Last week we went on a vacation down to Mexico. On the way home, Kathryn wrote up a fantastic journal entry describing our trip. I decided to transcribe it and post it on the blog. It took her a whole plane flight to write, so it’s pretty long. If you don’t want to read it all, that’s fine. Just flip through the pictures and know that we had a great time.
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WE LOVE VACATION! At this very moment we are on a plane taking us home. We’ve been in Cancun (Playa Del Carmen) Mexico for the past week and we loved out trip. We called this trip our 2nd honeymoon. In less than 2 months it will be our 2-year anniversary. So hooray for the best 2 years of our lives!
Cancun is very green. How? It has an extraordinarily long rainy season: April – November! We didn’t worry about that and booked the trip. We are glad we did…but MAN we saw a lot of rain! In our way back to the airport (aeropuerto in Spanish) this morning we drove through sections where the highway was totally covered in many inches of standing water. It was loco! The rain was beautiful but thankfully it didn’t rain the whole time. The sun came out and I even managed to score a sunburn.
We weren’t totally sure what to expect from our hotel upon arriving…so when we walked into our room and the lights didn’t work, I thought “Uh oh!” We called the front desk and they sent an employee to help us. He knocked, asked for our room key, put it into the weird metal box on the wall and everything turned on! He proceeded to inform us in his heavy accent “No care—No lights!” Bahaha. We thanked him, he left, and we cracked up. Words of wisdom Amigo.
The next morning we woke up to a special phone call…which Larry answered still asleep! He had to ask the caller to repeat himself and didn’t even realize it was his best friend James Peterson! Finally Larry woke up and could understand that James and Erica were going to the Xcaret park that morning and they wanted us to come with. I’m proud to say that we made the spontaneous last-minute decision to go and we’re glad we did! Erica’s family was there too, and we had a ball racing down the Mexican highway in a car about the size of a wind-up toy car…that James drove like it was a top-of-the-line Corvette.
Our day at Xcaret was the longest on our feet we’ve had in a long time. There was a nice collection of native-to-Mexico animals housed at Xcaret including: jaguars, flamingos, parrots, giant and baby sea turtles, a crocodile (there was a cute little girl that called for it in Spanish “cocodrillo, cocodrillo”) a truly stinky spin with and oddly floppy snot/trunk that ran at us, then turned around and sprayed pee at us—such a treat, a butterfly sanctuary where we sant the Enchanted movie tune to call the butterflies to land on us. There were all kinds of stops that taught how the ancient Mayans did things including candle making and the development to today’s chocolate from cocoa beans The chocolate tour was cool but we almost gagged on our cocoa beans that the guide gave us to try cause the chocolate taste was there, but quickly covered up by a poisonous-tasting flavor that lingers longer. We weren’t sure we could ever like chocolate that same way again until the next day Larrysplurged and purchased us some delightful peanut M&Ms. The name of chocolate was saved! Cocoa has come a long way since the Mayans, but they too saw cocoa’s worth. They would trade the beans as currency. Apparently some people would even fabricate the beans to make counterfeit money!
The show that night was very well done, and too long because there were so many great numbers no one had the heart to cut any! There were flying men that fell off a pole and flew to the ground (held up by ropes) and lots of music and dancing. There were demonstrations showing how that Mayan game like soccer/basketball was played by hip chucking it across the middle line or into the hoop. Cool! They also played fire hockey which reminded me of home dousing tennis balls in gas and lighting them on fire and playing tennis with them in the street. Good times!
The next day I got some quality Kat-time while Larry went scuba diving with James and Erica on the island of Cozumel. They saw 2 small sharks, an eel, a large school of fish, and a large black fish with a hot pink stripe and more. Thos guys had a blast! I just chilled and read my book “Seabiscuit” that I got from Grandma Hawker’s house last month. Larry got home just 7 minutes after I decided to start worrying because he was over 2 hours late coming back. But as soon as James dropped him off, he ran to our room barefoot in the pouring rain! It was romantic! Such a sweetheart.
The next day was Sunday and church was too tough to get to, so we had our own lesson on the 3 Kingdoms of Glory (from the Sunday School manual lesson). Just a few hours later, we got some internet and saw that Grandma Pauline Hawker passed away on Sunday morning. Thankfully Larry, Mom and I had time to swing by and give Grandma our love before we left on our trip. Two days later she was in a coma-like-unresponsive state till she passed quietly away Sunday morning. I was sad to hear it, but so happy for Grandma. I’m sure she’s spunking it up in Heaven enjoying being with Grandpa Don Hawker again. I love them both!
On Monday it rained, but we weren’t about to let the rain keep us inside! We ran to the pool and hopped in with our goggles to protect our eyes from fast-falling rain drops. We played catch, raced in all the swimming strokes, and floated down the pool together. Then we ran to the beach and went all the way to the buoy limit. We were the only ones crazy enough to be in the ocean with the rain pouring so we enjoyed the beach to ourselves. Then we ran back to the room where we filled our own personal giant hot tub with jets J
Not only was our room deluxe (once you got the lights on) but the entire hotel was glamorous! There were statues everywhere! Palm trees and thousands of flowering bushes everywhere you looked. The front hotel lobby was sexy and gaudy! Endless marble floors and giant columns with an exciting tall ceiling made us both say “wow!”
A huge highlight of staying at an all-inclusive resort is that all the food is free! Breakfast buffet, lunch buffet, snack bars, dinner buffet, drinks at the pool bars, deluxe reservation themed dinners, and our mini-fridge refilled magically daily with water and more soda than we could drink!
The food was good, but our 3 favorite meals were the special themed restaurants where we had to make reservations. French, Tepanyaki, and Fondue. All were superb! We didn’t know what to expect from French (snails?)…close enough! Larry ordered a salmon jelly (which he thought would come separately) and I ordered a duck/biscotti appetizer. We both had wide eyes when our food came! Larry’s jelly had raw salmon in it, and my duck had the oddest texture of any meat I’ve ever had! I don’t know how they cooked it, but it was the consistency of a soft sponge. Hmmmm. We both ate what we could and then let our waiter, who loved me for some reason, take our plate and bring on the next course adventure. The next course was soup. Safe right? Wrong. It actually had amazing flavor, but it was seafood soup that had a bunch of whole oysters/clam shells and meat floating around in the bottom. Larry ate all of his meat and I ate all of the broth. Pretty good, you silly French, but we had to save room for the main course: a perfectly prepared steak with delicious gravy. Yum. Then we had chocolate mousse for dessert.
Our next dinner was a must-do. Tepanyaki. Our cook was an amazing ninja that could catch his spatula avout his head while juggling at top speed. He was a jokester too…”accidentally” tossing an egg at me which ended up being a raw shell that had been drained, “See, no baby chick!” I screamed and caught it and it made for a good show. The food was just as good as Tepanyaki in SLC that we went ot for Emily’s graduation party last month. When the chef was tossing broccoli, for everyone to catch in their mouth, Larry got his, and I got mine too! Dream Team represent!
Last night we went to “La Fondue.” The Swiss came up with Fondue. We enjoyed the cheese pot dipping chicken, shrimp, beef, veggies, and croutons. So good! Our high-energy waiter even got us a special multicolor fruit punch drink with a lime. Totally classy!
What a trip! What an amazing hubby I have. He is the best friend possible for me and I love him and whatever time we get to spend together.
