OP
El Graduado
Contributor
- Messages
- 833
- Reaction score
- 1,666
The True History of Cozumel - now available
- Thread starter El Graduado
- Start date
Please register or login
Yes! Thanks to the Kindle version, I can finally read the book! I bought the color print version but I can't really read most print on paper due to what doctors technically call "really weird eye wackiness".
A ScubaBoard Staff Message...
OP
El Graduado
Contributor
- Messages
- 833
- Reaction score
- 1,666
Ggun responded to a post I made on the thread "Lion hunting in Cozumel" about Cozumel in the 1980s, but I felt is was more appropriate for me to respond to it here and not keep dragging the other thread off course!
I had posted a list of restaurants and discos that were in Cozumel around 1984, and he responded that he fell in love with the island in 1978. So, below is a list of restaurants and discos and such from that year. It is from my "Brown Map of Cozumel," which was in it's fourth edition in '78.
The bar "Big Rocky's" that appears on the list was on the malecon and was one of my favorites. I still have a bar glass that has their name printed on it that I got when they closed down. The place later housed the old Carlos 'n' Charlies (& Jimmy Kitchen) and is now known as El Zocalo.
You can see from the amount of "import stores" that those were a big deal back then. Quintana Roo was a free zone (a real one) and there was a load of electronic and electrodomestico stores on the island that brought things in duty free and sold them to Mexican nationals who would then drive them back past the customs point on the Yucatan border. Diamonds were not yet the thing. Black coral jewelry was big and getting bigger. It got so big that it became harder and harder to get on the Cozumel reefs. Looking for an alternative, I found that I could get Asian black coral in Miami pretty cheap, so I started importing batches of it to the island for the "Black Coral Factories" in town. The black coral guys said they could tell the difference, but I doubt a tourist could.
I had posted a list of restaurants and discos that were in Cozumel around 1984, and he responded that he fell in love with the island in 1978. So, below is a list of restaurants and discos and such from that year. It is from my "Brown Map of Cozumel," which was in it's fourth edition in '78.
The bar "Big Rocky's" that appears on the list was on the malecon and was one of my favorites. I still have a bar glass that has their name printed on it that I got when they closed down. The place later housed the old Carlos 'n' Charlies (& Jimmy Kitchen) and is now known as El Zocalo.
You can see from the amount of "import stores" that those were a big deal back then. Quintana Roo was a free zone (a real one) and there was a load of electronic and electrodomestico stores on the island that brought things in duty free and sold them to Mexican nationals who would then drive them back past the customs point on the Yucatan border. Diamonds were not yet the thing. Black coral jewelry was big and getting bigger. It got so big that it became harder and harder to get on the Cozumel reefs. Looking for an alternative, I found that I could get Asian black coral in Miami pretty cheap, so I started importing batches of it to the island for the "Black Coral Factories" in town. The black coral guys said they could tell the difference, but I doubt a tourist could.
Someone showed me their copy of that with price tag of something like a $1.50 US or $6,000 pesos. Kinda neat to see.
Do you know Roberto... I can't remember his last name, but he had a black coral shop downstairs from the original Prima? He moved to the mainland a few years ago, but for many years my parents bought pieces from him to sell in their pharmacy/gift shop in the US.
OP
El Graduado
Contributor
- Messages
- 833
- Reaction score
- 1,666
My parents got to know him when his shop was on Melgar in one of the hotels - Barracuda, Plaza las Glorias, or someplace similar. We bought a lot of pieces from him over the years. He does (or did) beautiful work. He is living in Merida now, isn't he? In the last few years he lived on the island he was getting more and more unhappy with all the concessions the local powers were making to the cruise ship industry. "Cozumel is a whore" was how he put it one of the last times I spoke with him before he left the island.
OP
El Graduado
Contributor
- Messages
- 833
- Reaction score
- 1,666
OP
El Graduado
Contributor
- Messages
- 833
- Reaction score
- 1,666
The photograph below was taken on Cozumel in 1877.
Can anybody guess the location?
Can anybody guess the location?
Similar threads
