Remembering the Beach in Mexico
The other day I was going through some old photos, and I realized that there are still several photos I have never shared from the beach we visited near the town of San Crisanto in Yucatan, Mexico, as part of our 2016 Cruise to Mexico. So here are a few of the memories from that day.
As you may remember from reading the trip report or some of the posts from that trip, we visited this beach as part of a shore excursion that also took us to the Mayan Ruins of Xcambo. It had already been a really fun day before we arrived at the beach, but once we got to the beach, the day was just about perfect. Some people might look at this and be a little turned off by all of the seaweed that has washed up on the shore. But instead, I see an empty beach that goes on for miles, with a great stand of palm trees just up on the shore. It looks wonderful to me, enough so that I did not mind stepping over the seaweed at all.
This wider view shows one of the thatch umbrellas that were there to provide shade for when we were not out in the water. But we did not spend much time up under those umbrellas, instead enjoying the water and the shore line as much as we could for the limited time that we had to spend there. One of the umbrellas did provide a nice shady spot to leave our stuff, and if we had been given more time there, it would have also provided a nice place to sit for a while. But for us, the umbrellas were mainly just another interesting element of the beach, although I did appreciate that there was some type of shelter there and not someone wanting to charge you extra to use a beach umbrella as you would find at so many public beaches.
This view looks down the opposite direction of the shore from the first photo above. But just like in that first view, most all of what you see is the beach, although this view does include a couple of people. All of the people you can see in these photos (which are not that many) were in our shore excursion group. It really did seem like we were the only people for miles, which may have actually been the case for all I know. I was not complaining about that at all. It was a much different experience from being on a cruise ship full of people. Not that the ship seemed overly crowded or anything, but just that compared to that feeling, the feeling at this beach was definitely one of welcome isolation.
As you can see, this beach did not have a terribly wide sandy area like you might find at some beaches, and there was some grass growing up in the sand in places, but that did not bother us at all. It was still picturesquely beautiful, and the secluded nature of the beach added to its beauty even more. I definitely liked the fact that it looked more like a “natural” beach than a well-manicured beach. This is much more like what you would see someone stranded on after a movie shipwreck, and while I am glad we were not shipwrecked there, I did enjoy how the beach looked.
This last view (for today) is very similar to the first view, except that it is from a slightly different angle. I like the first view because it has a nice vanishing point at the right end as the beach and the trees go on toward the horizon. But I also like the small waves on the shore in this view, and how it does not seem to focus quite as much on the seaweed. To me, it also gives a better look at the palm trees instead of clumping them together more as the first view does.
Thanks for reliving the past with these photos. It is fun to look back and see things from the past, and I am glad that we have photos to help us remember all of the good things that we have enjoyed along the way.
Remember the days of old; consider the generations long past. Ask your father and he will tell you, your elders, and they will explain to you. - Deuteronomy 32:7
About the photos:
As you can see from these photos, I switched up lenses some during the day. Switching lenses on a breezy beach is a little tricky, because you want to do all you can to keep dust and dirt from blowing into your camera body. Be sure you find a place out of the wind as much as possible if you do that. However, don’t let that scare you out of doing it, because the results from using different lenses are worth the trouble of changing, even if you have to find a different spot to do it.
Also, my photo processing preferences are constantly changing, so although I have posted similar photos in the past (such as this post for example), these look different just because of different things I have learned over time. Sometimes it is fun to go back and find some old photos and process them again, just to see how they might be different from what you did before. Or as in this case, to find some photos similar to what you have processed before just to see how the new ones might be different.
Photos: Each photo is a single Raw exposure, processed in Photoshop. Read more about photography tips, photo software, camera gear, and more at Steve’s Photography Tips.
Camera: Olympus OM-D E-M10
Lens: Rokinon 7.5mm f/3.5 Fisheye Lens and Olympus 14-42mm IIR
Date: July 19, 2016
Location: Near San Crisanto, Yucatan, Mexico
