Nate and I have never gone on a vacation by ourselves since we had kids. And I don't think we've ever gone on a "nice" vacation where we weren't scrimping and saving and staying in crap-hole motels and stuff. Until January that is, when we went to Mexico for a week to celebrate our 10th Anniversary. We went with Nate's brother Bradley and his wife DeAnna. Our anniversary was the previous August, and their's was the following June, so we split the difference and went in January. It was nice to escape the dreary weather and hit the beach. I wasn't allowed to bring my new phone (see previous I broke my phone stories), so all the pictures were taken on Nate's phone.
January 19—Nate's birthday. We spent many hours in various airports and on various airplanes making our way to Cancún, Mexico. We left for the airport around 5:30 am, and we arrived at our hotel around 6:00 pm. It was a long day. We drove from the airport in Cancún down to our resort in Playa del Carmen. That was the most terrifying ride of my life. There are no rules when driving in Mexico. No rules. Just some guidelines and suggestions. Our ride took over an hour, but I have a feeling it would have taken twice as long with a different driver. Yikes. Brad and DeAnna arrived before we did, and they made us dinner reservations at the Japanese tepanyaki restaurant. We ate really late (for me, because I am used to my children's eating schedule), but it was fun and delicious. We designated our trip Treat Yo Self 2015. The resort we stayed at was called Barceló Riviera Maya, and it was absolutely beautiful.
January 20—Glorious weather. We spent almost all day at the beach/by the pool. We played pool volleyball with some strangers. DeAnna and I tried out water aerobics and laughed our heads off. We read books. We ate copious amounts of food. It was awesome.
January 21—Overcast weather, but warm and pleasant. We took a tour with Alma's Tours to the Mayan ruins of Cobá and Tulum. We also swam in a cenote. When we first got to Tulum we fell into a tourist trap with these guys, but hey, at least we got some cool pictures.
Tulum is a walled city of ruins right on the coast. It was fairly close to our resort, which was nice. There were a lot of other tour groups there, which was less nice.
Our guide was awesome. He was born in Mexico, but his parents sent him to live with relatives in the US so he could learn to speak English with an American accent instead of a Mexican accent. He actually lived for a long time in Springville, Utah. What?! It was really fun to talk to him and get to know him and the other couples in our group.
Nate and I dressed to match. It was embarrassing. I wore a hat and tried to stay fairly covered up because I was a bit sunburned from the day before.
The Mormons think this temple is about Jesus. The other tour guides think the Mormons are nuts.
I hate taking selfies. And I hate the word "selfie."
Nate was a good sport about letting me take pictures of him.
It really was a beautiful place.
We left Tulum and drove to Cobá, which was quite a ways inland. We stopped and had lunch right outside of Cobá. It was delicious, and it gave us a chance to talk to the others in our group. At Cobá the ruins are so spread out that we rode bikes around to get from place to place. I loved it. The temple here isn't quite as tall as Chichen Itza, but you can't climb that one, so I'm glad we did the tour we did.
I'm better at taking pictures than Nate is. The one I took of him and Brad is much more flattering than the one he took of me and DeAnna.
I can't believe we ran up that thing. And run we did. We beat all the "old folks" to the top, and they teased us about being so young and spry. I was out of breath at the top, but it was worth it.
A view from the top of the big temple at Cobá.
We made it to the top!
I was scared to go near the edge, but I really wanted a picture looking down.
I feel like Brad is in the background of most of our pictures.
A beehive shaped building with no door.
This was one of the big game arena things where the players bounced these giant, heavy, rubber balls with their shoulders, hips, head, but not feet or hands. They scored by putting the ball through the hoop. And then the winning team was sacrificed right on the spot, or something like that.
DeAnna with our sweet bikes. Mine was the one with the granny seat, and I loved it. The frame said "Jaguar," so naturally that is what I called her.
The skull marked a place where people were buried. Duh.
A picture in a tunnel.
I'm so photogenic. (I was entertaining myself while I waited for slowpokes. I'm a little embarrassed for myself for posting these.)
After Cobá, we stopped at a cenote, which is an underground lake thing. The water erodes the limestone creating these underground lakes and rivers. There are some that are connected making tunnels and stuff. I didn't take Nate's phone down into the cavern, so this is the only picture I took.
I stole these from DeAnna's Facebook page. It was a little chilly, but so fun to swim around and look at all the rock formations. It was creepy and beautiful.
I tried to take a picture with the creature on my neck. But it's little rat claws creeped me out and I wasn't super poised like I imagined I would be.
Crawling from Nate to Brad.
This is where the grandmother weaves hammocks by hand. Our guide said it takes her 2 months to finish a hammock, partly because she only works on them for a couple of hours each day.
She also embroiders all the dresses by hand on her little pedal-powered sewing machine.
They were so beautiful, I wanted to buy them all. But Nate and I didn't think ahead and bring a lot of cash with us. Duh. We are the worst travelers.
The hand-carved masks were my favorite. This was our big souvenir that we ended up getting. Not this particular mask, but one of the masks.
The entertainment at the resort at night was terrible. We left after a few minutes.
And that was the end of our third day of vacation!
