Pat and I took a week off of work, parenting and keeping up with the house to go to Mexico. We were celebrating Pat's 40th Birthday, which isn't really until June but who wants to leave Seattle in June? It's almost Summer by that time! So off we went to Playa Del Carmen, a small resort town about an hour South of Cancun (and 100 miles away from Cuba as Pat repeatedly pointed out).
It was gorgeous and sunny as soon as we landed. I was having a bit of ear drama after a bad landing so we didn't do much the first day other then rest in our room (which they upgraded for us, woo hoo!). So the next day, when I could finally hear we were off to soak up the sun.
This was one of our hangouts, the Adult Pool. You had to be 21 or over to get in, which came in really handy when over 200 College Spring Breakers checked in later that week. It was quiet here, no music, no kids just the breeze and a few wild birds. Amazing!!
When we weren't there we were here on the beach hammocks which were almost always empty. And that was how we spent most of our week. Seriously! It was an all inclusive resort so we ate and drank a lot too but mostly it was sleeping in the sun for us.
After a few days of laying around we were ready to explore so we hired a taxi for the day (fyi -it's cheaper to do this then going on a tour, plus you can do whatever you want). We drove about an hour away to the Mayan Ruins of Coba. We were going to go to Chichen Itza but our hotel concierge said it was just a tourist trap now and not to waste the 6 hours of travel time getting there. Great recommendation, Coba was awesome!
It's a huge park in the middle of the jungle with beautifully preserved buildings all over the place. Our guide, Juan was amazing and answered all of our crazy gringo questions. Did they sacrifice anyone here? Answer: Yes, but not too many. Are we all going to die in 2012? Answer: no.
If you look close on the picture above you can see the ball court with it's tiny little ring. He told us that they would sacrifice the winning team to the gods, because they didn't want to offer their gods the losers! Scary!
I know this looks like a picture of a wall and it pretty much it, but this was the most impressive part of the site. All those piles of rocks were covered with a thick coating of mud and plaster and then painted with intricate murals. You can still see specks of these murals that remain which blew my mind. These buildings are 6,000 years old people! I have to repaint my house every few years to avoid fading. The Mayans were geniuses! I kept touching them whenever I saw these little flecks, and they were everywhere. This village was quite colorful back in the day.
This is us in front of the rain worshiping temple, fitting that the Seattlites pose here since the rain gods love us so much!
The main draw of this site is the pyramid which rises up 150 feet over the jungle. And guess what? You can climb it! It is one of 2 Mayan ruins left that you can actually climb, the rest are roped off.
So up we went! This is the view going up, no railings or anything except for that piece of rope right in the middle. The steps were crazy uneven and slippery so you had to be very careful. I am about half way up here and right about now is when my fear of heights kicked in. I high tailed it to the top without looking back.
Here's me on the top, woo hoo! I'm glad that this picture captured me looking like I'm going to pass out and throw up all at once, because that is how I felt. My hands are sweating just thinking about it...moving on!
Pat was brave and just walked down. Can you see him a little a head of me? I sat on my butt, held on to that rope and slid down one step at a time.
Eventually we both made it to the bottom! I was so happy to be back on the ground and very proud of myself.
Here's a better view of the pyramid from the website. It is seriously huge! I bought this postcard to remind me of my moment of braveness. Such a great experience though, I highly recommend it to anyone that travels to that area!
Since we had the taxi all day we decided to check another thing off our list: zip line. They don't let you take pictures (because they want you to buy theirs) but it was amazing. It was 10 series of zip lines through the dense jungle that just so happens to be a nature reserve so there were monkeys and boars and all kinds of things out there. Totally amazing and also a little scary as the lines were anywhere between 20-50 feet off the ground.
With a little time left on the meter, we stopped in a little village called Akumal where our driver promised us we would see Sea Turtles in the bay. He was so right! we rented some snorkel gear and immediately found the turtles.
They are so huge! Most were about 3 feet wide and we were told those were probably around 10 years old but then we encountered the big guy. Estimated to be about 25 years old he was at least 4 feet across and his head was the size of mine. We don't have an underwater camera but I borrowed this shot from the snorkel shops website. We did see this one though as he was the only one with fish groupies. We also saw sting rays, which freak me out and swam through the coral reef with some very friendly fish.
Here we are in Turtle Bay after we came in.
It was a very productive day to say the least. Pat and I kept laughing at how much we did and how crazy it all was. All that activity helped us justify our laziness for the rest of the trip. Not to mention that we were sore from all those stairs at Coba! So the rest of the rip looked like this.
We stuck pretty close to home the next few days. Swam in the Ocean, which looked like a pool. This was right at sunset which was one of the only times it got cloudy (besides the one day it rained), otherwise it was blue skies and over 80 all week.
The grounds had amazing plants everywhere but I enjoyed the banana trees the most. I have never seen a banana tree in real life so I was pretty impressed.
Plus the resort had a ton of wildlife. I only captured these Iguanas (can you see the 2 in the back?) but there were monkeys, these giant anteater type things, chipmunks the size of a cat (I'm not even joking), and a couple kittens that roamed the grounds.
It was such a great vacation and we had an amazing time, but we missed our little monkey back home. It made leaving Mexico much easier to know that we would be going home to Noli. I was really worried that he would be mad at us for leaving him but he was so happy to have us home. Yaya did a great job spoiling him all week so he wouldn't miss us and now we are almost back on our routine. Hopefully we can all go back soon, although I'm never letting Nolan climb that pyramid!
