The morning of our first full day, Maureen and I were good little triathletes and went for a run around the Playacar complex. We were hoping for a beach run, but it was high tide and they put those darn lounge chairs right up to the high tide line. We weren't really looking for an obstacle course, so we hit the sidewalk. After our run and leisurely breakfast, we paid our dues at the time share place before hitting the beach. We relaxed the afternoon and evening away, finally feeling the cold and stress of the city leaving us. We had dinner at one of the restuarants at the the other Wyndham resort down the road from our hotel. We definitely made the right choice in our hotel selection. Their other place was empty and not nearly as nice as our hotel. They were the same price when we were booking, but I'm guessing in better economic times ours was the more expensive of the two.
Our original plan for our second day was to use one of our car rentals to head to Tulum (since we had the car, we had decided that perhaps driving was the better option than cycling). We weren't able to get a hold of the rental car place (it seems the office we had a number for was closed on Sundays), so ended up lounging on the beach all day. It was fantastic. That day ended up being the only day during our entire trip that was sunny all day long, so the snafu with the rental car totally worked out in our favor. That night we celebrated Maureen's birthday at one of the restaurants at our hotel.
Feliz cumpleanos a Maureen!
We were finally able to secure our rental car on Monday for two days. At first they told us all they had was manual transmission. I was the only one with my license with me, which meant I was the only one who could drive it. When asked if I could drive a manual transmission, I said not really (my experience with a stick shift is one day in a parking lot - I don't think I ever made it out of first gear). We weren't about to pass up the rental car, so we were going to take whatever we could get. I figured I could practice on some back roads before we actually headed south to our destination. I knew I had the general idea of how it all worked. Plus, I'd be able to drive stick by the time I got back to the States, which would not be a bad thing. After the car rental place was done playing games, they did produce an automatic transmission for us. I was definitely relieved (but I do still want to learn how to drive stick). Our original plan for the day had been to go to a water park in Xel Ha, but since the whole rental car process had taken longer than anticipated, we opted to make Monday our ruins day. We were planning to go first to Tulum and then on to Coba (a suggestion from our friend Carlos). We ended up missing the turn into Tulum and decided to go to Coba first. What a stroke of luck! Coba was awesome! We ended up spending several hours there, so many that we didn't even have time to go to Tulum on our way back to the hotel because it was starting to get dark. Coba was so great that I doubt we would have gone to Tulum even if we had had time. It was an entire settlement of ruins, all in the woods. We totally felt like Indiana Jones searching for archaeological treasures in the jungle.
Ruins at Coba
Reminds you of Indiana Jones, yes?
Primitive (and more gruesome) basketball - could you throw a skull through this loop?
Trees that found a home on top of the ruins
Me in a really cool tree
This is where we overheard a tour guide explaing that the Mayans came from space. I think something may have been lost in translation. The tourists were so impressed with this information that they asked for their guide's card so that their friend could find him when he was in Mexico in a couple of weeks. Wow...
View from the bottom
View from the top
View looking down - yes, it really was that steep
On our drive back to the hotel, we stopped for tacos and did a little shopping in a village along the way. The tacos were okay, but my mounth was on fire by the time I finished them :-) It also rained on us, but of all times for it to rain, while we were in the car was a good one. Plus, we got to see a rainbow!
We saw a lot of wildlife during our time in Mexico, which was unexpected since we weren't really looking for it.
Spiny-tailed iguana living at our hotel
Central American agouti living at our hotel - not to be mistaken with an NYC subway rat. When asked by another guest what it was, one of the hotel workers replied "buenas carnes!" - good meats!
White-nosed coatimundi living at Coba
A bird living at Coba that I can not figure out what it is. I've officially given up because I have wasted way too much time trying to figure it out.
On our last full day in Mexico, we took the car out again. At this point, we had decided that Xel Ha was not for us. Since Carlos had not steered us wrong about Coba, we decided to follow his second suggestion and head to the Dos Ojos cenotes. Again - awesome! Since I left my camera in the car I don't have any photos, so I hope my explanation can do them at least a bit of justice. Cenotes are caves filled with water - not completely - just enough that you can swim in them and go snorkeling. SCUBA diving is also an option, but we opted for the snorkeling route. We also splurged for the guided tour, which gave us access to a lot more of the cenotes than if we had just chosen to do things on our own. Dos Ojos is two cenotes connected by caves, one of which has bats living in it. By taking the tour, we were able to go through all of the connecting caves and see the bats. It was really cool. We even went into one cave where we turned off our flashlights - it was pitch black - very neat. After our tour, Maureen and I swam around one of the cenotes for a bit longer before heading back to the hotel. Maureen also scored the location of a good taco place in Playa (Serrape should you ever find yourself there - it's a local place and tourists don't really know about it) from our tour guide, so we stopped their before returning the rental car. These tacos were excellent, and again my mouth was on fire - yay!
On our last night, we opted to eat dinner in the hotel cafeteria instead of at one of the restaurants. We had decided that the food was actually better there (or so we thought). The next morning we were up at 5:30AM to finish packing and catch our ride to the airport - the start of what turned into a very long day. We arrived at the airport around 7:30 to find out that our 10AM flight had been delayed until 2PM - yuck! We asked if there was another flight we could get on that would get us home earlier but were immediately told that was the earliest. We should have pushed more because it turns out their was a flight into Newark that would have worked. At least they provided us with a voucher for lunch. At 1PM we learned that our flight had been officially cancelled. Since the flight to Newark was gone by this time, we ended up having to connect through Miami (5 hour layover included - yippee!). To make the best of a not great situation, we decided that the only thing to do was to camp out at the airport bar and drink away our layover. It was fun for a while, but about half way through our second round Maureen started getting sick. Not a good sign of things to come. Being the epidemiologists that we are, we quickly diagnosed ourselves (norovirus) and pinpointed the meal that was the likely culprit based on the incubation period (dinner the previous night). The only question was which food item, a quesiton that would be answered by when (there's no if when it comes to norovirus since it is so contagious) I would also become sick - that night or the next day.
After a couple of delays, we finally were in the air and on our way back to NYC. What was originally supposed to be a direct flight getting us home at 3PM on Wednesday, had turned into a connection that would not get us home until nearly 2AM Thursday morning. As we were boarding, I was starting to feel a bit nauseus, but I was hoping that it was psychosomatic. I really wanted to be home before I got sick. I was able to sleep for most of the flight, which helped delay the inevitable. About an hour before landing, it hit me - so close! Maureen and I concluded that the likely culprit was the paealla from the previous night's dinner. I wonder how many others at the hotel succumbed to a similar fate. We were at least happy that our illnesses struck after our vacation was over. We did attract attention from the airline passenger sitting across the aisle from us - perhaps the hers and hers barf bags we collected for the cab ride home were the give-away. I do hope we didn't infect anyone on the plane, but that may be wishful thinking...
At the end of the day, we had a fantastic time and came back to NYC refreshed. We had relatively good luck with everything during our trip, and our bad luck managed to hold off until our way back. If bad luck is going to strike, that would be my preferred time. Now I am going to start looking forward to my back packing trip in South America - it's only two months away!
