We were in a meeting yesterday, called to discuss the time change in Cozumel, one of our favorite cruise ports. Since there were only two people attending, there wasn’t a lot of debate…only a lot of explaining so that one of us (ahem) could understand what was going on here.
On the first of this month, the Mexican state of Quintana Roo (that includes Cozumel) moved from Central Time to Eastern Time.
Our conversation yesterday went something like this…
“I don’t understand.”
“What don’t you understand?”
“How can Cozumel change its time to Eastern when it’s not Eastern?”
“Maybe it is Eastern.”
“Well, it’s certainly never felt Eastern.”
“Get a map, draw a line and you’ll see Cozumel is on the border?”
“What border?”
“The time zone border, dummy.”
“My line going north goes between Tallahassee and New Orleans, just misses Nashville and hits Cincinnati and Detroit.”
“Exactly.”
“Exactly what?”
“All those places are in the Eastern time zone except New Orleans, which is also on the border.”
“What border?”
“Who’s on first…?”
“Does this apply to Cancun, Playa del Carmen…?”
“The whole enchilada.”
“So if what you say is true, why has it taken so long for Cozumel to discover it belongs in the Eastern time zone?”
“No maps on which to draw lines, maybe.”
“Why are they ‘moving’ east after all this…time?”
“Because of the people.”
“They’re not Eastern, they’re Central.”
“They all come from the East.”
“So if most of the people in Los Angeles came from the East, they’d change the time zone?”
“Who knows?”
“And why now?”
“To make it less confusing.”
“It’s not working.”
“There’s another reason.”
“Which is?”
“Energy. An extra hour of daylight means one less hour for restaurants and nightspots to keep the lights turned on.”
“Isn’t that what Daylight Savings is for?”
“Don’t go there…and there’s also the beach.”
“The beach?”
“An extra hour on the beach makes it easier for Cozumel to compete with the beaches of Jamaica, Dominican Republic, even Cuba. They already have that extra hour.”
“But we already like Cozumel, so why change?”
“It’s just time.”
Today at portsandbows.com: Jazz celebration on Cunard's Queen Mary 2
Norwegian Sky
4 nights
February 23, 2015
Miami (return): Grand Bahama, Nassau, Great Stirrup Cay
Inside: $209
Cost per day: $52
www.ncl.com