Vacation Day 4

On day 4 we got up and had breakfast and then we got ready to go on our Mayan Adventure tour. 

Loved the fruit art that we saw every day:

Our guide's name was Israel and after he picked us up we drove down the highway for a little bit and then stopped and he gave us some general instructions.  It took a while because there were 2 English speaking couples, 2 Italian speaking couples and one family that only spoke French.  So he gave the instructions in English, then in Italian and then he spoke to the French family with a combination of English, Spanish and miming.  When we arrived at the ocean inlet he found a tour guide that spoke French and the French speaking family went with another group.  It was cloudy all day and windy and cool.  Luckily the ocean felt fairly warm.  We got in and got used to our equipment.  My snorkel kept leaking so I got several mouthfuls of sea water until Reed and I traded snorkels.  For some reason it worked fine for him. 

Right away we saw an eel hiding in between some rocks.  It was cool, but creepy looking:

We saw a HUGE swarm of sardines.  It looked like a river of fish - there must have been thousands of them all packed closely together:

After a few minutes we realized that our camera was running low on batteries and we still had to make it last the rest of the day so we didn't take a ton of pictures.  And some of the pictures that we did take turned out really blurry.  But we saw some cool, colorful fish:

We also saw some jelly fish.  Our guide warned us to stay away from them but that was harder than you would expect.  We think Reed might have brushed up against one because his knee was really sore and a little red when we got out of the ocean.

We couldn't go as far into the ocean as we would have liked because the waves were too big because of the bad weather.  Our guide said that farther out there were sea turtles and sting rays so I was pretty disappointed but at least we got to see cool fish.

After that we loaded back into the van and drove to a cave cenote (see-note-ay).  We learned that in that part of Mexico there are no rivers above ground.  Instead there are rivers flowing underground and there are sometimes sink holes that allow access to these underground rivers.  The water was very clear in these cenotes.  As we got ready to enter the cave cenote our guide warned us that the water was pretty cold and that it was best to jump in rather than go in slowly.  He said when you get in you make the monkey sound "Oo, oo, oo" because it was so cold.  So we were expecting really cold water.  We jumped in...and realized that it was not very cold at all.  That water was definitely warmer than our local lake water in the middle of summer.  So that was a pleasant surprise.  Some of the other people in our group thought that the water was pretty cold though (so cold that they wouldn't get in) so I guess it all depends on your perspective.  We enjoyed swimming around looking at all the cool rock formations.

We decided to try to take some pictures of us swimming down in the water but they didn't turn out that great.  Reed's picture had too many bubbles:

And I look like a chipmunk underwater:

When we were done with the cave we went for a short drive to another cenote.  This one had a 12 foot high platform to jump off of and a zip line over the water. 

Here is Reed on the zip line:

When you got close to the dock you let go and drop into the water:

Carissa on the zip line.  We did this several times - it was so fun:

A nice shot of me swimming with the beautiful jungle in the background.  You can also see the platform that we jumped off of on the left side of the picture.  The water was SO clear:

After that our guide took us to a little place for lunch.  The person who booked the tour for us told us that they had the best chicken in the world so we were curious to try it.  It was pretty good, until Reed found this on one of his chicken pieces:

Yup, a bent nail.  It looked like it had gotten stuck to the chicken as it cooked because it was covered with the seasoning.  We just sat there looking at it and then we laughed.  We didn't tell anyone there because we didn't want them to take the nail away - Reed wanted to keep it as a souvenir.  And Reed still ate the chicken piece (I advised against this, but he survived, so I guess no harm done).  After that I lost my appetite for chicken but they had the best tortillas, refried beans, rice and tomatoes and avocado.  After that we went back to the hotel and changed into dry clothes.

When we got back to the hotel we found this crab waiting for us:

That evening we went to the Italian restaurant.  I remember that the meal was okay but not spectacular.  However Reed's dessert was awesome - ice cream in a cake roll:

When we were done there we visited the Creperie, because you can never have too many desserts!  Then we went back to our room.  We got a phone call at 10 pm telling us that our tour for the next day had been changed.  We were scheduled to go to Tulum, Chichen Itza and Cenote Ik Kil but they said they had to change it and we would be visiting Tulum the next day and Chichen Itza and the cenote the following day.  

Vacation Day 3

On day three we got up and had breakfast and then went for a walk on the beach.  The day dawned sunny but with a lot of clouds in the sky. 

Reed walking on the beach:

There was a long stretch of beach in front of our hotel.  The middle was rocky and had a boardwalk over it and the sides were nice and sandy.  Reed decided that he wanted to walk through the ocean from one side to the other, rather than walk on the boardwalk:

We headed to the lagoon to do some snorkeling:

This time we felt confident enough in our snorkeling abilities to bring the underwater camera with us.  Here are some pictures of the fish in the lagoon:

I don't know what this is but it was cool-looking:

Then we headed back to our room to get dry and change.  When we got there we found that the housekeepers were cleaning our room so we hung out in the lobby area outside of our rooms:

We found towel art on our bed everyday.  Today it was a fish:

After lunch the wind picked up and it started to rain.  It was actually quite cool - as in jeans and sweater weather.  Usually all the pool and beach chairs were taken but the rain and wind had a way of emptying them:

That afternoon we decided we wanted to plan another excursion.  We had checked the weather forecast and it was supposed to be rainy and cool for the next 3 days.  We talked to a guy in the lobby of our hotel and told him we wanted to try snorkeling at Cozumel (an island a little ways from our resort).  He told us that we could book a tour but that if the weather was bad (and it was) then it would be postponed.  He then suggested that we try a tour with Mayan Adventures.  There were a few different options.  We chose to go snorkeling in an ocean inlet, then snorkel in a cave cenote, and then go zip lining at a different cenote.  So we set that up for the next morning.  Then we went back to our hotel and just hung out until dinner time.  On this day we went to the American grill - the Bamboleo. 

Here is Reed's Caesar salad:

And his t-bone steak with garlic mashed potatoes and corn:

I ordered the mahi-mahi.  It was okay, but kind of bland.  I enjoyed trying lots of different kinds of fish while we were in Mexico, since that is something that we rarely eat at home: 

Then we enjoyed dessert - cheesecake and brownie.  All of the restaurants served 3 course meals:

After that we decided to try one of their shows.  We heard that the resort put on a show every evening at 9:30 pm.  So we went and waited in the bar area.  We tried some of the non-alcoholic drinks and really liked them.  Then the show started.  I was pretty disappointed.  The show was 8 dancers (4 boys, 4 girls) dancing and lip-syncing to music videos.  Some of the dancers were very scantily clad.  We stayed for a while and then left to get a good nights sleep and be ready for our Mayan adventure the next day.   

Vacation Day 2

The next day we slept in.  I have to say that sleep was one of the things I was most excited about - sleeping in, taking naps, going to bed whenever I wanted and sleeping through the nights.  My kids are pretty good sleepers but with how much we had been sick I had stayed up for a lot of nights and I was running pretty low on sleep.  You know you're a mom of little kids if you get REALLY excited about sleeping in and not having to make or clean up meals.  Anyway, after we woke up we headed over to the open air buffet.

The lower level of the building was the open air buffet (there was also an air conditioned building with a buffet).  On the roof is the Mexican, Italian and Spanish restaurants, as well as the Creperie.  I loved eating breakfast and seeing the ocean so close (the ocean is to the left of this picture):  

Breakfast was my favorite meal to eat at the buffet.  There were so many things you could choose from: pancakes, French toast, refried beans, muffins and breads, bacon and sausage and a whole lot more.  You could fill up a plate with omelet fillings and then take it to someone who would make your omelet in front of you.  They also had someone who would make fresh crepes and you could choose fresh fruit or jam or chocolate syrup to put in the middle.  There was always fresh fruit at every meal.  We even tried papaya and passion fruit, although Reed and I found that we didn't really care for those:

After that we decided to explore the resort and try to figure out where everything was.  The grounds were beautiful - so green and beautifully groomed.  They had this Christmas tree made out of water bottles that was lit up at night:

Coconuts!!!

After that we checked out some bikes from the hotel and rode to the little town down the road.  We were in a gated community so we felt safe to do this. 

That is a big boat:



Oh, funny story: when we woke up it was sunny but it quickly became cloudy and rainy.  So when we went down to see if we could check out some bikes it was raining lightly.  We walked into this little hut and a guy was sitting behind a desk:

Us: Hello, can we check out a bike?

Man: blank stare

Us: Pointing at the row of bikes - "Can we use one of these?"

Man: says something in Spanish and points above my head

Carissa:  "umm, yes I am pretty tall" (I was trying really hard to figure out what he was saying and I thought he was pointing out that I almost hit my head on the grass roof coming inside)

Man: keeps pointing above our heads

Us:  "umm, do we need to go get helmets?" ( by this time I am really wishing one of us spoke Spanish)

Man: keeps gesturing over our heads

Us:  "Do we need to go back and pay for them?" (We had heard they were free to rent but maybe we were wrong?)

Man: gets up and points outside

Reed: "It's raining..."

Man:  Nods his head

Us:  "So, can we still use the bikes?"

Man:  Looks at us like we are crazy and points again at the rain

Us:  "So we can't ride the bikes in the rain?"

Man:  Shakes his head

So we left and waited in the lobby for a few minutes until the sun came out again.  Funny, because to us it still felt warm and we didn't mind getting a little wet.  So we went back over there and there was a different guy there who spoke some English and we checked our bikes out in no time. 

Reed cruisin' the town:



ready to roll:

After we had explored for a while we were hot and hungry so we headed back to our hotel.  We ate lunch and then took a nap in our room.  After that we decided to go lay on the beach:

They had a juice bar there so we both ordered one and went to relax:

After relaxing for a bit we were ready to try snorkeling.  We had heard that there was really good snorkeling right off the beach at our hotel because there was a coral reef nearby.  Neither of us had ever snorkeled before but we both really enjoyed it.  We didn't see very many fish but it was fun to explore the lagoon beside our hotel.  It started raining while we were snorkeling but that didn't bother us.  The ocean water was quite warm.  After we got out the wind felt cold so we went back to our rooms and changed and got ready for dinner.  When we checked in we were given 5 tickets for the restaurants and were told that we could use them in any of the 5 restaurants and that there were no reservations, just first come first serve.  We had heard that it was hard to get into the Japanese restaurant so we decided to try there first.  We went and stood in a short line for about 1 minute and then a hostess came out and asked if we wanted to eat now or later.  We told her now and she took us back to a table.  We sat around a grill with another couple and a young family.  They did a show where he flipped an egg and caught it with his metal spatula and he cooked all of our food in front of us.  It was really good food.  It tried sushi for the first time and actually liked most of it. 

In the picture below you can kind of see a white bowl in the air about level with the chef's hat.  He stuffed the bowl full of fried rice and then he was flipping it over and catching it with his spatula.  Then he would hand it to one of us:



After dinner we went for a night time stroll on the beach.  We had fun looking for sea shells for the kids.  We also saw a little crab on the beach.

 

It was my birthday so we decided to go get dessert at the Creperie.  We LOVED the Creperie.  They were open in the evenings and they served all kinds of dessert crepes and savory crepes and milkshakes and ice cream treats.  So I ordered a chocolate crepe with chocolate ice cream, chocolate sauce and whipped cream - yummy!  Reed ordered a banana split.  It was a very fun birthday!

Vacation Day 1

Last year was our 10th wedding anniversary.  I have always wanted to travel somewhere exotic so we decided that we would go to Mexico.  We waited to go until January because it worked better for us and for my parents who volunteered to stay with our kids while we were gone.  Our plane flew out at 5:45 am.  It was cold (around 0 F) and snowing when we left, which made it all the more exciting to be going somewhere warm.  Our first flight went smoothly.  Then we had a 5 hour layover in Denver.  We got some breakfast and then wandered through the airport.  When we arrived at our gate our pilot informed us that we were all ready to go, except that we were missing our flight attendants.  He then informed us that they wouldn't be here for another 1 1/2 hours so our flight would be delayed.  We thought about trying to convince them that Reed could do the job but we decided to just wait patiently.

Waiting to start boarding our plane.  Waiting really wasn't so bad since we didn't have any kids with us and we could just sit and chill.  Of course we did spend most of that delay talking to the kids on the phone:

It was snowing pretty hard when we finally took off:

We finally got on the plane and took off (after waiting to be de-iced).  It was a 5 hour plane ride to Cancun, Mexico.  The ride went smoothly until the end.  Then it felt like we were on a roller coaster.  We would drop really fast and your stomach would lurch up and then it felt like you hit the bottom and your stomach would drop back down and then you would suddenly be diving again.  Oh, boy, my stomach did not like that at all.  I kept it together, but just barely.  I was very glad to be back on solid ground.  Once we were on the ground we had to get through customs and immigration and then pick up our bags.  We finally walked outside to find our ride in the pouring rain.  We were about 2 hours later than we had planned on and at first we didn't see our ride anywhere.  We were starting to get concerned when we found him.  He drove us to our hotel, which was about an hour south of Cancun, in Puerto Adventuras.  It was 10 pm when we finally checked in.  They tried to upgrade us to a privileged room but we just wanted to go and get something to eat.  So we hurried to the buffet and ate a late dinner.  Then we thought about the rooms again.  The room they had showed us to was okay, but nothing special.  We had checked the forecast and knew that it was going to be rainy that week so we might be spending more time in our room than we normally would.  So we decided to upgrade.  I'm glad we did.

We stayed at the Catalonia:

 

picture taken from the bottom of the driveway:

 

Our room had a king bed:

 

and a living room area when you first walked in:

 

the bathroom had two sinks, a shower, toilet and closets (with bathrobes and slippers):

 

Out the back door we had a this little garden area:

 

right next to the garden was this tub and chairs (my computer didn't like this picture so it won't turn it):

We didn't have an ocean view but our room was quiet and only about a minute walk to the beach.  We really liked the room and were glad we upgraded.