Mexico
Returned yesterday from a week-long vacation in Mexico. Summary and pics below.
Introduction and Cast of Characters
This was a family trip. Over 80% of it was planned by my parents, which I was super grateful for. Had it been just me, I would have ended up woefully unprepared. Our group contained 9 people in total:
Back row: Rory, Amy
Middle row: Dad, Mom, Matt
Front row: Evie, Morgan, Kendra, Devin
Very front row: a mellow crocodile at the zoo that Evie found more interesting than the camera-man.
Saturday - Travel
Day began bright and early at 5am. After one last hope that my skinny bag contained sufficient stuff for the week, drove out to the Herndon Park & Ride to catch the 7:15 Metrobus to Dulles Airport. This $12 plan was better on paper than the $50-70 plan of parking in long term at the airport, but the temperature was in the teens that morning, and I don’t want to pack *too* warmly with stuff that will be wasted space all week. Anyhow, the bus came on schedule but Dulles was super packed. The bus arrived at 7:25, and by the time I got checked in, through security, and across the mini-subway to my gate for my 8:45 plane, boarding had already started and no other people were waiting in line.
After an uneventful flight, Cancun immigration/customs was similarly crazy. It became quite clear that Cancun is a tourist destination first and foremost. The “Mexican Citizens” line was completely empty, and the line for the rest of us was 30-40 minutes long (*2 lines). I was the first to arrive, so I sat down at a restaurant table next to a sign marked “Family meeting place” and hoped for the best. As expected, my cell phone gets no signal in Mexico, and doesn’t even realize that there is a 1 hour time difference from the east coast.
After about an hour, Mom and Dad arrive with Amy, Morgan, Evie and Rory, and we begin the arcane process of figuring out how to obtain our two rental cars without getting scammed. We pick up Kendra and Devin from the other terminal and begin the drive to the hotel.
By the time we were inside, unpacked, and given instructions about the resort, there wasn’t much time left for anything other than a short evening walk around the premises.
Sunday - At the resort
The morning gets spent at the resort. Some scattered showers curtailed ideas of driving elsewhere. They have a ridiculously large pool with some chairs nearby to soak in the sun, but none of the water is more than 4 feet deep. There are a lot of artificial waterfalls, fountains and footpaths around connecting various parts of the pool.
The resort is close to a “real” beach, but there are many shallow rocks and coral outcroppings, so it is not really safe for swimming.
Kendra and Devin walk along our beautiful but unswimmable beach.
After an hour or two of aquatic exploration in the pool, we head back for lunch.
After lunch, most of the family goes back to the pool, but I had enough during the first pool visit, so I make my own walking tour of the place for a couple hours. Most of what I find includes expensive restaurants and other services we are unlikely to be willing to pay for. I find two crocodile cages, containing 2 crocs each, and one flamingo pen with 18 birds in it.
I am amused that price listings in pesos (which are 10 or 12 to the dollar depending on the hostility of your exchange broker) are given using a $ sign. Most of the time, if they actually want to talk about US dollars, they use the abbreviation usd, but not always. So it takes a bit of getting used to, when you glance at a restaurant menu and see that you can order enchiladas for $150.
Sunday evening we decided to watch the Super Bowl. We found a channel with English game commentary but Spanish commercials, so if there was some cool commercial, we missed it.
Monday - Snorkeling
The morning starts with a timeshare-sponsored breakfast. RCI, the organization through which Mom and Dad exchange vacation weeks, sends us all to a breakfast buffet on site, (would have been a normal fee of $280 or about 25 usd per person) and give us a hefty credit to incidental expenses, at the cost of requiring Mom and Dad to listen to a timeshare presentation afterwards. This seems like a decent deal on paper, so we accept. Unfortunately, the elapsed time between being ready for breakfast and being released of all post-breakfast obligations ends up being about 4 hours (!) Poor Mom and Dad were quite tired of being lectured about new timeshare offers.
With the morning unexpectedly wasted, we looked for a good non-full-day activity for the afternoon, and settled on a trip to Puerto Morelos (about a 15 minute drive north), with snorkeling gear in hand. According to various travel guidebooks, there are supposed to be a lot of good snorkeling options at the reefs outside the city. Mom, Dad, Kendra, and Devin came along while Amy, Morgan, and the girls stayed home for naptime.
Puerto Morelos itself is a pretty crappy looking city. The center of town is lined with mom-and-pop vendors in rickety booths trying to sell you a bunch of stuff that you can tell from fifty paces that you don’t want. We find a place to park and make our way to the beach.
The beach view is quite beautiful, but also has a lot of medium-sized boats, and no obvious place for public swimming.
While inspecting the boats, a small Mexican guy maybe in his 70s sees our interest and offers us the use of his boat for two 45-minute snorkeling expeditions near the port, for 300 pesos or 25 usd per person. The guy had equipment for us to borrow. We decide to give it a shot.
The snorkeling turned out to be *incredible*. The water was about 6 to 8 feet deep, quite clear, and there were thousands of beautiful fish hanging out near the coral. An additional person named Melissa came along, who was fluent in marine biology, Spanish, and English, and helpfully described a lot of the fish we were seeing. My favorite part was the schools of 100+ fish that would peacefully sit there 3 feet below me without being intimidated. Others were amazed by the 6 foot manta ray with 10 foot tail that we spotted near the end. Overall it was a great highlight of the trip. No underwater pics available, we didn't have an underwater camera.
On the return trip, Kendra was not feeling well. Her condition got worse as the evening went on.
Tuesday - Tulum
Overnight, Mom starting feeling unwell, and Kendra was still feeling rotten, so the other seven of us packed in the car to check out the ruins of Tulum, about an hour south of the resort. The road was pretty direct, but there were some inexplicable speed bumps thrown onto the road while heavily armed police officers looked on. The bumps were made out of half-grapefruit-sized metal balls that seemed to only exist for the inconvenience of motorists. We could only assume that these existed to catch drug runners or some specific license plate the cops were searching for.
After arrival at Tulum, we found a couple overpriced tour options, and some additional crappy mom-and-pop vendor shacks, but admission to the park itself was quite reasonable, 57 pesos each. The limestone Mayan architecture was neat, and the beach view was beautiful, but managing the care (and shade) of Evie and Rory was challenging. Dad and Amy took plenty of pictures. Some signs provided historical context in three languages: Spanish, English, and an unfamiliar third that we can only assume was Mayan or Aztec.
Limestone castle at top right overlooks beautiful beach
Amy and Rory are off-camera, the rest of us pose by a 'cenote', aka natural cave/sinkhole
By lunchtime, everyone was feeling quite exhausted. We spotted a Subway store on the way out of the park, and were unable to resist the allure of air conditioning. I decided to walk next door to obtain some "real" Mexican tacos instead. They were small but tasty.
On the return trip, Dad, Devin, and I went to the supermarket to obtain some salmon and pasta for the evening’s meal. After dinner, we had time for 16/28 hands of a Barbu game.
Wednesday - Zoo & El Rey
For the morning, we went to a place called the Croco Cun Zoo just on the other side of Puerto Morelos, about a 15 minute drive north. The focus here was clearly on the entertainment of the young ones, but it was interesting for the adults too. Our admission fee bought us a guide who spoke fluent but heavily accented English, and was very knowledgeable about the birds, crocodiles, snakes, iguanas, monkeys, deer, turtles, and other creatures around the zoo. The non-aggressive critters were brought out of their cages to pet and/or feed, and every type had a story behind it that our guide was able to keep interesting and humorous.
Everyone had to take a turn holding the baby croc.
This snake stayed behind a cage, thankfully. Probably could have eaten Rory whole! :-)
Evie and Rory have been a handful this week, and especially at encounters like this, if baby ain’t having fun, ain’t nobody having fun. I try to not have their experiences color my own too much, but sometimes it is a challenge. Fortunately, on the whole, everyone had fun at the zoo, young and old.
After the zoo, figuring we were close to Cancun at this point, we decided to scavenge Cancun’s hotel district for a suitable lunch spot. We found a nice Mexican burger/taco place with a nice place to eat outside, viewing Cancun’s inner lagoon. I had some shrimp tacos which were basically just fried shrimp inside a tortilla, but with enough options for veggie/spice/salsa customization to make them tasty.
From here we split up. Mom and Kendra had regained their good health and had missed out on Tulum, so we drove further down the Cancun hotel district to a ruin called El Rey. This was clearly the bottom of the barrel as far as ancient Mexican ruins went, yet there were still some interesting comparisons to be made. El Rey, being significantly smaller and less popular, did not rope off most of the structures, allowing us to climb to the top of (what’s left of) its ancient temple.
Iguanas were omnipresent at both ruins; the limestone rocks provided good sunning locations and shelter for them. We joked that they were the squirrels of the ruins. Kendra was very excited to see them, and we had the insight to bring some left-over tortilla wraps from lunch. We found out that iguanas have the same “motion vision” as the T-Rexes in Jurassic Park: they were really interested in the food pieces as long as they were still flying through the air, but would be unable to find pieces that they didn’t personally see landing. Even so, feeding the iguanas was great fun; a cluster of nine had gathered by the time we exhausted our tortilla supply.
For the evening, we finished our Barbu game and Devin got a lesson in back rubs.
Thursday - Xel’Ha
Mexico, on the whole, is really excited about the 24th letter of the alphabet. They seem to really like using it at the beginning of city/site names. We’re still not clear about when X should be pronounced as the German “ch” and when it should have the hard “k” sound. Xel’Ha was one of the former cases. So is Xichen Itza (at least, in that alternate spelling). The jury is still out on Xcaret, which is a site not on our radar this week.
Originally a minor Mayan ruin site, Xel’Ha is now a major aquatic amusement park. A steep thousand-peso entry fee grants access to a wide variety of swimming, snorkeling, and games, as well as full breakfast and lunch buffets and an open bar. Mom and Dad had been there before, and knew that the place would not be suitable for Evie and Rory, so we agreed for the four of them to stay behind at the resort and let the “big kids” go to the park.
Amy takes a picture of me, Morgan, Devin, and Kendra at the start of the day, overlooking the central swim/snorkel bay of Xel'Ha. We did buy a water-camera for later action shots but those photos were developed elsewhere.
We started the morning at their “lazy river”. A short shuttle ride to the far corner of the park gave us a gentle inner-tube ride down towards the center of the park. Along the way, many colorful fish are swimming below, and some side water activities were available: first a 15 foot climbing wall to jump from, then a 150 foot lateral rope walk that made for a challenging balancing act (especially when other teenagers jump on the opposite end to troll you), and three different ziplines with big splashes at the end.
Morgan had bought into a supplemental “swimming with dolphins” offer; after lunch we watched him hang out with some well-trained dolphins in a side pool. Among other antics, two dolphins worked in parallel to lift his feet and propel him across the pool at maybe 20 mph. Amy took lots of pictures and videos.
During the prep time for Morgan’s adventure, I went with Kendra and Devin to check out some minor sites elsewhere in the park. We found the swimming entrance to their Mayan Cave, which was okay but not particularly impressive, a floating bridge that was alarmingly unstable (which stirred up memories of Seattle’s floating bridge, though only tangentially related), and a plant nursery with some endangered plants to look at (and also iguanas, because why not).
For the afternoon we rented some snorkel gear and ran the lazy river a second time. Apparently the mix of freshwater and saltwater creates a blurry effect under the surface, so the quality of snorkeling was inferior to our earlier adventure in Puerto Morelos. However, the addition of ziplines and ropewalks made for interesting diversions along the way (though I got a non-serious abrasion on my shin from a bad scrape with the rope), and the duration of the snorkel trip was significantly longer than before. As the end of the day approached, we skipped ahead to their marked “fish sanctuary” locations, which was a good high point on which to end the day. The density of fish was a lot higher and the blurry effect diminished as we got closer to the ocean.
After the return trip home, we found that Mom and Dad had had a positive day with their grandchildren, and pictures of the day were shared by all, but we started dinner late enough that the evening contained no games, only some reading before bed.
Friday - Rio Secreto
Mom, Dad, Kendra, Devin, and I took a morning trip to Rio Secreto, or the ‘secret river’, which is an underground series of partially flooded limestone caves. The only such cave system that I am familiar with is Howe Caverns in central NY State, which is some 150 feet below the surface and is sufficiently insulated from the real world as to be 50 degrees F, year round. So this recollection had me slightly worried that I’d freeze my buns off. Fortunately, these caves were a mere 50 feet underground, and had a very reasonable temperature. They gave us partial wetsuits anyway.
The morning started with a 7km, 20 minute van ride along an unpaved road. With all the fishtailing required to reduce the number of potholes we struck, it’s amazing we all kept our sanity intact. After being equipped with water shoes, wetsuits, lifejackets, and mining helmets, we were assigned a guide, Rene, to lead us through the cave system while describing the biological and historical significance of the caves. Rene’s English was fairly good but had several recurring goofy phrases, like asking you to “Smile, look like enjoy” when having a picture taken, or “On your lights, please” when additional illumination was necessary.
The stalactite and stalagmite formations were very pretty, despite the generous pedestrian traffic that the caves apparently get. Some paths were dry, some paths as deep as 7 feet of water. Unfortunately, the pictures that were taken were all part of a campaign to swindle an additional 70-100 bucks out of their customers, so we did not bring any personal mementos home.
This is not any of us (it's lifted from their website) but it's the same area we were in.
After the romp in the caves, we celebrated with a shot of Xtabentun liquor. (I’ve since learned that ‘esch’ is the appropriate pronunciation for X when no vowels are nearby.) I tend to not like booze, pretty much ever, but I gave this a try and enjoyed it. It has a thick consistency and strong anise (licorice) and honey flavors. They also fed us lunch.
Back at the resort, we made a final visit to the pool before enjoying a nice dinner at the Mexican restaurant onsite. I had a “tlayuda”, ordered sight unseen based on an ingredients list. It ended up being a sort of Mexican pizza. Mine came with chicken, black beans, cheese (in lumps rather than a traditional pizza spread), cabbage, onions, and at least three unknown substances. I managed to resist the temptation to dissect the thing and just ate it like a pizza.
Introduction and Cast of Characters
This was a family trip. Over 80% of it was planned by my parents, which I was super grateful for. Had it been just me, I would have ended up woefully unprepared. Our group contained 9 people in total:
- parents, Mom and Dad
- my sisters, Amy and Kendra
- Amy's husband, Morgan
- Kendra's boyfriend, Devin
- Amy and Morgan's two girls, Evie (2yr 10mo) and Rory (11mo).
Back row: Rory, Amy
Middle row: Dad, Mom, Matt
Front row: Evie, Morgan, Kendra, Devin
Very front row: a mellow crocodile at the zoo that Evie found more interesting than the camera-man.
Saturday - Travel
Day began bright and early at 5am. After one last hope that my skinny bag contained sufficient stuff for the week, drove out to the Herndon Park & Ride to catch the 7:15 Metrobus to Dulles Airport. This $12 plan was better on paper than the $50-70 plan of parking in long term at the airport, but the temperature was in the teens that morning, and I don’t want to pack *too* warmly with stuff that will be wasted space all week. Anyhow, the bus came on schedule but Dulles was super packed. The bus arrived at 7:25, and by the time I got checked in, through security, and across the mini-subway to my gate for my 8:45 plane, boarding had already started and no other people were waiting in line.
After an uneventful flight, Cancun immigration/customs was similarly crazy. It became quite clear that Cancun is a tourist destination first and foremost. The “Mexican Citizens” line was completely empty, and the line for the rest of us was 30-40 minutes long (*2 lines). I was the first to arrive, so I sat down at a restaurant table next to a sign marked “Family meeting place” and hoped for the best. As expected, my cell phone gets no signal in Mexico, and doesn’t even realize that there is a 1 hour time difference from the east coast.
After about an hour, Mom and Dad arrive with Amy, Morgan, Evie and Rory, and we begin the arcane process of figuring out how to obtain our two rental cars without getting scammed. We pick up Kendra and Devin from the other terminal and begin the drive to the hotel.
By the time we were inside, unpacked, and given instructions about the resort, there wasn’t much time left for anything other than a short evening walk around the premises.
Sunday - At the resort
The morning gets spent at the resort. Some scattered showers curtailed ideas of driving elsewhere. They have a ridiculously large pool with some chairs nearby to soak in the sun, but none of the water is more than 4 feet deep. There are a lot of artificial waterfalls, fountains and footpaths around connecting various parts of the pool.
The resort is close to a “real” beach, but there are many shallow rocks and coral outcroppings, so it is not really safe for swimming.
Kendra and Devin walk along our beautiful but unswimmable beach.
After an hour or two of aquatic exploration in the pool, we head back for lunch.
After lunch, most of the family goes back to the pool, but I had enough during the first pool visit, so I make my own walking tour of the place for a couple hours. Most of what I find includes expensive restaurants and other services we are unlikely to be willing to pay for. I find two crocodile cages, containing 2 crocs each, and one flamingo pen with 18 birds in it.
I am amused that price listings in pesos (which are 10 or 12 to the dollar depending on the hostility of your exchange broker) are given using a $ sign. Most of the time, if they actually want to talk about US dollars, they use the abbreviation usd, but not always. So it takes a bit of getting used to, when you glance at a restaurant menu and see that you can order enchiladas for $150.
Sunday evening we decided to watch the Super Bowl. We found a channel with English game commentary but Spanish commercials, so if there was some cool commercial, we missed it.
Monday - Snorkeling
The morning starts with a timeshare-sponsored breakfast. RCI, the organization through which Mom and Dad exchange vacation weeks, sends us all to a breakfast buffet on site, (would have been a normal fee of $280 or about 25 usd per person) and give us a hefty credit to incidental expenses, at the cost of requiring Mom and Dad to listen to a timeshare presentation afterwards. This seems like a decent deal on paper, so we accept. Unfortunately, the elapsed time between being ready for breakfast and being released of all post-breakfast obligations ends up being about 4 hours (!) Poor Mom and Dad were quite tired of being lectured about new timeshare offers.
With the morning unexpectedly wasted, we looked for a good non-full-day activity for the afternoon, and settled on a trip to Puerto Morelos (about a 15 minute drive north), with snorkeling gear in hand. According to various travel guidebooks, there are supposed to be a lot of good snorkeling options at the reefs outside the city. Mom, Dad, Kendra, and Devin came along while Amy, Morgan, and the girls stayed home for naptime.
Puerto Morelos itself is a pretty crappy looking city. The center of town is lined with mom-and-pop vendors in rickety booths trying to sell you a bunch of stuff that you can tell from fifty paces that you don’t want. We find a place to park and make our way to the beach.
The beach view is quite beautiful, but also has a lot of medium-sized boats, and no obvious place for public swimming.
While inspecting the boats, a small Mexican guy maybe in his 70s sees our interest and offers us the use of his boat for two 45-minute snorkeling expeditions near the port, for 300 pesos or 25 usd per person. The guy had equipment for us to borrow. We decide to give it a shot.
The snorkeling turned out to be *incredible*. The water was about 6 to 8 feet deep, quite clear, and there were thousands of beautiful fish hanging out near the coral. An additional person named Melissa came along, who was fluent in marine biology, Spanish, and English, and helpfully described a lot of the fish we were seeing. My favorite part was the schools of 100+ fish that would peacefully sit there 3 feet below me without being intimidated. Others were amazed by the 6 foot manta ray with 10 foot tail that we spotted near the end. Overall it was a great highlight of the trip. No underwater pics available, we didn't have an underwater camera.
On the return trip, Kendra was not feeling well. Her condition got worse as the evening went on.
Tuesday - Tulum
Overnight, Mom starting feeling unwell, and Kendra was still feeling rotten, so the other seven of us packed in the car to check out the ruins of Tulum, about an hour south of the resort. The road was pretty direct, but there were some inexplicable speed bumps thrown onto the road while heavily armed police officers looked on. The bumps were made out of half-grapefruit-sized metal balls that seemed to only exist for the inconvenience of motorists. We could only assume that these existed to catch drug runners or some specific license plate the cops were searching for.
After arrival at Tulum, we found a couple overpriced tour options, and some additional crappy mom-and-pop vendor shacks, but admission to the park itself was quite reasonable, 57 pesos each. The limestone Mayan architecture was neat, and the beach view was beautiful, but managing the care (and shade) of Evie and Rory was challenging. Dad and Amy took plenty of pictures. Some signs provided historical context in three languages: Spanish, English, and an unfamiliar third that we can only assume was Mayan or Aztec.
Limestone castle at top right overlooks beautiful beach
Amy and Rory are off-camera, the rest of us pose by a 'cenote', aka natural cave/sinkhole
By lunchtime, everyone was feeling quite exhausted. We spotted a Subway store on the way out of the park, and were unable to resist the allure of air conditioning. I decided to walk next door to obtain some "real" Mexican tacos instead. They were small but tasty.
On the return trip, Dad, Devin, and I went to the supermarket to obtain some salmon and pasta for the evening’s meal. After dinner, we had time for 16/28 hands of a Barbu game.
Wednesday - Zoo & El Rey
For the morning, we went to a place called the Croco Cun Zoo just on the other side of Puerto Morelos, about a 15 minute drive north. The focus here was clearly on the entertainment of the young ones, but it was interesting for the adults too. Our admission fee bought us a guide who spoke fluent but heavily accented English, and was very knowledgeable about the birds, crocodiles, snakes, iguanas, monkeys, deer, turtles, and other creatures around the zoo. The non-aggressive critters were brought out of their cages to pet and/or feed, and every type had a story behind it that our guide was able to keep interesting and humorous.
Everyone had to take a turn holding the baby croc.
This snake stayed behind a cage, thankfully. Probably could have eaten Rory whole! :-)
Evie and Rory have been a handful this week, and especially at encounters like this, if baby ain’t having fun, ain’t nobody having fun. I try to not have their experiences color my own too much, but sometimes it is a challenge. Fortunately, on the whole, everyone had fun at the zoo, young and old.
After the zoo, figuring we were close to Cancun at this point, we decided to scavenge Cancun’s hotel district for a suitable lunch spot. We found a nice Mexican burger/taco place with a nice place to eat outside, viewing Cancun’s inner lagoon. I had some shrimp tacos which were basically just fried shrimp inside a tortilla, but with enough options for veggie/spice/salsa customization to make them tasty.
From here we split up. Mom and Kendra had regained their good health and had missed out on Tulum, so we drove further down the Cancun hotel district to a ruin called El Rey. This was clearly the bottom of the barrel as far as ancient Mexican ruins went, yet there were still some interesting comparisons to be made. El Rey, being significantly smaller and less popular, did not rope off most of the structures, allowing us to climb to the top of (what’s left of) its ancient temple.
Iguanas were omnipresent at both ruins; the limestone rocks provided good sunning locations and shelter for them. We joked that they were the squirrels of the ruins. Kendra was very excited to see them, and we had the insight to bring some left-over tortilla wraps from lunch. We found out that iguanas have the same “motion vision” as the T-Rexes in Jurassic Park: they were really interested in the food pieces as long as they were still flying through the air, but would be unable to find pieces that they didn’t personally see landing. Even so, feeding the iguanas was great fun; a cluster of nine had gathered by the time we exhausted our tortilla supply.
For the evening, we finished our Barbu game and Devin got a lesson in back rubs.
Thursday - Xel’Ha
Mexico, on the whole, is really excited about the 24th letter of the alphabet. They seem to really like using it at the beginning of city/site names. We’re still not clear about when X should be pronounced as the German “ch” and when it should have the hard “k” sound. Xel’Ha was one of the former cases. So is Xichen Itza (at least, in that alternate spelling). The jury is still out on Xcaret, which is a site not on our radar this week.
Originally a minor Mayan ruin site, Xel’Ha is now a major aquatic amusement park. A steep thousand-peso entry fee grants access to a wide variety of swimming, snorkeling, and games, as well as full breakfast and lunch buffets and an open bar. Mom and Dad had been there before, and knew that the place would not be suitable for Evie and Rory, so we agreed for the four of them to stay behind at the resort and let the “big kids” go to the park.
Amy takes a picture of me, Morgan, Devin, and Kendra at the start of the day, overlooking the central swim/snorkel bay of Xel'Ha. We did buy a water-camera for later action shots but those photos were developed elsewhere.
We started the morning at their “lazy river”. A short shuttle ride to the far corner of the park gave us a gentle inner-tube ride down towards the center of the park. Along the way, many colorful fish are swimming below, and some side water activities were available: first a 15 foot climbing wall to jump from, then a 150 foot lateral rope walk that made for a challenging balancing act (especially when other teenagers jump on the opposite end to troll you), and three different ziplines with big splashes at the end.
Morgan had bought into a supplemental “swimming with dolphins” offer; after lunch we watched him hang out with some well-trained dolphins in a side pool. Among other antics, two dolphins worked in parallel to lift his feet and propel him across the pool at maybe 20 mph. Amy took lots of pictures and videos.
Click to viewDuring the prep time for Morgan’s adventure, I went with Kendra and Devin to check out some minor sites elsewhere in the park. We found the swimming entrance to their Mayan Cave, which was okay but not particularly impressive, a floating bridge that was alarmingly unstable (which stirred up memories of Seattle’s floating bridge, though only tangentially related), and a plant nursery with some endangered plants to look at (and also iguanas, because why not).
For the afternoon we rented some snorkel gear and ran the lazy river a second time. Apparently the mix of freshwater and saltwater creates a blurry effect under the surface, so the quality of snorkeling was inferior to our earlier adventure in Puerto Morelos. However, the addition of ziplines and ropewalks made for interesting diversions along the way (though I got a non-serious abrasion on my shin from a bad scrape with the rope), and the duration of the snorkel trip was significantly longer than before. As the end of the day approached, we skipped ahead to their marked “fish sanctuary” locations, which was a good high point on which to end the day. The density of fish was a lot higher and the blurry effect diminished as we got closer to the ocean.
After the return trip home, we found that Mom and Dad had had a positive day with their grandchildren, and pictures of the day were shared by all, but we started dinner late enough that the evening contained no games, only some reading before bed.
Friday - Rio Secreto
Mom, Dad, Kendra, Devin, and I took a morning trip to Rio Secreto, or the ‘secret river’, which is an underground series of partially flooded limestone caves. The only such cave system that I am familiar with is Howe Caverns in central NY State, which is some 150 feet below the surface and is sufficiently insulated from the real world as to be 50 degrees F, year round. So this recollection had me slightly worried that I’d freeze my buns off. Fortunately, these caves were a mere 50 feet underground, and had a very reasonable temperature. They gave us partial wetsuits anyway.
The morning started with a 7km, 20 minute van ride along an unpaved road. With all the fishtailing required to reduce the number of potholes we struck, it’s amazing we all kept our sanity intact. After being equipped with water shoes, wetsuits, lifejackets, and mining helmets, we were assigned a guide, Rene, to lead us through the cave system while describing the biological and historical significance of the caves. Rene’s English was fairly good but had several recurring goofy phrases, like asking you to “Smile, look like enjoy” when having a picture taken, or “On your lights, please” when additional illumination was necessary.
The stalactite and stalagmite formations were very pretty, despite the generous pedestrian traffic that the caves apparently get. Some paths were dry, some paths as deep as 7 feet of water. Unfortunately, the pictures that were taken were all part of a campaign to swindle an additional 70-100 bucks out of their customers, so we did not bring any personal mementos home.
This is not any of us (it's lifted from their website) but it's the same area we were in.
After the romp in the caves, we celebrated with a shot of Xtabentun liquor. (I’ve since learned that ‘esch’ is the appropriate pronunciation for X when no vowels are nearby.) I tend to not like booze, pretty much ever, but I gave this a try and enjoyed it. It has a thick consistency and strong anise (licorice) and honey flavors. They also fed us lunch.
Back at the resort, we made a final visit to the pool before enjoying a nice dinner at the Mexican restaurant onsite. I had a “tlayuda”, ordered sight unseen based on an ingredients list. It ended up being a sort of Mexican pizza. Mine came with chicken, black beans, cheese (in lumps rather than a traditional pizza spread), cabbage, onions, and at least three unknown substances. I managed to resist the temptation to dissect the thing and just ate it like a pizza.