Considering Mexico? We Bring You the Scoop From Cozumel

Joe Luther  0:02  
Welcome to another episode of Friends In Wonder, a place where we invite you to explore meaningful topics without judgment or limits,

Vince Kern  0:11  
brought to you by two lifelong friends sharing their insights. I'm Joe Luther, and I'm Vince Kern,

Joe Luther  0:18  
and we've got great topics lined up for you each week. So be sure to subscribe, like and even share with your friends. Hey, honey,

Sheila Kern  0:27  
what you do on a napkin at your computer again? 

Vince Kern  0:30  
No, I'm just trying to figure out which of the topics and our show calendar I can do by myself for this week's podcast episode.

Sheila Kern  0:38  
What do you mean by yourself? What happened to a friend in wonder, Joe?

Vince Kern  0:43  
Well, he and Sonya are in Cozumel this week, little winter time away from here. Yeah. So what do you mean? Yeah, so well,

Sheila Kern  0:53  
so why don't you do a show on Cozumel? You know that one show we used to watch with Ricky Gervais An Idiot Abroad. Only instead he's a co host abroad.

Vince Kern  1:02  
Yeah, but they're on vacation.

Sheila Kern  1:04  
Yeah, but I don't think the friends and wonder audience wants to listen to you for a whole show. You should call him but call him

Vince Kern  1:13  
all right.

Vince Kern  1:29  
Well, hello Yucatan Peninsula. Joe, are you there?

Joe Luther  1:32  
I am here Vince, with the modern technology of the internet. How you doing?

Vince Kern  1:38  
Hey, I'm not too bad. I can hear you we got a good signal. So let's talk a little bit about where you are and what it's like you're in Cozumel. Is that correct?

Joe Luther  1:46  
That is correct. And so technically, I'm not on the Yucatan Peninsula. We're just 20 miles off of it. Cozumel being an island directly across from Playa Del Carmen which most people are familiar with the Gulf of Mexico, which, you know, kind of starts with Florida and curls around through Texas and in Mexico. And then there's the Yucatan peninsula, which kind of points back up at Florida is very close to it pointing at Cuba, in fact, and we're basically on the opposite side of that Peninsula, on the little island of Cozumel. Actually, I think we're looking at the Caribbean Sea, not the Gulf of Mexico.

Vince Kern  2:28  
That's interesting, because I'm not a geographic expert of Mexico, by any means. And when I looked at a map, I didn't realize how close you are to Cuba. It's to the north east a little bit. Right.

Joe Luther  2:39  
Right. I don't know how far it is. And I'll be throwing those kinds of questions. All right, I'm gonna guess like 80 miles or something like that? And I guess,

Vince Kern  2:48  
and then it's part of Central America. Is that correct?

Joe Luther  2:51  
Right. Well, Mexico is I don't you know, I don't really know where Central America starts and ends according to the borders. But certainly this connection of, of land between North America and South America is known as the people here call it mezzo America. You know, there's a number of countries that are part of that, like, Guatemala and Costa Rica, and Belize. And I can't name them all. But yes, we are in Central or metro America.

Vince Kern  3:22  
So what was it that attracted you for this destination? When you were planning to go here, I know it back here. We've got fallen trees and branches and power outages. And, you know, you'd like to get away from that. So you had planned this trip in advance. This wasn't an escape from America trip.

Joe Luther  3:43  
Right. It wasn't a spontaneous escape from America or from the winters of America trip. But it was definitely a planned escape from the winter because we'd like to get at least a week or two south in the middle of the winter to break it up, sometimes gets a little monotonous. Get our natural form of vitamin D. So mostly, this was a trip to come south and be on a beach somewhere where it isn't too crazy with Spring Break kind of activity. And doing a little research, it seemed as though this island is far more laid back than other areas of Mexico because with Mexico, you've got the legal age of drinking at 18 years old. And that seems to attract a lot of seniors in high school because many of them can drink legally down here. So it's a very popular destination for spring break youngsters. And we wanted to avoid that. So this fit all the particulars for avoiding that. And you

Vince Kern  4:43  
always like to go to places that are culturally enlightening, I suppose is one way of saying it will tell me what it was about Cozumel that we're interested in and were you surprised at what you found? How did you find it? Was it more or less cold? Trolden you thought?

Joe Luther  5:01  
Well, yeah, it's good question because I have always wanted to see the Mayan ruins. I've been fascinated with the Mayan culture since reading about them and, you know, historical outlines and books in high school, probably. And there's pyramids, like what you know, people always are amazed that there's pyramids in Egypt, but we have pyramids here and on the side of the Pacific and Atlantic, whatever. And right here, right here in the Yucatan Peninsula. And Chichen Itza is the Mayan ruin that many people have seen. I think it's even now one of the seven manmade wonders of the world. And I've always wanted to see that and I was hopeful that from Cozumel, we'd be able to at least see some parts of the Mayan ruins. And yeah, so that was part of the draw here is to get some time on the beach and maybe spend a little time looking into the Mayan culture.

Vince Kern  5:53  
Well, you were telling me that the excavation of that particular What did you call it triangular thing? A pyramid? There you go.

Joe Luther  6:03  
Yeah, there are temples that you know, they're not like Pulau, but I guess it's similar to the Egyptian.

Vince Kern  6:09  
But you were telling me that the excavation of those didn't really begin or they weren't really found until the 1800s. So this is a relatively new finding. And can you talk a little bit about your experience with what you saw how you felt? What you learned?

Joe Luther  6:23  
Well, it's fascinating because the Mayan culture is it's kind of a murky, well, I guess the archaeologists are only piecing it together in the last couple of 100 years. But the Mayan civilization is by far the oldest civilization in North America, you have kind of the Aztecs to the north, and the Incas to the south. And here in Central America, the Mayans go back, they're not really sure yet. 1000s of years, most likely, before the Greeks had civilization. So this civilization is very deep in history. And what's interesting is that these ruins are covered in jungle. And maybe the locals knew about it. But when the European explorers came in, and began to learn more and more about the area, they stumbled onto this, and I don't know exactly when they stumbled onto it. But like you said, they didn't begin archaeologically, uncovering chicks and meats until the 1800s. They've been piecing it together ever since. And they keep finding out more they find out that there's huge amounts of these structures all around, it was a huge area, you know, many, many miles, I don't know if it's hundreds of miles. But a huge area that was civilizing in had these types of structures connected to this big one that's at chips needs.

Vince Kern  7:47  
So it sounds like some of the migration might have come up from southward. And then in North America, you had Indian tribes, and it feels like, you know, the Aztecs and the Incas. Obviously, we're related to the North American Indian tribes, right, because they all came together and kept continued on northward. Is that a fair assumption?

Joe Luther  8:09  
Yeah. And I would think that a lot of the difference between maybe as Texan Native Americans of the United States are manmade, by US European border drawers, because I'm sure that they were very similar. But when we're talking about the Mayans, though, we're talking about a culture that goes back much further in terms of being an organized civilization. And the Aztecs and the Incas, and the in the native North Americans were more hunter gatherers, whereas the Mayans were very much a settled civilization, they had farming. And this goes back a long way, in really many historians believe it might be the oldest civilization, although I don't really know who wants to take that claim. But it goes back very, very long way.

Vince Kern  8:56  
Mostly Mayan culture where you are, what are the people like there?

Joe Luther  9:00  
So the people here obviously, it's a mix and when the Spaniards came the camp Easter doors, there was a lot of extinguishing of heritage, just like in North America and in the United States. And so you have a lot of Spanish blood here, and you also have Mayans, and they're very proud of the Mayan heritage. You also have the Inca and Aztec heritage as well because it's a very much a mixing bowl in Central America of all these different genetics, and I think it's made it kind of murky, to figure out exactly who's who and what from from a historical standpoint, but I will tell you that the local people here are extremely proud of the Mayan heritage, I think mostly because they were considered to be a very peaceful non warring, spiritual connected to nature, definitely connection connected to the stars and the sun. You know, the Mayans are the ones who obviously created the Mayan calendar. We're in that kind of thing. And this temple, it shifts, Anita is set up very much in line with the equinox of spring and fall and the sun and the stars and all sorts of great technological and architectural advancements that were made on these buildings, hundreds and hundreds and 1000s of years ago.

Vince Kern  10:21  
It's amazing how the more we learn about ancient cultures, whether it's the Mayans, or people, you know, in other continents, how much mathematics played a part in their culture, but also in their advancement of technology and building an architecture. And we don't really pay much attention to that. I mean, we, we have computerized architecture programs that can throw up a building and a plan, is it reflected in just the everyday living? Or how's that feel?

Joe Luther  10:52  
Right? Well, and I think people are so amazed by is that, just like with the pyramids of Egypt, all of that was done without machines without engines and cranes. So it was all done by hand, and who knows what kind of other equipment, but the precision with which this was done, you know, at chips, and Isa is pretty spectacular, and I think appropriately is one of the seven manmade wonders of the world, because of it. And what's interesting, like you said, Vince, is that they placed a very high value on architects and scientists, I think, you know, astronomers and, and and mathematicians in this culture in the Mayan culture, because those were the people that made up royalty. So they, the people who were smart and understood were, in fact, elevated in society, probably similar to shamans would be in hunter gatherer societies. But this was, they placed a much higher emphasis on the ability to keep track of time, probably because of their, their heavy reliance on farming, because they needed to know how the seasons and variations of natural elements worked, so that they could be most successful with farming. And that was why I'm sure they were so fascinated with the seasons and time to tell

Vince Kern  12:21  
me about your track to Chester Nietzsche. And what did you learn about the MindScape? kind of disappeared? Right? What did you learn from the guides? Or what were the people that are telling you what happened to the Mayans? And I mean, they're still there culturally, but

Joe Luther  12:34  
yeah, well, genetically, they didn't disappear. There's some people that there's some accounts in history. And so the Mayans just kind of disappeared, and they don't know why. And I guess what they mean by that is, when you look at these ruins, there's no clear connection between when they were there, and why the jungle covered it all up. And when the Spaniards came and took over it, mostly the Aztecs and the Incas, so it's, but culturally, they continued on, they just went the their civilization had died out earlier. And I'm not an expert, I can't really tell you. But what I do know is that sometime around 700 AD or CE, as they like to say, Now, modern times 700, the toll tax from north of Mexico City area, and integrated with the Mayans and changed their culturally, they still consider that to be my inherited but with a heavy Toltec influence. And that's when you started to see some of the cultural shifts in human sacrifices and various kinds of cultural changes that didn't appear to be part of the Mayan culture. And from before, the teltik integration

Vince Kern  13:47  
was constant mixing of cultures and populations. I mean, this was happening all over the world. So that was a rapid period of change, what was going on in Europe, and then, centuries later, Europeans come into America, and then a southward invasion by the Spaniards and all that. So when I walk around this city where I live, Joe, and you know, the state, there's a lot of geographical heritage, and you can feel the ancestral guides up around the Great Lakes are in different places around the country in America, but I don't feel a great sense of our ancestors when I'm walking around, because frankly, they all came from Europe, and we displaced the people that were here. But what's it like down there in that regard? And you were telling me about some statues that they found that confounded the heritage in a sense there?

Joe Luther  14:40  
Yeah. Well, no, that's a good two part question. And the first part is the connection both to land and ancestral heritage that is present here. That, like you said, isn't really present in North America. Certainly we have a connection to the land. I think anybody would have connection to anyone and that they grow up in. And if you open yourself to the, to the spirits of the land, they're there. But what's interesting here is that the people here at least with Mayan heritage, are connected, both ancestrally and to the land and in the two kind of commingle together. But yeah, the interesting fact that I found when we were at chimps and apes, which really does confound our sense of history, and really this narrative that we have about how this continent became populated via the Bering Straits 10,000 years ago, and it wasn't discovered until Leif Erickson, or, or whomever the European was, that was able to come across the ocean. But what they found inside this temple that was kind of inside the inside of the temple, they know that there was a statue there from multiple 1000s of years ago, I think, like, at least 2500 years ago, they're even wondering if it's older than that, but at least 2500 years ago, and in the eyes of this statue, are Jade, a variation of, of jade that is only bound in China. So they know that these eyes that were placed in the statute come from China from multiple 1000s of years ago? And that really has them scratching their heads, like, how did they get here? And why? Why are they in these in the eye sockets of these of the statue? And and I think that it begs the question, the historian sometimes are very quick to dig into their narrative of how things happen. But time and time again, there's data and evidence that we find that goes against that narrative. And this is another piece of that that suggests that maybe either people were traveling around more than we knew, or who knows, I don't I don't know. So Mr.

Vince Kern  17:02  
Mr. Erickson wasn't the first leaf on the tree down there as basically what we can take from that, you know, we do have this tendency to write our own history. Finally, I wanted to ask you one thing I know, Mexico is always a timely tourist conversation in terms of safety and, and yet this week and other story of, you know, some some security issues with some people that is brewing right now. How did you find it in terms of safety and Mexico being a place that people should or should not feel comfortable to? I know, there's some parts that are categorized, like category four do not go but what are you finding?

Joe Luther  17:42  
Yeah, well, and to be honest, it's a it's a very good question, because I didn't, I wasn't 100% Sure, when we decided to come here. Whether it was a good idea, because of what I had heard and read. And then as I kind of stripped away the irrational fear, I was able to do a little better research and recognize that there are millions of people who come here every year, and never have any kind of problem, we tend to only hear the bad news. And certainly there's plenty of discussion about cartels and, and open borders, and people coming up through Central America and, and coming across the border. And, and I think that all gets kind of lumped into this idea of a negative view of Mexico. And I can only speak to what I have personally seen. And that is nothing but warmth, and kind, friendly people in the service industry who are very welcoming and very concerned about having a good time and connecting to the heritage. The food here is outstanding. The service is outstanding, quite frankly, the US dollar goes a long way here. But again, I can only speak to Cozumel, it's been absolutely a wonderful place to go. And I'm glad that I stripped away my ears to look a little deeper and see that it's perfectly okay.

Vince Kern  19:04  
It's definitely a concern, something people should think about. But the reality is, is that life these days is is not perfectly secure anywhere. And I suppose taking the precautions and watching and knowing and doing the research is probably the best way to go about it. Now for people who haven't been there, you mentioned the great food. Does it have a sort of cultural flavor to it? Is it Indian Mexican down there? What's it like?

Joe Luther  19:31  
Well, when I went to Greece, I came back and told everybody turns out that Greeks are really good at Greek salads. And I can say the same thing here. Turns out the Mexicans are really good at Mexican food. Because it's like nothing you ever had. The corn tortillas that you use for tacos are are made with a grain and a texture to it that you don't get in that ultra processed corn flour that we get you know In North America, so the food is great, the spices are not, you can ask for hot spicy if you want to, and they give you that option. But a lot of cilantro in line was Sonia and I have become huge fans of a tradition, which is line soup. And so it's a line based flavored chicken soup. And it is spectacular. And everything's fresh because you've got vegetables that are grown, and ripe and right on the vine down here. So everything is really kind of fresh and very delicious. And spices are not too much at all. If anything, it's quite good.

Vince Kern  20:35  
So I imagine that traveling to another country these days is pretty much back to normal with people in the airport, long lines. And it's not the greatest service that's been sort of the way we deal with things now. But, but tell me what it's like down there now that you're there. What's the geography like what's some of the things you've been doing if you've been snorkeling?

Joe Luther  20:57  
I don't know if you know this, but there was a movie years ago called against all odds. And that was Phil Collins won a I think an Oscar for that song in that movie. And that was filmed here and Cozumel. There, I think there was a fair amount of diving involved in that movie, underwater activity and that kind of thing. So yes, this is quite the destination for snorkeling and diving. We're snorkelers. And then also there's the jungle around us and they have jaguars and various kinds of wild animals hear that I could not enumerate them all but are you able to keep them at bay? Well, I you know, we haven't gone too deep into the jungle. But I think they're real and they come out at night. But in fact, what I heard is that our guide, one of the days told us that during COVID some of the animals is when the humans weren't here, the animals started taking over some of the resorts, for sure, in Cancun that happen that they had difficulties not not with human looters but with animal looters. It didn't take them long to come back in. And I can tell you that the fish population is alive and well around the reefs here in Cozumel because I've snorkeled quite a bit and it's been quite a show of snorkeling, it's been very fun.

Vince Kern  22:22  
So when the humans go away the Jaguars find out that laying on a poolside chair by the by the warm weather and trees isn't such a bad place.

Joe Luther  22:31  
Yeah, get the humans out of the way and they can have some of the good places to

Vince Kern  22:35  
Well, it's good to get the humans out of the way best we can. It's good to get outside of ourselves. And Joe, have a safe travel back. We've got some trees here for you to get cut up. And just so you know that the forecast for when you return is supposed to get super super cold. So enjoy your climb.

Joe Luther  22:56  
Well, it's been great wandering with you, Vince and I enjoyed our conversation. But now I will very much enjoy going back to the beach.

Vince Kern  23:06  
You do that? Yeah. Bob by now. gladly go back to the beach. I got your beach right here you saw oops, we're still on the air. Well, hey everybody. Thanks for listening to another episode of Friends in wander. And while we go out and clean off the snow and the ice and the branches and the wires that have fallen. May the Spirit be with you. Thanks again for listening. Join us again next week. Friends