Wednesday was the last of our “downtime” days on board SQL Cruise Miami 2011.  Dawn shone on the Mexican Caribbean as we awoke to the promise of an adventurous day on the island of Cozumel – and for some of us on the mainland of the Yucatan peninsula.  Today all cruisers would find their way ashore, visiting the ruins of Tulum on the mainland via ferry and bus, driving off-road vehicles into trees (consult Brent on that one), or spending the day at the beach or in the stores in and around the port.

My son Austen and I found ourselves loaded onto a ferry along with Crys Manson and her mother Sue, and Kevin Kline and his lovely wife Rachel.  Note to self: though nothing of note happened this time, reconsider sitting on a ferry with exhaust issues in very choppy seas next to a pregnant woman.  After a 45 minute ferry ride and hour long bus ride – stopping for chatskis somewhere in the heart of the Quinta-Roo state of Mexico – we arrived at Tulum.  I was a little surprised that it also included what would pass for a Mexican strip mall as well, but capitalism prevails I suppose.  A short hike  through the mall, open air plaza, and down a service road and we arrived at an amazing spectacle: Tulum.

Sitting on a bluff overlooking the coast of the Mexican Caribbean, Tulum was one of the hundreds of Mayan cities that greeted the arrival of the Spanish Conquistadors.  Unlike most other Mayan cities, it was only surrounded on three sides by a high wall – the “fourth wall” in this case was not the television audience, but rather the sea itself.  Today, while you can no longer scale the ruins, you are able to navigate through pathways between the remaining edifices and scale down to the amazingly blue ocean and sandy beach below thanks to stairs erected when the site was restored.

Temperatures in the 90’s and high humidity eventually drove us back to the <sarcasm> authentically </sarcasm> named Mr. Frosty’s for a fantastic lunch of fish tacos and margaritas that proved too much for a couple from our party (hint: the couple did not include a minor child or pregnant woman) who claim the locals mixed the drinks stronger for them than for the rest of us who were partaking. 

After loading up on  <sarcasm> authentic </sarcasm> Mayan wrestling masks and other items we loaded up for a return back to Playa del Carmen to catch the ferry back to Cozumel and the Norwegian Dawn.  Speaking of bus rides in Mexico.  I offer a little bit of advice:

1. It appears the bathrooms on these vehicles are not part of the air conditioning/ventilation system.  Warm and cloying are appropriate descriptions for their aesthetic.

2. The driving skills of Mexican bus drivers are admirable.  I remember this from my honeymoon some years ago in Cancun.  They can tailgate any other vehicle within a 2″ margin.

3. The previous point means that the brakes tend to be used frequently and in some cases violently.

4. When all previous items are taken into consideration along with poor shock absorbers and exposed pieces of metal you may want to reconsider removing using the “facilities” on a Mexican tour bus from your bucket list.

5. If you expect to get a tetanus shot on board a cruise ship – particularly when it’s Spring Break – expect to be greeted not with a sympathetic health care worker, but rather one who can rifle through a drawer of medical supplies with one hand to provide you with bandages, iodine, and rubbing alcohol… all while holding onto the largest quantity of condoms I’ve ever seen in one place at any time with the other free hand.  Seriously, I wish I had my camera.  It looked like prep work for the Halloween Party at the Playboy Mansion circa 1972 if I had to hazard a guess.

 Enough though about old buildings and carnage from poor transportation decisions.  Once safely aboard the Dawn, we assembled for a contests and team-building event sponsored by none other than SQL Cruise itself!  We met in the Pearly Kings Pub, having enough of lounge music by an assortment of passable piano players, so we could hear what was to come: a contests that would test each Cruiser’s skill at associating numeric values to SQL Server questions.  We gave each cruiser a worksheet with questions such as the maximum amount of columns in an an index key in SQL Server 2008 or the default log file size of the model database in SQL Server 2008R2.  They had to match the correct number with the question.  Our winner this time around was Mike Decuir of AllRecipes.com.  He walked away with a brand new netbook courtesy of SQLCruise!

So ended the last free day on board SQL Cruise Miami 2011.  The next day would bring with it a schedule that included both Brent and I speaking on topics of Defensive Indexing, Dynamic Management Objects, and Metadata Mining – with BONUS WATERSPOUT ACTION OFF THE PORT SIDE!

Stay Tuned.