One of my oldest friends turns fifty this year. That came out weird. I mean he's been my friend for a very long time, not that he's the oldest in age of all my friends...although, jeez, if he's turning fifty, then he is my oldest friend. What an old fogey!
His wife and my wife are friends as well. His wife called mine with an idea. Our friends were discussing taking a trip to Cancún, Mexico for his birthday, because all things related to travel are much cheaper than usual right now due to the pandemic. She thought it would be really neat if we came as well, but didn't tell him we were coming, and instead surprised him when we showed up there.
It sounded like it would be really fun, and we thought that we could probably afford it considering the discounted prices these days. So, they planned it out, and we bought our trips to Cancún.
It was a little nerve-racking as the weeks progressed toward the eventual departure, because we weren't even sure if our jobs would allow us to go. Would we have to quarantine or something like that? My wife was working a pretty indispensable position at her job, and she thought they might not be able to allow her to leave, but in the end everything worked out.
There was also a period where it seemed like my passport wasn't going to make it in time for us to leave, we called up the passport office, and had them expedite it for me, and two days later, we got confirmation that it would be there in plenty of time. Not sure if we actually needed the expediting or not. Considering how fast it was ready, my guess was that it was almost about to ship out anyway. Maybe we could have saved that money for the trip, but without the passport there would be no trip, and we'll never know one way or the other.
I did my best to keep our secret. Each time I talked to my friend on the phone. He mentioned going to Cancún to me on several occasions, and I just wished him a good time. It worked out, and he was clueless about our surprise.
The day finally arrived. We packed our bags and took them to the airport. Our flights were cheap, but to make them cheap we had to take a connecting flight. The funny part was that we flew 250 miles north to Dallas so that we could catch a plane heading south to Cancún. The flight to Dallas was not a long flight, just 45 minutes in the air, but the flight to Cancún went right over Houston on its way to Mexico. It's 800 miles across the Gulf of Mexico from Houston to Cancún, or 1,000 miles from Dallas to Cancún.
The difference between the two trips is only about a half hour in the air, but we could have saved the hours of boarding, flying, getting off in Dallas, taking a train to the other terminal, and getting on that other plane. That process took several hours, but I guess it saved us a lot of money, so it was probably worth it.
The two of us were pretty excited. It's the first time we've ever traveled to a foreign country other than Canada together, and to us Canada doesn't really count as a foreign country (same language, same culture, same continent, family lives there, we stay at their house, etc.). What would it be like? We descended through the clouds right at sunset, and my wife took some nice pictures out the window of the plane.
Then we were on the ground, and had to go through the various hassles of customs. Once we had our temporary tourist visas in our hands, we stopped by a booth at the airport to trade some of our dollars for pesos. My friend's wife had prepared us for the onslaught of people waiting for the tourists to come out the door in need of a ride to their hotel. We had bought a Costco package, and everything was included. We didn't need to arrange transportation, and she warned us to walk through the gauntlet of people trying to sell us a ride, because a guy with a Costco sign would be waiting outside for us.
He was there as advertised, and loaded us onto a van with a few other couples for our ride to our hotel. The weather was humid and hot, like Houston...except like Houston was about three months ago in the height of the summer, not the mild and pleasant weather we've had recently.
The driver spoke in Spanish to the couple that sat in the front seat of the van, telling them all about what to expect on their trip, what the best things to see and do were. Portuguese is pretty similar to Spanish, but normally I have a hard time understanding native Spanish speakers, because they talk so fast. That wasn't the case with this guy though. I was getting it pretty well. That was encouraging.
We were texting my friend's wife, but being subtle about it. My wife originally typed out a text that said, "Our plane just landed in Cancún," or something like that, but I stopped her before sending it, just in case the birthday boy happened to see his wife's phone when the text came in. Instead, she was subtle about it...saying something like, "How are you guys enjoying Cancún?" That way, they could get a conversation going, and make sure he wouldn't see what was being said.
They arrived in Cancún two days before we did, and had been out snorkeling that day. They'd just arrived back at the hotel, and were heading to the restaurant for dinner. We dropped our stuff off at our room, and headed down to meet them...and surprise him.
We got to the restaurant, and came up behind them. His wife distracted him, by saying she was going to take his picture. We walked up and said, "Hey, man, what's going on?"
"What the hell?" he said, pretty shocked to be 2,500 miles from home and have a familiar face just show up there, even though they are also 800 miles from home. This is the kind of coincidence that just doesn't happen.
He was really excited to see us. He said that right before we showed up, he had been looking at some of the other groups in the restaurant who happened to be there with friends, and had thought, "this is really cool, but it might have been really neat to have friends here with us too."
We ate dinner with them...well, more like after them. They'd mostly finished by the time we arrived, but they were happy to just sit and sip their drinks while we ate and talked. We caught up on things and they told us about what they'd been up to in Cancún before we showed up, but mostly we talked about keeping the secret from him for this big reveal.
We hung out in the hotel for the rest of the evening, and got our first taste of what this vacation was going to be like. We were staying at the Grand Fiesta Americana Coral Beach. We bought the all-inclusive package from Costco, which meant that everything was taken care of, from our airfare to our rooms to our meals. We didn't have to pay for anything, because it was included in what we'd already paid. They just asked us our room number, and handed us food and drinks.
It was pretty neat. It made us feel like royalty or something, and usually I feel more like the opposite of royalty. I have to admit that I took advantage of everything that I possibly could. If there were snacks out, then I grabbed them. They had an ice cream machine, and I got a cone there most every night. I got a soda whenever someone walked within hailing distance. Yeah, I screwed up on my #75Hard thing a few weeks ago, and I was taking advantage of the lull before starting it back up...which I fully mean to do when I get back.
We went down to the hotel's little patch of beach, and waded through the waves barefoot. The weather was warm and pleasant, so we sat on the chairs there, enjoying the night air. After a while, however, it started sprinkling, so we decided to go back inside. We would have plenty of time on the beach before this was over.
Eventually, we said good night, and went back to our rooms for the night. Our bed had been turned down for us by the staff, and chocolates had been left on our pillows. Yeah, I ate that action. It was good chocolate too. The room was really nice, and the bed was big and soft, but it could have been a cot in a shack at this point. After a full day of travel, we were tired enough that we were asleep the second our heads hit the pillows, possible even before they touched down.
In the morning, my friend ran out to Hertz, and rented a car to transport us to the various tourist attractions in the area. While we waited, my wife and I sat on our balcony overlooking the pool and the ocean, and watched the waves roll in on the beach. It was a really nice view.
We had our first breakfast at the fancy, all-you-can eat buffet breakfast restaurant in the hotel.
And then we hit the road toward Chichen Itza. It took longer than we expected to get there, and cost more than we thought it would too. Not only was there a relatively hefty entrance fee, but there were some hefty tolls on the road on the way out as well.
I think it was worth it, however. Chichen Itza is really amazing.
We got there, and started taking picture after picture.
There was a time, years ago, when tourists could ascend to the top of the big pyramid at Chichen Itza, know as El Castillo or the Temple of Kukulcán, but those days are gone. I believe it was because too much damage was being done to the structure. So now, you can only look with your eyes, and take pictures, but no touchy!
That is unless you are a dog. Then you can do what you like. On the side of the pyramid, as we gazed up at the top, a dog came loping out of the top of the structure and looked down on us like we were encroaching on its territory.
I guess it had already peed on the pyramid, thus marking it as its own. Or maybe that's Emperor Kuzco after he drank the wrong potion bottle.
There were other things beside just El Castillo, however.
We spent a long time there, wandering from one ruin to another, and enjoying the splendor of the art that still survives after a thousand years.
The stone carvings were really interesting.
We didn't hire a guide however, despite being asked a thousand times by people as we made our way inside. So, we didn't really get too deep into the historical significance of the structures or what they might have been used for.
There was something especially cool about these pillars. I think they must have supported something that is now long gone, but what is left behind is really neat.
It makes me wonder what our own civilization will look like a thousand years from now. Will people come and walk through the rubble of our house, and read the little plaques that say, "This space was probably a living room. People of this era would sit on the couches in their living room and stare at their phones rather than use the oversized television monitors hung on their walls." Of course, there's no way to know, unfortunately. My time machine keeps exploding and catching fire rather than transporting me to the future when I try to test it out.
We made a circle around the grounds, and came back to El Castillo again, and found that this other side was the ideal location for a great picture.
The worst part about Chichen Itza were the vendors. They had tables filled with souvenirs lining the pathways all the way around the site. If you've ever been to Mexican tourist areas, then you know what it's like, but let me tell you that these guys don't just let their merchandise speak for itself. They don't just present their wares, let you find something you like, and then charge you a fair price for it.
Instead, it's a full-court press. Before you even get within close proximity, they're calling to you. "Hey, twenty pesos! One dollar! Almost free!" There were many tables that had these whistles that, when manipulated properly, sound like a jaguar roaring. Everywhere we went, we heard jaguars. It was a little disconcerting, truthfully, because we were often in jungle-like parts of the site...
And hearing a jaguar roaring is a legitimate cause for alarm, not for long, mind you, but for the first moment it would cause that flight-or-fight reaction, getting your heart racing. When we'd look around, some vendor would hold up the whistle and say, "you like? Good price! Almost free!"
Most of the stuff they had was made in a factory in Mexico City and worth almost nothing, but some of the stuff was actually made locally and even right there onsite. We walked past one table where the vendor was carving wooden Mayan masks right there at the table. My friend is an artist, and this stuff interested him a lot. That was trouble for us, because if you showed the slightest interest in anything at a table, the full-court press intensified fourfold.
These guys wouldn't take no for an answer, and would often pursue you even long after you'd walked away from their table. My friend kept looking at the masks everywhere we went, and it was like continually poking a beehive with a stick. The vendors swarmed around us over and over again. At least they didn't sting, but they were about as annoying as a circling swarm of angry bees.
I suppose it wasn't that big of a deal, but it did wear on us after a while. Some of them were entertaining. They'd say things like, "hey, American, buy this for your second home." I suppose in a place like Mexico it probably seems like all Americans must be super rich, because that's what they see on TV, and surely a fair number of the Americans that come are super rich in reality.
Similarly, they'd say, "hey, American, you like? Buy this for your second wife?" or to my wife and my friend's wife, "buy this for your second husband." Is it because everybody on TV is divorced and remarried? Or did they watch a lot of that Sister Wives reality show?
We did, in the end, buy a few things. my friend bought two or three of those Mayan masks, I think. He really appreciated the handmade art that was available. My wife and I bought one of those jaguar roar whistles. The second we heard it we knew...sorry, let me amend that...the second we realized we weren't actually being stalked by a jaguar we knew that it would be the perfect gift for the little guy at home.
I also got me a cheap little representation of the Castillo pyramid. I already knew that this was going to be my favorite part of the trip, and the perfect thing to remember the trip with. I could put it on my shelves with my toy collection.
We finished up at Chichen Itza, and drove back to Cancún. We didn't get back until pretty late, and had to take what we could get for dinner. You're supposed to make reservations for the restaurants, but we had neglected to do that. There were still openings, however, (I mean it is the middle of a pandemic, so not a lot of folks are traveling) just not immediately. We had to hang out for a half hour, before they could get us in for dinner at 9:00 PM. Kind of late for dinner, but when you're staying up till midnight anyway, it's not so bad.
The restaurant we went to was their Mexican-themed one, and the girls were impressed with the decor.
Those flowers are made of tissue paper or something like that, and they had these trees all over the restaurant. The food was good, though a little difficult for me because it was very seafood-centric, and everything seemed to have shrimp in it. I am allergic, and the last thing I wanted was to have a reaction in a foreign country. Of all the reactions I've ever had, it's never been bad enough to send me to the hospital, but just in case...
Our first full day in Mexico was over, and it was time to hit the sack. The next day we were hoping to see both of the other sites of Mayan ruins in the area, Tulum and Cobá, so we needed to get on the road earlier.
We decided that the best way to go about it was going first to Cobá. Even though it was farther away, it seemed wise to hit it first, then on the way back, we could go to Tulum, and we'd be closer to Cancún and our hotel when we were done. We were most excited about Cobá, because it was the only ruin left where you were still allowed to climb up to the top of the big pyramid. My friend had been to Mexico in his youth, and he'd been allowed to climb to the top of El Castillo in Chichen Itza (and in those days the vendors would follow you all the way up there trying to sell you stuff), but that isn't allowed anymore. Cobá is the last place that it's still allowed.
On the way out, we stopped to fill the car up with gas, and my wife and I offered to pay since my friend had paid for the car rental. At the gas station we found, they had attendants that pumped the gas for you. It was pretty funny, we thought, when our purchase rang up as 666 pesos.
I took a picture, because I had to send it to Rish Outfield. He would appreciate that.
We joked with the attendant that our purchase was a bad luck number. We handed him our credit card to pay for what he'd pumped for us. This was a mistake that I recommend you never do when in Mexico, or frankly anywhere else. Don't give your card to someone without watching them use it. The purchase actually did turn out to be bad luck, but we didn't find out until we were in the airport on our way home.
The gas station attendant used our card to pay for the 666 pesos bill, but then quickly also charged 4500 pesos to our card somewhere else. We have no idea what the charge went to. It was charged to a business in Guadalajara, which is about a thousand miles away from where we were on the Yucatan Peninsula. 4500 pesos works out to about $220.
We had our bank dispute the charges, and were able to get our money back at first, then later the decision was reversed, and we were screwed. Chase isn't your friend. They don't care about you. Don't believe the bullshit in the ads. It seemed like they went to bat for us, but they most definitely didn't.
Things were a little sketchy in Cobá when we arrived. There have been several hurricanes that have hit Cancún this year, and the main parking lot of Cobá was flooded. We had to take a different way around to get onto the site, but the site itself was flood free. Cobá was different than Chichen Itza. The vendors were only on the outside of the site, so the time within was much more peaceful and relaxing.
Time had taken a much harder toll on the ruins of Cobá than they did to Chichen Itza, however.
The stones there seemed much more pitted and damaged. Maybe it was the proximity to the coast or something, or maybe these ruins were even more ancient than the others. Again, we didn't hire a guide (despite many trying to sell their services out front), so those questions never got asked or answered.
A lot of the ruins near the front were roped off, but there were several places we were still allowed to walk on. They were much more interactive than Chichen Itza had been the day before.
They were more spread out than Chichen Itza as well. It was such a long walk between the various ruin sites that they rented out bicycles to tourists that would rather bike than walk. We were trying to do this trip on the cheap as much as we could, though, so we skipped the bikes just like we'd skipped the guides.
The walks were pretty pleasant anyway, and there were several shortcuts for the walkers where bikes weren't allowed. That was nice, because most everybody chose bikes, and we had the paths all to ourselves there.
It was sprinkling on and off the whole time we were there, and on a few occasions it got even heavier. We had ponchos, and some of us put them on.
I found that it was just as useful to hide under some of the big fronds of the palm trees. They acted like umbrellas, keeping most of this relatively light rain off me. If it had been a bigger downpour I might have put on my poncho, but it was still pretty hot, and draping myself with a sheet of plastic made me pretty sweaty. I could get all wet with sweat or rainwater, and personally I'd rather be covered in rainwater.
At last we made our way to the big pyramid.
We were so excited to have the chance to climb to the top, but you might notice that there's nobody on the pyramid behind them in this photo. The pyramid here in Cobá was roped off as well.
No one was allowed to ascend the pyramid here either, and this was the last place left where that had still been available. My friend asked the employee of the place that was keeping an eye on the pyramid, and he told us that they'd closed it down because of the coronavirus. I guess everybody climbing the pyramid would be within too close of proximity if they were on the pyramid together.
So, just like Austin, the best parts of the trip were once again prohibited from us for our own good. I have to admit that I'd really prefer it if they'd let me make that decision myself. It's pretty unlikely that I'll ever make it back to Cancún. I'd probably be willing to take the risk for the opportunity to have the once-in-a-lifetime experience of climbing to the top of a Mayan pyramid.
Oh well. Out of luck on that one. I suppose it will probably help preserve the pyramids for future generations, which is a worthwhile thing, even if that wasn't the reasoning behind the prohibition in the first place.
One thing that was ubiquitous everywhere we went in Cancún, and first started to get on our nerves here in Cobá was the proliferation of Instagram models posing suggestively in front of everything everywhere. Here in front of the big pyramid we watched as a woman wearing tights with stitching on the backside to ensure that every last curve of her buttocks was accentuated was directed by her photographer to thrust out her chest so that her boobs looked as big as possible, while holding her arms in an odd way so that it didn't look like she was thrusting her chest out, but that her boobs actually were that big.
She posed for dozens of pictures, before trading places with her photographer who removed his shirt, and flexed his muscles in front of the pyramid while trying to make it appear that he wasn't flexing at all, but that he was in fact always that pumped.
It was pretty ridiculous, but went on everywhere we went. At the beach, there were usually at least three or four women posing in bikinis in front of the waves. When we went to a cenote later on, Women posed in bikinis in front of the clear, blue waters. Is there really such a need for Instagram models in our world that you can't swing a dead cat around in Cancún without hitting one?
From what I understand, the most common thing people of the younger generation, what they're still calling Generation Z although I'm sure they'll come up with something better eventually, say they want to be when they grow up is an Instagram star. I guess it's the modern day version of moving to LA to become a movie star. After all, Covid has all but killed off Hollywood now anyway. I guess it makes sense, but it kind of steals from the beauty of these locations to watch desperate people posing like that to titillate their subscriber base.
Anyway, since we couldn't climb the pyramid, we were done with Cobá. It was time to head back to Tulum, and get in to see that ruin before the day got away from us. We sped back along the highway, and reached Tulum at about 3:05 PM. We thought we were in pretty good shape, because the site didn't close until 5:00 PM. However, we were actually already too late, because they stopped letting people inside at 3:00 PM. We'd missed our chance by about five minutes.
We all loaded back in the car, and decided to come back the next day. It was early enough that we could probably enjoy some time on the beach before the sun set. My wife and I were excited, because we still hadn't spent any real time on the beach yet, and why else do you come to a place like Cancún?
As soon as we were back, we went to our rooms and threw on our swimsuits, and met on the hotel's strip of beach. We wanted to hurry, because the light was fading, and it worked perfectly, because we hit the beach at exactly that magical time of day where the sunset makes the world look like a wonderland.
We waded out into the water, which was warm and extremely pleasant, and swam around contentedly.
Jeez, do I really look like that? Is it because I'm covered in excess fat that I look like I have a hunchback? Never mind, moving on.
It was so nice that it was hard to believe it was real. Later my wife said to me that, even though we've been to the beach dozens of times in various places, that night was the single most gratifying experience she'd ever had on a beach. It was simply magical there in the waves at sunset.
Eventually, the light failed us, and it was time to go get some dinner. Instead of eating at the hotel's free restaurants, my friend wanted to go to the Brazilian barbecue restaurant he'd seen on the main strip. We'd both lived in Brazil when we were youner, and going to Brazilian barbecue restaurants together is something we'd done many times over the years. It was kind of weird to come to Mexico and eat Brazilian, but we did it anyway.
We drove out to the mall, and parked in the garage. When we got in the elevator, they had put those little markers on the floor to advise you to say as far away from each other while riding the elevator as possible to avoid spreading the virus. Their markers were pretty unusual though.
To stay safe in this elevator you had to stand in the corner and face the wall, apparently, like the kid wearing the dunce cap in an old-timey school. Well, we are obedient citizens, so we made sure to comply.
Dinner was great, as it always is at a Brazilian churrascaria. There was tons of meat, which I have always appreciated. They had above average pão de queijo, which my wife and I have both always appreciated. And they had nice barbecued pineapple, which she has always appreciated. Not really my thing, though.
The next morning, my wife and I were up early, and didn't hear from our friends about whether they were up and ready to go to breakfast or not. So, we decided to wait for them down on the beach instead of in our room. As nice as the rooms were, the beach was nicer.At this time of the morning, we were mostly in the shade, so we weren't working on our tans or anything. We were just enjoying the ambiance.
When they texted us, we headed over to the buffet breakfast restaurant, and had our all-you-can-eat breakfast while being waited on hand and foot by the staff there. It's sad to admit that I was already less excited about it by this third day of our trip. I had already tried everything, decided what I liked, and been eating that again and again. My wife had done the same. She didn't enjoy most of the stuff, but she did really like the fresh tropical fruit they put out each day.
It's funny how fast things can get dull on you. Maybe that's a good thing too, though. Harder to get fat when you get tired of the food.
We went out and hopped into the car, and headed up the freeway toward Tulum. We came to stop lights here and there along long the way, and most of them had vendors and performers that would wait in the median until the light turned red, and then run out and perform dances, sell tamales or roses, and so on. There was one guy who came out with a mat in his hand and a helmet on, started doing breakdancing, then took it to the next level, and began spinning on his head. I was pretty impressed.
"There's a guy over there spinning on his head," I said. He was in between the cars, and not everyone had a good view of it. I tried to point it out.
I think my friend saw him first, "Woah, no way!"
The girls were in the back seat, and I think they thought we were joking or using the phrase in a metaphorical way. "No, he's really spinning on his head. Look at him go!"
"Where?"
"Over there, between the cars," I said.
"Oh my gosh! Look at that guy! That's crazy!" my wfie said.
We all marveled at this guy's feat. When he finally got up and came running between the cars to collect any tips that people might throw his way, we started digging out our pesos and made sure to support the guy. He was definitely worth it.
It was the last of the three Mayan ruin sites in the vicinity of Cancún. Once we finished our tour of the site, our plan was to head up the road to a nearby cenote, so we couldn't spend too much time in Tulum, or we wouldn't have enough time for the next thing.
We parked in the same parking lot we'd used the day before, and walked to the front gate. There was a big line to get in. This was a Sunday, and a lot more people seemed to be out and about. It was also a very clear sky with few clouds to give us shade, so it was much hotter than the other days we'd been out and about. It made the tour of the site much less enjoyable than any of the others.
The ruins at Tulum were right out on the cliffs above a beautiful white sand beach.
I don't know if that had anything to do with why there were so few trees around or not, but being totally exposed to the sun made for a much less pleasant time at the ruins.
We all had our hats on to try to save us from the sun, but the hats weren't really the problem. There were so many more people around us, and that meant we couldn't go around without a mask very much. We pulled them off for photos, but in between, we had to have them on, trapping the heat and the breath in our faces, fogging our sunglasses with the moisture of our breath, and just plain making us miserable. Or at least I was. I don't know how everyone else felt. Although I did hear my wife comment more than once that she really wanted to go down to the beach and get in the water.
My guess is that it is usually allowed, but because of Covid, the stairway down to the beach was closed. It was okay for us to be jammed together on the paths near the ruins, but if we were close together going down the stairs to that cool, clear water, then that would surely mean disease and death.
Since the sun was out in full, one thing we saw everywhere that we didn't see at any of the other ruins was iguanas.
They were all over the place here. Like this picture:
They're harder to see, but if you look close, you'll find three different iguanas in this picture.
We also came across these creatures right next to the pathway.
At first, we thought they were monkeys, but then when we got a better look, we realized we were quite wrong about that. They looked more like monkeys crossed with aardvarks and maybe lemurs too. When we got home, I looked them up, and found out that they are called coatis or coatimundis. They live in South and Central America, and even get as far north as southern Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. So, there's a chance I could see them in the USA some time.
We walked around the site, looking at as much of the ruins as we could see, but after one loop, we were done. It was too hot and miserable out there. We were ready to get out of here, and hit the cenote.
Have you ever heard of a cenote? I hadn't before going on this trip. Turns out they are all over the place in the Yucatán. They are places where the limestone bedrock has collapsed, and formed a pit or a sinkhole that fills with groundwater. The water is clear and cool, and people go snorkeling or scuba diving in them. My wife and I had bought snorkel masks just for this occasion, and after spending all that time in the sun, we were excited to put them to use.
We drove up the street to Gran Cenote, which is just minutes away from Tulum. The cenotes are supposed to be completely clean, so we had to shower before getting into the water. There was a staircase that led down to a deck inside the cenote, and the whole place was utterly beautiful.
We rented a locker to keep our phones and other stuff safe inside, but I did have my underwater camera that I've used many other times. I took a couple of pictures of us outside of the water.
The camera seemed to have trouble with the high contrast of the sunlight trickling through the trees down into the darker cave areas, but when we got into the water, it did a much better job.
It was absolutely amazing in the water there swimming with the turtles and the fish.
There were places where you swam through a tunnel to get to the opening on the other side, and other spots that just kept going down and out of sight.
Maybe if we did scuba instead of snorkeling, we could have explored that too, but I don't know if I would be willing to try that. I get nervous in tight spaces, imagine how much worse it would be in tight spaces way under water.
There were some down sides to the cenote, or at least to the cenote that we chose to go to. After swimming our way through the tunnel to the other side of the cave, we arrived in a murky, cloudy pool of water. Not because the cenote itself wasn't clean, but because a group of noisy college age folks were jumping off the deck into the water, and stirring up the sand. We didn't spend long there, because it was a smaller area and you couldn't see anything in the water.
That didn't help a lot, because over on the other side, there was another loud group of folks shouting and jumping into the water. Worse yet, a lot of these people couldn't even swim. They were using life jackets to keep themselves afloat in the water, but they didn't even seem to know how to properly use the life jackets.
One girl had her life jacket on so loose that it would rise up to her chin as soon as she got in the water. This would put her face in the water more often than not, and send her into a panic whenever that happened. We were sitting on the dock at one point, when the girl started freaking out, and swam for the safety of the deck boards. Instead, however, she grabbed my friend's wife's legs to secure herself. She nearly dragged her off the dock and into the water in so doing. Needless to say, we were glad to move away from them as soon as we could as well.
Despite those small annoyances, we had a great time at the cenote, and if you pressed me to tell you my favorite part of the trip, I would choose it. It was a magical place, and a very special experience.
After we finished up at the cenote, we drove a little way up the road to a roadside village where there were several shops that were displaying lots of homemade wares. The girls had basically fallen in love with their stuff the few times we'd passed by on our way to and from Cobá.
We got out, and wandered through their displays, finding loads of things we'd like to buy. They had several hammocks that I would love to have brought home with me, but in the end, we only had enough money to buy a few of the handmade dreamcatchers to give to my daughters when we got back.
We drove back to Cancún. our friends had scheduled a special couples dinner at the hotel's hydrotherapy spa, so they wouldn't be eating with us on this night.
There was one of the hotel's restaurants that we hadn't gone to yet. It was called Isla Contoy. It was a surf and turf restaurant that was out beside the pool, right up against the beach. Here's a picture of it from the elevator window.
That big thatched roof thing is the restaurant. My wife and I scheduled a dinner there, and, because my friend's wife told us that we should, I told them it was our anniversary. Apparently, another couple that they had met had eaten there on their anniversary, and they had done something special for them for dessert. They told my friend's wife that it was totally worth it to say it was your anniversary even if it wasn't, so I went ahead and told them that it was. My wife was not happy about that. She expected to be significantly embarrassed, but it was too late. The deed had been done.
The dinner was nice. I had steak, she had seafood. The ambiance was really great. There's nothing better than eating in the open air next to a tropical beach. There was one time on in João Pessoa that someone treated my friend and me to a dinner at a restaurant beside the beach, and I still remember it quite fondly, despite the fact that the next morning I was so sick that I puked all over the floor of the kitchen. I blamed it on the meal I'd had the night before, suspecting food poisoning, but I still loved the experience of eating beachside.
At the end of the meal, they brought out a nice little dessert as well as a piece of cake with the words, "Happy Anniversary" written on the plate in chocolate syrup. They didn't dance and sing or make a fuss like my wife was fearing. All they did was give us an extra piece of cake. So, it turned out to be kind of underwhelming considering the way it had been played up what the other couple had said. It certainly hadn't been a bad thing, though, for sure.
Our friends had wanted us to go to dinner at Isla Contoy as a sort of reconnaissance. The next day was my friend's actual birthday, and they wanted to know if it would be worth it to reserve a spot there for his birthday dinner. We decided it would be worth it, so we would be back there again the next night.
Now that we'd seen all of the various ruins in the area, and even been to a cenote as well, it was time to take advantage of what Cancún is most known for, the beach. We'd been at an all-inclusive resort with its own beach now for four days, but had yet to spend any significant time on the sand. So, that was our plan for the day.
After our usual breakfast at the buffet restaurant, we went down and laid on some of the hotel's beach chairs in the sand. It wasn't long before a waiter came down and offered to get drinks for us.
This truly was the life. We went out to spend some time in the clear water, and even saw some sort of large silvery fish in the waves while we swam.
We also hadn't spent any time in the hotel's massive pool. Here's a picture of the pool (and the beach and the ocean) from above.
So after a few hours on the sand, we went up the stairs, and played volleyball with the pool's net. It was just the four of us, two on two, and we really didn't have enough people to get a good volley going. I think our friends both played volleyball in high school, so they really have an affinity for it. We played for a while, and then decided to get some lunch from the swim up bar that they had in the pool.
We swam over and sat on the chairs that were in the water, and ordered food. It was pretty cool, the kind of thing I'd only ever seen in movies up until this point. We didn't stay long, however. The swim up bar was in the shade of the hotel's towers, and the girls were freezing cold in both the shadow and the water. So, we moved over to some of the deck chairs that were in the sun to wait for our lunch.
They brought it out to us, and we continued to enjoy the pleasures of being waited on hand and foot. It's such a strange thing for a schlub like me. It feels weird. No wonder all the Hollywood celebrities turn into major jerks once they get used to this kind of treatment, even though they came from humble origins. It can go to your head.
I really like lighthouses, and I was excited to learn that there was a lighthouse one could visit in Cancún. I found it online just shortly before we headed to the airport to come down, but once we arrived, and I looked it up, I discovered that we were almost right next to the thing.
So close, in fact, that you can see it in the picture I showed you earlier that we took from the elevator near our hotel room:
When I looked online, I found that it was just a few minutes walk up the beach to go and see it. I wasn't sure if we would be able to, however, because we had to cross the beach of another hotel to get there. Just one hotel, but if they said no, that was all it took was one.
The girls weren't interested in going to the lighthouse, but my friend thought it might be cool, so he accompanied me over there. When we got to the border with the other hotel, a security guard came over and asked us what we thought we were doing. We told him we wanted to go to the lighthouse, and he said we could if we stayed down on the beach instead of walking on the sidewalk.
We went down and trudged along the beach for a while, but walking in the deep sand was difficult, and My friend quickly disobeyed the guards orders. I followed along, and soon we were at the fence blocking the way to the peninsula where the lighthouse stood.
The fence had a sign that said we shouldn't proceed any further, but we could see that there were dozens of other people out around the lighthouse, taking pictures, sitting on the beach, and even having picnics. So, we didn't pay the sign any mind. It was obviously not being enforced. Maybe we had come to the wrong spot to enter, but it didn't matter. The fence was easy to climb over, and then we could walk along the rocks out to the lighthouse.
I took a lot of pictures, and my friend looked around for good shells; there were a lot of them washed up on the sand.
At this point, I was starting to get a little uncomfortable. I had spent most of the day shirtless, and I think our time in the sun playing volleyball in the pool had left me sunburned. It was making me pretty hot, especially now that we were away from the water, and just walking around without any of the shade we could hide under back at our hotel.
After we'd taken dozens of pictures and found dozens of shells, we walked back to our hotel. We took the sidewalk the whole way, and the security guard didn't bother us at all on our way out. I guess he didn't have to worry about people leaving, only the ones coming.
As soon as we got back to our wives, I decided that I would jump into the pool to cool back off. They had a nice waterfall fountain that felt really good to stand underneath. The water pounding on my back almost felt like a massage. Maybe it was similar to the hydrotherapy that our friends had enjoyed at their dinner the night before.
I jumped in the pool, and instantly felt better. My sunburn needed a little something to cool me back down. I swam around, stood under the waterfall, and then swam back to my friend, who had jumped in the pool to join me. We talked for a moment, when I suddenly realized that I had forgotten to take my phone out of my pocket before jumping into the pool. I had been in the water for at least five minutes, maybe ten.
I pulled it out of my pocket, and touched the home button. As you would expect, nothing happened. I was pretty sure that I had just drowned my phone. It was dead, and I didn't think I had much hope in reviving it.
We went through the motions anyway. One of the waiters brought me out a container full of rice, because that's supposed to be the best way to suck the water out of a wet phone. I stuffed it down in the rice, and set the poor dead machine aside.
It was a really big bummer. I had taken most of the pictures during our trip. My wife had taken a few, but she usually doesn't take many, because she knows I will take enough for everyone. Sadly, I don't have my pictures automatically upload to any cloud service, because I like to have them properly named and dated before I get them backed up.
I'm starting to think that might not be the wisest course of action for the future. I guess I could almost as easily delete the unnamed pictures when I upload the ones with names. Something to consider for next time. I just wished that I had considered it before, because I had just lost all the pictures I'd taken from what could possibly be the best vacation we'd ever been on. Well, I guess I still have my memories, at least until Alzheimer's comes for me.
My cell phone mishap brought our beach day to an end, and we headed back up to our rooms to get showered and cleaned up. In a little bit, we would head to the restaurant for my freind's big birthday dinner that night. We were going to that same restaurant from the night before, so I was going to be able to have some good steak again.
First, however, we went down the street for some final shopping before we left. There was a little market full of souvenir shops nearby. I wasn't really interested in it because I'd already gotten my souvenir, but my wife wanted to get my oldest son some kind of knickknack, and possibly get something for herself as well.
This place was like a a re-do of the souvenir tables at Chichen Itza. These guys were serious about selling you souvenirs. If you stopped to look at anything for a moment, they would be at your side, pestering you to make sure you didn't walk away without buying something. Sometimes they kept following you out into the hall and into other shops.
My friend was still interested in the Mayan masks, and he found one that he liked with a football team logo on it...just not his favorite football team. He asked the shopkeeper if he had one of these for the Green Bay Packers, and he went looking. When he found it, my friend was disappointed because it wasn't the same mask.
"No," he said, "I want this one," and he held up the original mask that had caught his eye, "but in Green Bay Packers. I don't like that one."
The man admitted that he didn't have it, but he said that his cousin had one at his store on the other side of the mall, and he would see if he could bring it. We left the store, and went to the next one, but word seemed to have spread, because everywhere we went people would show us all of the Green Bay Packer merchandise they had.
I stupidly wore one of my Houston Astros shirts to the market, so everywhere I went, they tried to interest me in Astros souvenirs. Personally, I have no idea why anyone would want their souvenir from their trip to Mexico to be something with their American sports team's logo on it, but I guess a lot of other people must think differently because they had a lot of stuff plastered in sports logos.
As it did in Chichen Itza, the experience got old really quick. I would have been happy to leave after about five minutes of it. The girls seemed to have more fun with it. They were intent on getting something that they wanted at a far better price than they would spend in America.
My wife found that they had various nativity scenes in the shops, and she looked for the one she liked best, then called in my friend's wife as her hard-nosed negotiator. After several tries, they finally found one that she liked and the shopkeeper would part with at a price she liked.
We also found a Quintana Roo license plate as my oldest son's souvenir. Quintana Roo, in case you're like me and have never heard the name before, is the state that Cancún resides in. My oldest son has a collection of license plates that he's gotten over the years, including a Brazilian one that I got while I was there. This one will look good beside that one.
Eventually, everyone spent all the pesos they had left, and we ran out of time as well. We needed to be back at the hotel for our dinner reservation, and I couldn't handle this stuff anymore anyway.
The restaurant was pretty busy, and I think the staff might have been a little lower than usual, so our dinner took longer than you might expect, but it was okay. We were able to spend more time talking and enjoying each other's company.
My dead cell phone was the main topic of conversation. Our friends went through all of their photos and videos that we might like and airdropped them to my wife's phone. I had to get my charging port fixed a few months ago, so I knew right where a repair shop was located. I was hoping that they might be able to save it for me once I got home, but it was a good idea to get their pictures from them now, just in case.
The ambiance of the restaurant was even better this time, because they had seated us even closer to the beach. It felt even more like that night in João Pessoa twenty years ago, as the ocean breeze tousled our hair, and the sound of the waves whispered in our ears.
The waiters reappeared with that special piece of cake that they'd given to us the night before, only this time happy birthday was written on the plate in chocolate syrup. Then the whole group of waiters gathered around and sang the happy birthday song to my friend.
Instead of saying his name at the end of the song, they said, "Happy birthday, Panchito, Happy birthday to you!"
I never did figure out why they called Mitch Panchito in the song. I looked it up when I got home again (and had access to something that could use the internet again), and Wikipedia says that Panchito is a diminutive form of the name Pancho, which in turn is a diminutive of the name Francisco. I asked a few people that I know who speak Spanish, and nobody knew. My guess is that it's funny because it's something you would call a little kid, but my friend was being serenaded for his fiftieth birthday...a long way from being a kid. But I don't know. It could have nothing to do with that at all.
After dinner, we went back to our friend's room to hang out for a little while longer. We were both heading home in the morning, but not on the same flight. Ours left town a couple hours after theirs. So, we thought we'd spend a little more time together before they went back to California and we went to Texas.
Our time did run out, however, and we had to say goodbye. We went back to our room for the night, and then the next morning we saw them for just a few more minutes at breakfast before their ride came and they had to leave for their flight. It was hard to hug them goodbye. For one, my friend is really tall, and it's always awkward for me to hug someone taller. I'm just not used to doing that with tall people. But also, since moving to Houston, I haven't gained many new friends, so this time spent with old friends that we loved like family was so very nice. It was sad to see it come to an end.
We packed everything up, and checked out so that we would be ready for the arrival of our own ride. It took us to the airport, and we struggled our way through security and customs and the like, and finally made our way to our gate. We had a while to wait, however, and there was a big duty free shop where you could buy all sorts of things, including nativity scenes. This place was like the market we had gone to the night before minus all the swarming, pestering salesmen. It was just what my wife was looking for.
I looked with her for a minute or two, but it was just too much of a pain to drag our luggage around through the shelves. The aisles didn't leave enough room for that kind of thing either, and I was afraid I would knock something down and break it. I went and sat with our carry on bags at the gate, and she kept shopping. She came back with a bracelet for one daughter, earrings for the other, and a bottle of Mexican hot sauce for my oldest son. Couldn't find anything good for the little guy though, he was going to have to be happy with just his jaguar whistle.
We got on the plane, and had another unnecessary trip to Dallas to take. We flew right over Houston again. They had a GPS map app on the touchscreen on the back of the seat, and I tried to see if we flew close enough to our house to see it, but we didn't. We live pretty close to an airport in Houston, so they probably have to keep clear of that airspace unless they're actually landing there...which I wish they would have.
Instead, we flew all the way up to Dallas, where we had to go through American customs and American security. I got flagged at security, and had to pull out the bag of rice with my phone in it to show them that I wasn't hiding drugs or weapons in there. The security guard laughed when I told him what happend.
"I've heard of that bag of rice thing. Does that actually work?" he asked.
"Sometimes," I said, "but I don't think it's going to for me this time. I had my phone in the water for a pretty long time."
We walked for what felt like miles, and then had to take a train all the way around the airport to a different terminal, and we arrived just in time to hurry onto the plane as it was boarding. This last flight was short, and at last we were back in our home town.
We didn't head out for our ride, however. It so happened that my oldest son was arriving in Houston to spend a couple of weeks with us through Thanksgiving. We weren't going to be able to bring him at Christmastime, so, since flights were good and cheap right now, we brought him out in November instead.
His plane was going to come into the same terminal that we were in, so we hauled our luggage over there, sat down and waited for him. While we waited, my wife discovered the gas attendants little swindle as she looked on our bank statement on her phone. The next day, she was going to have to call and get that fixed.
My son came out of the jetwalk and walked right past us, heading for the way out. He was listening to an audiobook on his phone, and didn't notice us there at all. We chuckled, and walked after him at double time so that we could catch up. When I got next to him, I gave him a pat on the arm and said, "boy, the food on that flight sure sucked, right?"
He looked over and them jumped, startled to see us there next to him.
"Oh, you guys are here?" he said, and stopped walking so we could each give him a hug. We had just hugged someone goodbye earlier in the day, and now we got to hug hello to finish the day off. Outside, my daughter was waiting to pick us up, and in no time, we came in the door to the house. It was late, and the little guy couldn't stay up to greet us, but he left us this note:
As much as I loved our time in Mexico, I sure missed the kids while we were there. It was good to be home again.
