Vacation over

Hola Chicas!  I’m back from vacation, and it was A-Maz-Ing!  We spent at week at HN Riviera Cancun in Puerto Morelos, Mexico.   I wanted to say something before we left, but with Sara’s crazy ax murdered turned house-breaker iner and stories about people being robbed because they mentioned their vacation on Twitter, I wasn’t about to.

Puerto Morelos is south of Cancun by about 20 minutes.  It’s much quieter than Cancun (granted, it’s off season, so it’s not busy anywhere down here- but still.) and gorgeous.   You can read about why I picked this resort, here.

It was everything we were looking for.  The water was a beautiful blue and the infinity edge pool went right up to the beach. 

So if you didn’t want to swim in the ocean, you could swim in the pool overlooking the beach.  We did that most of our first day, talking to two other couples we met.  Unfortunately, that resulted in my entire right side being burned.  It was the holy trinity of 1- not enough sunscreen (and thinking it was enough) 2- my thinking that the Mexican sun was wussier (ha!) 3- alcohol, which is free at the swim up bar.  I would like to think I can blame the majority of it on #3.

The resort was great.  We stayed at a Sandals resort when we married and it was nice, but the décor was dated.  That was not the case here.  Everywhere you looked, there was stone; travertine, tile, onyx.  All trimmed with dark wood. 

The room was decorated modernly, with large double pocket doors separating the bedroom from a sitting area.  We had two flat screen TV’s (which Brad did take advantage of) and a jacuzzi on the balcony that overlooked the courtyard and the ocean.

We snorkeled in Puerto Morelos.  The visibility was around 15 feet when we went out, but the instructor told us that it gets up to 90 feet sometimes.

I couldn’t really see well with the camera, so I just snapped away and checked them out later.  Several keepers, and many, many were just blue bubbles.

We also took an ATV/Cenotes tour.  I wasn’t sure what that would entail, but the Cenotes were awesome; underground caves of the bluest freshwater.  We took ATV’s out into the jungle (which kind of felt like the woods in Arkansas, but maybe that’s just me) splashing around and had a lot of fun just getting there.

We came to a small camp and walked out to a clearing, we passed a hole where he said we could ‘jump in.’ I only saw blackness, so I quickly declined.

Another hole about 15 feet around had stairs leading down (I thought that was safer).  We were greeted by the sight of stallagtites and stalagmites (I can’t remember which is which) jutting in and out of the water. 

They had a small zipline in there and it dropped us into the dark water.  Which was FREAKIN’ FREEZING!  Others said it was ‘refreshing,’ but it was just damn cold.  And there were tiny catfish swimming with us. 

And that’s when my camera died [ran out of juice].

We went to another cenote that was open and the water was a bit greener (because of the plant life) and had tiny fish in it that would nibble at your skin if you got in.  I stuck my feet in and got a ‘Mayan pedicure.’  It felt like the fish bumped into you, it didn’t hurt. 

We visited a third cave, which was called the bat cave.  Um, yes, I don’t have to tell you why.  Because of the BATS!  Tons of them.  The guide kept stirring them up whistling and calling and they circled us- angry that we were bothering them.  Needless to say, I didn’t get into that one either.  Although I did get a few steps down the ladder into the water chasing a baby turtle.  I did not catch it and when the guide tried, he lost it.  I was kind of sad.  It was about the size of a half-dollar and I would have begged the other couple with us to take my picture with the little guy. (Not that we don’t have turtles here in Arkansas, but whatever, Mexican turtles are much cooler.)

I did manage to find a tiny hermit crab near our room.  I'm pretty sure he was lost.

I'll post a few more pictures and stories later.  Really, we just laid out on the beach for 6 days.  It was awesome.