Monday, February 1 2010

Back In the Saddle Again

Aye, you can call me Angus MacGringo, of the clan MacGringo. Tequila and haggis for all!

Richard Orben once said, 'A vacation is having nothing to do and all day to do it in'. By that measure, I had a pretty successful time the last two weeks. This was our third trip to the Caribbean side of Mexico and it just gets better every darn time. I know this is technically a blog about wine, but there really isn't any in Mexico--sure, Mexico makes wine, but it's universally bad, and while they give the cheap stuff away at all-inclusive joints, it's not worth drinking, being the very cheapest imported swill.

Two-millennia old customs shack on the canal. Some things never change.

We did a little trekking, visiting the Sian Ka'an Biosphere Reserve. Over a million acres, it takes up a significant portion of the Caribbean coast of Mexico, and is a very important wildlife and archaeological preserve. We jungle trekked (I can report that while small, Mexican mosquitos are as bloodthirsty as their Canadian cousins) hung out at the Muyil pyramid and did a wonderful and delightful trip: we boated across a freshwater bay and floated down a canal linking it to another natural bay, all through the roots of a mangrove forest.

Somewhere, down the lazy river

It was a complete and utter delight, with bromeliads, mangroves, termite nests, orchids, history, and inverted life jackets. I'd go back in a second, if they'd have me. Of course, like all Mayan experience trips it included a visit to a cenote, which being a hole in the ground, I could have skipped (trust me, you've seen one cenote, you've seen all of them) but it preceded a stunningly good lunch at a little hole-in-the-wall that had the most delicious pickled vegetables for an appetiser, and grilled grouper that was so good I wanted to weep tears of fish-happiness.

Of course, we couldn't be on the go all the time. Sometimes you just have to know when to harbour your strength and plan your next move . . .

So much pressure . . . must hold on . . . must keep . . . napping

My next move? Instruction sets, employee performance reviews, final touches on my F11 plan, got to go drop in on  Coastal winemakers (see you there Bert) pick up some wines for a comparison tasting, write up a few sooper-seekrit new product descriptions, answer the rest of these emails (nice of everyone to write me while I was gone!) and generally get useful, fast. Whew, it's good to be back.

Posted by Tanned Tim AT 2:40PM

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