Wednesday, 18 January 2012

Wednesday, January 4th - back home safe and sound

Wednesday, January 4th

Well....I am sad to report that our Mexican Adventure is now over, and we are back in Medicine Hat safe and sound. I have to say that NONE of us were quite ready to leave.

Overall, a terrific, awesome and memorable trip....now we just have to figure out how to make it an annual event?????

None of us were ready to leave just yet!









......well, as the Looney Toons Cartoon says..........

........That's All Folks! 

Sunday, 15 January 2012

The First (of likely many) Embarrassing Moments in 2012


Tuesday January 3rd
Our last full day….I can’t believe the time has gone so quickly.

The plan for today was to get up early, go to the Tulum Ruins in the morning, and then hang around the beach in the afternoon.....and follow that up with our “normal” routine....Happy Hour from 5pm to 6:30pm, Dinner at 7pm (tonight our dinner is in the Marimba a la carte restaurant). Marimba is a steak house – Yeah!. Go to the show at 9....and after the show, Heather and I head to the lounge for a nightcap…and the kid’s continue to the disco
The reality…..we got up fairly early……and went to the beach for the whole day!

In our defence it was REALLY hot and sunny today….plus we had awesome waves for the first time all week. In fact, in the morning they had the red flag out as the current and undertow were quite strong.

We were still able to go into the ocean and had an absolute blast (I did make sure that I had either Jordyn or Chad with me at arm’s length in case I needed them to tow me to shore). We had tons of fun and were in an out of the waves all day! Heather was content to read her book and sit in the sun…..but as a result, we never did get to Tulum (oh well, gives us an excuse to come back to Mexico another time?)





I do have to say that today I EASILY had one of the more embarrassing moments of the week (as a rule our family generally has more than a few on our trips). In this particular case, one of the waves got me pretty good (as the surfer's say, I got caught in the washing machine!). Anyway, the wave rolled me over a few times and I ended up with my shorts  full of sand....and let me tell you, having sand EVERYWHERE is no absolutely no fun.

I tried to clean up at the beach with little success, and ended up having to walk bow-legged back to the room to shower in order to try and get all the sand out of my “gear”.

I was distracted because it was scraping and kind of hurt….and ended up inadvertently stopping at the wrong floor. All week we had problems with keeping track of our cards, sometimes I had the key to our door, sometimes to the kids door, sometimes they demagnetised and we had to go get them reset. In this case, I was trying my key in my door, and then the kid's door. It was not working, but there was a really nice maid there.....who used her key and let me into the room.

I took my shorts off, put my sunglasses on the table and got into the bathroom to begin showering….at this point, I started noticing that some of the stuff in the room did not look like "our stuff". It slowly dawned on me that I was in the wrong frikken room!!!!!!
I quickly ran back to the bedroom, put my bathing suit back on, and scrambled out of the room. I was safe and started chuckling to myself thinking that if the owner's of the room had come in while I was marching around their room naked, it might have made for an interesting conversation with the police! However, thankfully no one saw me, so I thought "no harm, no foul".

Except……in my panic to get dressed and get out the room, I left my stupid Rayban sunglasses on their dresser. I note that this is quite likely the first time in history that someone has broken into a hotel room, and not only not taken anything, but actually left the occupants a nice set of sunglasses?

This (sadly) meant that this was no longer going to be my "little secret" because I would now have to tell Heather/Jordyn/Chad what happened (.....there was no way I was going to be able to knock on their door and try and explain what happened?). I also knew that Heather would be more than happy to tell the women what her dumb husband had done (after all, she has quite a bit of previous experience in these types of situations) 

So after we left the beach, Heather knocked on their door, ready to explain that she had an idiot for a husband, and that we wanted to get back my raybans! Heather knocked on their door (and of course the lady was in the shower). So she said/actually kind of yelled (and I quote) “I need to talk to you”. Jordyn and I hid around the corner, but I have to say, it sounded kind of official…sort of like Heather was the Mexican Policia or something and needed to interrogate the people in the room!

Anyway, the lady said no there were not any sunglasses in her room. This means that the potential robbery victim has now become the criminal! (……unless I find my sunglasses somewhere else, which is possible given that I was a bit rattled due to the whole “tramatic event”.)

On a totally different note, I should also say that Chad’s Toronto friends also left last night, and he was a bit bummed out. But somewhere between last night and noon today he found another new set of friends…..and as a result, we hardly saw him all day.   

Even given my little brain fart,  all in all, it was ANOTHER glorious day in the Mayan Riviera!!!

Still in shock over the tramatic wrong room event!

Chad doing beach zumba

At the Steak House

Jord was a little sick of getting her picture taken

This was another pool (we played water polo in this one)

The steak was AWESOME

The show tonight was a little too "artsy" for me

Monday the 2nd...a day of true rest!


Monday January 2nd

Kind of a cloudy, windy day today…

Chad and I played water polo and won a medal!
Heather, Jordyn and I also decided to spent the afternoon and early evening in Playa Del Carma (Chad wanted to stay back at the resort and hang out with his friends).

We got back to the resort, had dinner, went to the show but by then were pretty tuckered out, and headed to bed at about 11:15….4 days of partying seems to be our limit and even the offer of free booze could not dissuade us from heading to bed!



After walking to Playa Del Carmen, we made a pit stop at Senior Frog's for a beverage

Talk about a table with a view!

Playa's main square at night

Jord in her trendy hat

Chad and I receiving our water polo medals

January 1st - Welcome 2012!


Sunday January 1, 2012

Welcome 2012…..waking up in sunny Mexico is certainly a great way to bring in the new year!
Lazy day…..we all slept in until about 10am (Jordyn and Chad had a VERY late night – we “think” they got back to the room around 4:30am). Heather and I were home at 12:30pm and dead tired…..I think trying to keep up with the kids for a few days has worn the old guy and gal out!

Anyway, we got up and had the New Year's Day brunch….after all it had been a few short hours since the last time we had a great big meal.

Even though the food is great, I think we are all starting to get tired of eating! It sounds strange, but after 4 days of stuffing your face, it just does not have the same appeal (although Chad seems to be hanging in there and still eats about 75 times per day – usually just a sandwich or a piece of fruit….but pretty sure he has worn a path to the various restaurants.

After brunch, we sauntered down to the pool and set up “shop” for the day. As usual Chad sat for about 15 minutes but would intermittently come back and visit us and check in.

We basically just played in the pool, shot some water basketball, had some cervesa’s, some mojito’s, some pina colada’s (our New Year’s resolutions are delayed until the 4th this year) and played a bit of ping pong….but mostly slept and read our books.

Early in the afternoon, I finished my book, and decided to grab the camera and try and find these elusive monkees’ that everyone has seen but me. I am happy to report that I was successful, and managed to capture pictures of quite a few of the different animals that are in the “jungle” in between the buildings.
Not sure what this animal was called....kind of looked like a long-legged gopher?

Big old tortoise

This was one of the path's through the natural area in front of the buildings

I finally found the monkey's!


They were not shy...this is the beach restaurant

lots of different types of birds

Supper tonight was at the Japanese al a carte restaurant (we decided to skip our typical 4pm BBQ hamburger in order to save our appetites for this meal!) 

It was pretty cool.....the food was good, but the atmosphere and entertainment were even better

Japanese a la carte restaurant

Started with Sushi

The chef....a mexican "japanese" chef

He built a food volcano

Rice for the table

The stir fry was really tasty

December 31st...Goodbye 2011!!!!!


Saturday December 31, 2011 - easily one of the best days of my life!!!!

We definitely said goodbye to 2011 in style as today we swam in an underground river, played in a cenote, snorkeled around the corral reefs in Akumel...followed up by a quick trip to the beach, a special new years dinner (including champagne, giant shrimp and lobster) and ending with one heck of a lot of fun "new year's" bash!!!! 

The day started pretty early as we had booked a tour with the Mayan Adventure Tour Company. We met our van and tour guide in the lobby at 8am (no small feat for THIS family….Chad and I are good – as for the other two – it was like trying to wake the dead!). However, we made it (and were actually even about 10 minutes early). 

This tour was recommended by the Sun Wing representative at the hotel, and even though a bit pricey at $99 per person, it was well worth it. The pamphlet promised small groups (no more than 14 people) a bilingual guide (ours was Nacho), lunch (BBQ Chicken…which was VERY good) and a great day (which it certainly was).

The tour consisted of 3 different adventures; the underground river, doing zip lines and cliff jumping in a Cenote (basically mother nature’s best effort at a swimming pool here in the Mayan Peninsula) and snorkeling on the second biggest coral reef in the world, near Akumel
As evidenced by the pictures we had an absolutely tremendous time – all of it was simply off the charts cool. (The only downer was when Nacho told us the reef is brown because it is basically dying….and that he did not think future generations would have a chance to view the reef because of this. Hopefully this generation figures out a way to save these natural treasures before that happens?)
The underground river (it was about a 25 minute drive "back" into the jungle)
The river entrance

The water was CRYSTAL clear
Getting out at the Cenote

Mother nature's swimming hole - it was stunning!

The zip line was a hoot!

Again the water was so clear it was amazing

even Heather jumped!

Jord in fine form!

Lunchtime!





Anyway, the day trip was, in one word, absolutely fantastic (OK two words)!

The "tour company" also took pictures all day - and many of these were so stunning that we decided to buy the disc ($40US). Unfortunately we left it in our hotel room (we are going to try and e-mail the company to see if we can get another copy) :(

We got back at the resort at about 3:30pm, which was perfect timing as it gave us a couple of hours to head down to the beach for some more sun and fun!

Jordyn doing Zumba on the beach

My beautiful ladies!





We got back up to our room at dusk (5:30ish)...in order to start getting ready for fancy dinner and  new year’s eve party.


Supper was a “special buffet” and had everything from lobster to lamb, avacodo’s stuffed with crab, to every single kind of meat you can imagine. I managed to limit myself to only 4 plates of food, 1 plate of desserts and 16 or 17 glasses of red wine (serious exercise and dieting is in my near future!)






During dinner, Heather and I got visiting with a really nice couple from England, so the kids took off and went to the party. We followed up about 1 hour later…and what a party it was!!!!!

THE New Year's Eve Party!!!!!

In this case the pictures speak for themselves (see below)…I think it is safe to say we all had absolute blast!