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Cruise Port Review, Cozumel Mexico



One of our favorite cruise stops is Cozumel. For an inexpensive day at this port visit Chakkanaab park, it has everything you need. The snorkeling at the park is great and you can swim with the dolphins. The also have a jungle you can walk through and see tons of Iquanas and more. The food and drinks at the park are above average. Our favorite restaurant is downtown, visit Panchos backyard for the best authentic Mexican cuisine. Pancho's Backyard (Av. Rafael Melgar 27 between calles 8 and 10, Monday - Friday from 11 a.m., closed on Sunday) is a great place for margaritas and wonderful Mexican specialties. Here, you can sit inside on the terrace and cool off beneath whirring ceiling fans while listening to the soothing sounds of trickling fountains. Pancho's is attached to one of the best shopping venues on the island.

Cozumel offers good deals on jewelry, Mexican handicrafts, T-shirts and other souvenirs, mostly in the town of San Miguel. But what was pleasing to discover is that there's much more to Cozumel than duty-free shopping. This small island (measuring just 28 miles long and 10 miles wide) lies just off the coast of Mexico's Yucatan peninsula, and offers incredibly diverse options for water sports' lovers, due partly to its proximity to spectacular coral reefs. Though snorkeling, beach bumming and boating are popular activities, scuba diving is one of the biggest draws here.

Cozumel also has a rich background to satisfy any history buff's appetite. The island derives its name from the Mayan civilization that settled there approximately 2,000 years ago. According to Mayan legend, Cozumel was the home of Ixchel, the goddess of love and fertility. Legend has it that when religious temples were dedicated to her, she sent her favorite bird -- the swallow -- as a sign of her gratitude. For this reason, the people coined the island "Cuzamil" -- Mayan for "Land of the Swallows." There are several important Mayan sites on the island (such as San Gervasio and El Cedral) and even better preserved ones on the (fairly) easily accessible mainland -- Chichen Itza and Tulum are hot numbers as far as day trips and shore excursions are concerned.


Although Cozumel is Mexico's largest and most populated island, it wasn't until the 1960's that this once-sleepy fishing village became a tourist attraction in its own right, following a documentary in which Jacques Cousteau declared it one of the most beautiful scuba diving areas in the world. These days, Cozumel is a major cruise port welcoming more than one million cruise passengers each year, and as many as 16 ships per day. But even with all this progress, Cozumel has held onto its non-touristy side; only one-third of the island has been developed, leaving large stretches of pristine jungle and sandy beach basically untouched.
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