Mexico

Well, it's the Friday after Thanksgiving and I should be posting about Thanksgiving but I haven't posted about Mexico yet, and my mind is linear.

So this past week we were down in the Puerta Adventuras Area of the Mayan Rivera.  Somewhere around here.

It was a Christmas trip from my parents and the first time Lance, Sara or Anna-Lisa had been down there.

We were greeted immediately by a nice swan

and a reminder about clothing policy.

It is a really pretty area, the sand, soft and white (except under the vollyball court) and the water clear and warm.  Our beach had some issues with rocks and waves, but all-in-all it was a very pretty place.

I had really built Anna-Lisa up for this trip talking about the endless food, the tacos al pastor roof service, the great snorkeling and the fun cenotes in the area, as my family has been coming down to these resorts for years.  I am happy to say that we enjoyed the cenotes a lot.  The food, room service and the snorkeling were trouble items.

In years past we stayed at Iberostar resorts, but in the interest of cost we switched to Bahia Principe, which was nearly half as much money for the room and very VERY reasonable for all inclusive.  That having been said there were about half as many good places to eat and no room service.  But who are we to complain.

As for snorkeling, we were planing to go to Xelha, just down the road because I remember having such good time there as a kid.  Turns our its nearly $100 per person to go now!  We just couldn't justify spending almost $200 on snorkeling, which was sad.  In lieu of XelHa, we found a free, open cove about a mile south of our resort (and only 2 miles north of Xelha) that we walked to on our own.

We had a nice quite swim and got to meet the local wildlife.

And then we went back with the family with resort gear to do some snorkeling.

We found this amazing little swing and private quiet spot too.  It was a really neat place (snorkeling video will be uploaded when I'm done editing, soon hopefully).

It was pretty much how you hope a beach spot could be.  Soft sand, coral reefs, quite lagoon.  It was pretty sweet.

The next adventure was to Tulum.  Plan A was to rent a van for a day and have them take us to Tulum, then to a centote or two.  When we found out our van wasn't going to be available we went looking for another service which led us to Edventures.com

The plan again was to go to Tulum with those that wanted and then head back to get the group and go to the Cenotes.  We got to Tulum and we were told about his "edventure" park (his name was eddie...get it?)  which included Tulum.  So, first things first.  Tulum.

Tulum is an ancient Mayan city constructed on the coast as trading port and highly defended city (the walls are 15 feet high and just as thick)

Its only my opinion but a city like this would be a likely stepping off point for Lamanites or Nephites to go north up the coast to areas were its suspected that there were Nephites and Lamanites (New York area for example).

In any case, the city is rich with Mayan and therefore Lamanitish history.

In addition, its in a beautiful location

right on the beach.

Afterwards we met up in Eddie's store and he got us set for the "edventure."

It was one of the better bargins for something like this for sure

Step one is to ride about 40 minutes into the Jungle on a unimog.  Unimogs are awesome and I would much rather have one of these over a hummer.  

The edventure includes a 6 line jungle zip line which we all did, even mom and dad!

Rock climbing

which everyone tried, even those with "special ability."

Here is Ben and Bob proving my point.  After you climb the Pyramid you rappel down the other side.  Everyone made it to the top of the pyramid and everyone made it down without incident.

Then we went to the first of two cenotes.

(Pictures are missing because we were having too much fun jumping in and swimming around.  There is a little in the video but not too much because it was soo dark.  Cenotes, if you don't already know, are sinkholes where the underground aquafur eats away at the surface crust until it collapses and forms a swimming hole.  Many Cenotes are part of an underground network of rivers and thus are actually tubes of water that go from one place to the next.  and some used to be dry caves full of stalagtites and stalagmites until there was some event that flooded them.  In either case, they are clear as day fresh water caves you can swim in!

Here is a sample of the second one we went into.

 And here is what it looks like when you are in it.

It was a pretty cool experience.

After that it was home to the resort again.

Did I mention there were coconuts that dropped all over the place?

Here I am feeling pretty stoked that I got one open.  It's not the hard case that's so hard to get through it's the meaty outside.  But with patience (and a knife) I was successful.

Did I also mention there is a Dolphinarium at the resort?

What a trip, first I learned there was such a word as "dolphinarium" and then I got to see one!

This one has a name I'm sure but i just called them all "snorky".

Buoyed by the success of the coconut and the excitement of learning a new word we ventured to build a sand castle as a family;

with great success!

The Mayans would have been proud.

Aside from edventures, and fun in the ocean, this is what we did most for better or worse.  It was nice to relax but it would have been nice to get out more too.  Decisions, decisions.

In any case we had a great time with the family, but it was good to be back home too, to crisp air.

and happy little Girls.

There are a lot more pictures in the Album on the right and a video is coming as well.