DAY 17: COSTA MAYA -- On second, third and fourth thoughts, we decided to forego today's planned shore excursion to the Mayan ruins. It wasn't all that high on Ann'’s agenda, and I really didn't have a lot of enthusiasm to take another hot bus ride back into the country. It was one more steamy day, and we're both obviously running close to empty on the energy scale.

We decided instead to stay on the ship and explore the town of Costa Maya on our
own. This is our last port on the cruise, and we thought it would be fun to see what this Mexican village had to offer, and the clear blue Caribbean water looked inviting.

What a monumental surprise awaited us.

We had puzzled over the fact that Costa Maya was not to be found on the map of
any atlas we had, and the reason for that was simple: it did not exist just two years ago! The cruise ship companies, apparently looking for an alternative to Cozumel, built this "resort"” completely from scratch. It consists, right now, of a concrete pier extending far into the Caribbean, and a collection of small shops clustered around a crowded swimming pool. No one goes to the beach or the water. That's it. Costa Maya is a non-town!

We found out later that within a year or so they expect to host four or five cruise
ships every day, each of them pouring thousands of shoppers into the "“town"”. A
Carnival ship, with nearly 4,000 passengers, was already tied up when we arrived, so together we put a lot of credit cards loose!

I know I'’ve commented on this before, but this shopping phenomenon is still an
amazing one. Here on our relatively small ship we have several jewelry and gemstone
shops, and on every dock there are always more. They do a steady business, too. Shoppingis a big deal, a huge deal, on these cruise ships.

Since it isn't such a deal for us, we made a quick run-through of the Costa Maya shops then returned to the ship and spent most of the remainder of the day reading, happily watching the election returns, doing e-mail, sketching, napping, and (our old favorite) eating! But no shopping!