita is a large hydrogen sulfide layer. Pascual asked if we wanted to go down through it on the dive, and I said 100% yes. So we did. And I got a super sweet video of it.

There was a definite egg taste/smell to the water going through it, and below the layer it was dark and needed flashlights to see. We stayed for a minute or two before coming back up through the layer again.

On the surface was a small crocodile sunning himself. I named him Chancho.

Our second dive was at Carwash, apparently locals used to wash their cars there. There were plants growing in this one too, and lots of surface swimmers. The dive went back under a ways, and there were some big caverns to feel small in.

An attempt to keep untrained divers out of the more dangerous sections of the cenote.

The third and final dive was Casa Cenote, which is just a short ways from the ocean, so it's brackish water instead of just freshwater. This meant that visibility was kind of weird and fuzzy, like when we went through a halocline. There were smallish tarpon swimming around in it, and mangroves lining the whole thing. It was more like a channel than a cave, and had a completely different feel. On the way back we surfaced to see Pancho, the local crocodile sunning himself on a rock. I estimated he was 5 1/2 feet long, and got a kick out of the fact that he was right next to a 'beware of crocodile' sign. We didn't get too close, and he clearly didn't care that we were there.

Pancho is on the rock in the background.

We moved around a bit for the rest of the trip. We went to the Cirque du Soleil show in Playa del Carmen one night, then took a ferry out to Cozumel. We were going to do two days of diving on the reefs there, but I managed to injure my ears in the cenotes (still not exactly sure when or how) so Shay had two days of diving and I had one of doctor visits and then one of sub-par snorkeling from the dive boat. Not exactly an optimal way to spend the days, but it could have been worse. We rented a scooter one day and toured around the rest of the island out of town. Had a great time snorkeling off a beach on the far side. There was ocean surge to play in and lots of fish around.

A wreck on Cozumel. Shay got to dive it, I snorkeled above it.

Snorkeling on the far side of the island one day.

Cirque du Soleil dinner and a show.

Visiting the Tulum ruins one afternoon.

Overall we had some great diving, some less than optimal diving (for me), some really good food and ice cream, did a little salsa dancing, and got some beach time. Then we flew home straight into lockdown and quarantine and I didn't manage to finish the blog post until over a year later. Oh well.