Riviera Maya

As I said, we are back from our vacation. We spent 7 nights on the beautiful Riviera Maya coast of Mexico. Our resort was the Grand Oasis. We had an all inclusive deal, so we ate (and drank) to our heart's desire. The beach was clean, quiet, and had some decent coral reefs just off the shore. We had a great time snorkeling in calmer seas, but with a stronger current, I grew terribly frightened of running into a spiney urchin.

The food was delicious. I learned to love sushi at the outdoor sushi bar. We spent each night at a different restaurant. Our favorites were the Brazilian (meats served off of a sword/spit) and Mexican restaurants (flaming coffee). We always had the buffet for breakfast. I loved picking from one of ten fresh squeezed juices. Warning - watermelon is not so good.



We took a few outings, aka "adventure!" We took the collectivo (group taxi) along with the locals, both to Tulum and Playa del Carmen. We saw some beautiful Mayan ruins at Tulum.



Playa was a great place to sneak in some souvenir shopping, and get my Starbucks fix.



Our favorite outing was the "Underwater world" snorkeling trip. We were first taken 15 minutes into the jungle. We put on wetsuits and climbed a steep ladder underground, only to find a beautiful fresh water pool with stalactites and stalagmites all around us. After that, we went to a bay to snorkel around sea turtles. They were close enough to touch. We were reminded of the sea turtle in "Finding Nemo." We also saw a school of fish identical to the one in the movie that made shapes from all of the fish. There were thousands of them as big as my palm.



Although we had a lot of fun, there were downsides too.

The sun decided to show itself for about 50% of our trip. We saw nothing but clouds and drizzle for all of Thursday-Friday. Fortunately, that made it cool enough to knit - so I got a decent amount of my shawl started (after ripping it back to start once).



Our hotel was nice, but our room - not so much. Our a/c broke twice, ceiling fan broke, insects scurried beneath our shower, water dripped through our ceiling, and the sink faucet/cable TV worked intermittently. After a night with no air, we finally decided to ask for a new room. We had avoided it before because we thought the next would be just as bad. Instead, we moved one floor up to a much bigger room, cleaner, and fully functioning. My goodness.

Our airline travel was not smooth sailing. We had a delay at our connection on the way down because they needed to switch out an engine. So, driving to Chicago through the night did not result in us getting to Cancun before dark for our first day. On the way back, we missed our connection in Miami, so we were put up in a hotel for the night. It was not just any ordinary airport hotel, though. It was a Native American owned casino. After three hours of sleep, we headed back to the airport, dying to get home and see our refinished wood floors. They turned out to be a HUGE disappointment, but I'll save that story for another day.

You can see all of our favorite pics at my Flickr account.