cozumel stormy weather - days of self sufficiency

you might have wondered, where the heck did david and teresa get all this money to take 6mo off work and travel? the answer is we don't have it. we are on a budget of $100/ day and this is how we try to cut corners apart from the regular 1-2 week vacation in an all inclusive resort.

the hostels - we stayed in a hostel with bed bugs and no blankets and an open window that was freezing our butts off for 250pesos/ night. [20 bucks US]

the coconut incident- one day, walking along the embarcadero, david sees a coconut tree and grabs a coconut. We don't carry a machete in our pockets, obviously, so david smashes the darned thing into a block of cement with a piece of metal sticking out. voila~ instant refreshingly sweet coconut juice.

the chicken - food prices range from 1USD a taco to 150USD dinners at nice
restaurants, so we've been hunting down bargains to fit into our budget. one
medium sized roast chicken with all the fixins [spaghetti, rice, tortillas,
chiles] is 65pesos. That's about five bucks for an excellent meal for 2. =)
woohoo!

the many sting rays - we walked by this place called "sting ray discovery" which for $60USD/ person you could swim with sting rays! so 60 x 2 = 120USD = over budget. we decided to bring our snorkel gear which we already owned to the beach, and swim over to the sting ray containment area which was only blocked off by metal wires which to our luck, had big holes! [think metal gate 2x2 inch holes] we saw about 30 sting rays of all sizes, and had a blast with all the hundreds of fish of the warm cozumel waters.