Days 337-342 – Settling down in Paradise

And I'm back to Cozumel again. My energy place, my power spot, my personal paradise. I stopped trying to understand what it is that makes me feel so good here. I decided it's enough to just feel good, why ask questions. This time I'm planning to be here quite a while: 3-6 months. I'm excited about "settling down" here.

Here are the objectives of my long stay here:

• Complete the Dive Master course.
  
• Dive a lot.
  
• Explore new diving spots with my friends.
  
• Travel around Mexico (at least, around Yucatan).
  
• Do another round of hyperbaric treatments for my headache.
  
• Feel good.
  
• Figure out what's next.
  

Liang and I rented a 2-bedroom Villa Fontana together (Calle 12^th and Avenida 15^th). Yep, it's in town, so no ocean view for me this time, but the price is so worth taking a short stroll to the sea! The villa is awesome. Part of a very well maintained little residential complex with a pool and a beautiful garden, our town villa is a two-storey spacious construction with a full kitchen, dining room, living room, 2 bedrooms with full baths, guest bathroom, and a palapa covered terrace with a grill. It doesn't get better than that. Well, if it were on the ocean, it would be better of course. Although… I do feel more like a local being in town. So maybe it truly doesn't get better than that, after allJ.

Liang has her own place till January 21^st, so I moved in by myself for now. Efficiency being the motto I seem to have been born with, it took me only a couple of days worth of shopping at La Mega to make this house look like I have been living here for years. And I feel like I have been living here for years.

All in Spanish (very proud of myself, naturallyJ), I paid visits to the Cablemas (cable company office) and Elektra (electronics store) to get contracts for wi-fi at the house and a Mexican cell phone. Here you have to do everything in person. You cannot just call Cablemas and schedule a technician to come and install internet. No, you have to go to their office, spend 5,000 hours talking to a clerk about the weather and their family situation, and then you may be granted a privilege to be a happy owner of an internet contract. Things like this still make me feel uncomfortable and a bit awkward. Although I'm a very social person, I actually don't like small talk and I certainly don't like small talk to people who I don't know and chances are will never see ever again. But a mandatory discussion of weather and family seems to be a rule here on the island (probably the same as in any small town), so I must get used to it. When in Cozumel…

For the sake of full disclosure, let me add that both visits were only partially successful. The internet will be installed only next week. First, they told me January 20^th! Seriously? There are so many people on Cozumel who need internet installed right now, in the next two weeks? I cannot believe that! So I asked to escalate the issue to the manager. It sort of worked, and now – fingers crossed – I will have everything working on Monday-Tuesday. As to the cell phone, the service that seemed a reasonable option to me – Movistar – turned out to be the one that nobody uses, so it's very expensive to call other cell phones back and forth, and now I need to exchange it for the more common service – TelCel. Oh wellJ.

I have been here almost a week, and I still haven't dived once. This time I'm doing my hyperbaric treatments at the public hospital. It is 3 times cheaper than the private chamber I used before. But of course, there's no such thing as a free lunch. And you "pay" for the low price by having to adhere to their schedule and sharing the chamber with 2-3 other people (that is no big deal at all). So instead of real diving, for the next 2 weeks I'll be enjoying only the hyperbaric diving in the chamber. It's exactly the same time though – 7.30AMJ.

I won't let this bother me. After all, I'll be here for a while and will have plenty of time to catch up on real diving. Plus, my DM course that starts on Monday will naturally have some diving included (and conveniently for my chamber schedule the course takes place in the afternoon). Of course, constant working on pretty difficult skills is not the same as relaxing sight-seeing dives, but what the heck, it's still underwater.

Every morning I leave my house at 7AM to go to the chamber. The first breath I take in is always a breath of unconditional happiness that this place fills me with. Strolling the still silent morning streets of Cozumel, I think of nothing. And life is beautiful.

P.S. We had the Russian Christmas celebration (it takes place on January 7th) at La Cocay, a fancy and delicious restaurant on the island. The owner is from NYC, and it shows in the awesome steaks they serve. Spectacular!