Ecotourist with a Giant Carbon Footprint

It’s noon and I’m standing on the pier at the AquaFun Marina. “Is it just me?” I ask the guy who’s been assigned to me as a sort of handler, as though I might go rogue. “No, no, these groups are about 20 people.” I point at the flat pontoon type boat. “So we go out on that thing?” “Oh, no, you’re going to drive your own boat,” he says. “MY OWN BOAT?” “Yes, 45 minutes out to the reef in the speedboat, then 45 minutes snorkeling, then 45 minutes back. You drive.” “Um, uh, okay then, er, uh, I guess that sounds like fun…”

I am fine at handling the boat in the open water, even on the choppy swells of the lagoon. At the wheel, I feel fine, I feel like James Bond, I feel like Miami Vice made by Vaudeville producers. I feel… guilty as hell. We are a string of five boats, tearing through the mangroves, a cloud of bodies out at the reef, a carbon footprint the size of a a GM dealership.

At the reef, the water is a turquoise smear, visibility at almost nothing. I swim right in to a school of gringo snorkerlers, all circling, seeking the clear spots in the water. I see the coral when I am right on top of it, I see the vague shadows of the fish when they move, but that’s all.

My mask is crystal clear and a perfect seal, the water stays out of the cheap neon yellow snorkel that’s included in the price of admission. I see one gathering of plain silver fish, they are pretty and all swimming in a school right below me, but when they’re gone, there’s nothing else to see but the fins of the novice snorkeler in front of me. I am clearly being punished for expanding my carbon footprint in order to look at fish by being denied the ability to look at fish.

The guide is unbelievably patient, he doesn’t yell at me for dropping my rope in the water, for bumping the outboard on the neighboring boat, for having to circle three times to get to the dock in the swells. He doesn’t yell at the guys who fall waaaaaay behind and he leads the young woman who’s a little scared of whole situation by the hand when we’re all in the water. He hauls the big guys out of the water like giant tuna, with one hand. He herds us  like sheep. We are, myself included, a huge pain in the ass, I have no doubt, and he is patient and charming and even apologizes for getting a bit short with me once he realizes that yeah, driving and communicating at the same time might be a little hard for a novice boater.

The mangroves are gorgeous and on an island I spot an enormous white heron, or maybe it’s a crane? A pelican flies slow and lazy, low to the water, they are such hilarious and wonderful birds. There’s a cormorant standing high on a piling, his wings spread to face the sun. But we are racing, full throttle, no real time for birdwatching. The tiny boat slaps over the swells, blam blam blam, and sways in the wake of other boats and the spray coats me with salt. I’m cold in the wind and laughing at the absurdity of it and yes, it is fun, it’s stupidly fun,  the loud engine and the tiny two seater boat crashing in the spray.

I’m almost certain that I am having someone else’s vacation experience. I know how it happened, I signed up for it, whole heartedly and I have to say that yeah, it’s A Good Time. It’s weird though. It’s hard for me to recommend the experience, I’d rather take the slow shared boat, dawdle at the reef, take the long way home and see how many other species of bird I might catch with more than the corner of my eye. And I’m wracked with fishhugger guilt, this can’t be good for their ecosystem, can it? It’s carpooling and vegan food for me for a LONG time after I get home. That’s going to suck.

FYI: The hotel arranged my tour — I asked for “snorkeling!” and they sent me out with AquaFun, a company they have a partnership with here in Cancun. It was kind of a last minute thing — there was a misunderstanding about my Chichen Itza tour and they did there best to get me in the water with the fish ASAP. Tomorrow, Chichen Itza.