Travels Part 1: Honeymoon!

Well, I decided it is finally time to update you guys on all the adventures that Joe and I have had since we were married in October. Our first BIG adventure was our 10 day honeymoon in the Riveria Maya, Mexico. It was fantastic! I got a passport, (even has a decent picture of me along with my first stamp!) had to speak another language for those ten days and immerse myself in the history and culture of Mexico. We had so much fun, I highly recommend Mexico as a travel destination!

Where to start...how about the beginning! Mexicana airlines is a nice airline. They were comfortable and friendly and fairly affordable and had decent food-at least in first class! The only nerve racking part was our layover in Mexico City because all the staff new only rudimentary English, we knew only rudimentary Spanish, there were intimidating cops and security folk roaming around rapidly speaking a blur of Spanish into their radios and it took us a while to figure out where our gate was. We had to walk around the airport for probably 45 minutes or so before we found our gate, but luckily we had a longish layover just for such an event! I was surprised at how cold it was in Mexico City, but I guess it is surrounded by mountains. There was snow on some of the peaks.

After Mexico City it was absolutely fantastic to get into Cancun. We could feel the humidity in the plane increase as we descended and were eager to get out of our pants and sweaters by the time we landed! Baggage came through just fine and pretty quickly as I remember. It was crazy walking out of the terminal because we were immediately assualted by car rental people, taxi drivers, time share folks all clamoring for our attention. It was a little intimidating, at least for me, because I'd never experienced anything like it before. Luckily we had our car all lined up and ready to go through Budget, who were very calm and professional and had a van waiting for us and everything. If nothing else, the service is pretty darn good in Mexico!

The first thing I noticed about our car, besides the fact that it was smaller than Vanessa's and my Ford Escort, was that it had kilometers on the outer ring of the speedometer instead of miles. The first time I looked over and saw Joe doing 70 I almost had a heart attack before I realized it was kilometers! I was so glad that Joe drove the whole time we were down there instead of me! All the signs, of course, are in Spanish and while you do drive on the same side of the road as in the U.S., the drivers have completely different ideas of what is appropriate driving. The shoulders are really wide down there on the main roads and people just use the shoulders as an extra lane. They use their blinkers more to tell you it is ok to pass than to indicate that they are turning or moving over a lane and slower vehicles almost always use their hazard lights. If they have them and they are working! We saw several vehicles that had one working tail light and that was it! Scooters are popular down there too, but as family vehicles, not as single person transportation. It was common to see a man, woman and kid or baby on one scooter on the main road and not a one with a helmet. Crazy! The other crazy thing about the roads down there, besides the major potholes (they could have swallowed our little car!), is many of them have speed bumps every couple of miles or so, even on the two or three lane major roads! I suppose it works, but it was kind of annoying, especially if you had a sunburned, or stoveup back (which we did) and had to endure them all!

Anyway, our condo was pretty sweet at the Riveria Maya Resort. Huge grounds that really gave you a lot of exercise getting around, but a lot of nice, though expensive, amenities. They had a beach and, get this, SEVEN pools! But you know what, we were so busy running around we only swam in the pools once, though they were very nice.

We didn't really spend a lot of time at the resort because we didn't feel like we were really experiencing Mexico, which is the whole point of going to another country, right?! We had a great time in Playa del Carmen on (I think) Fifth Avenue, which is like the Duval Street, Front Street, or Gaslamp District of Playa del Carmen. Lots of crazy little shops, great restuarants, and a neat aviary (careful the birds in the flight cage are crazy, especially the toucans!). The wonderful thing about Mexico is, especially if you can find your way out of the tourist areas, it is soo cheap! We had lots of great meals for under ten or fifteen dollars out away from the resort. In fact, the staff at an Argentenian (?spelling?) grill in Tulum recognized us after a couple of days and were very friendly and helpful with places to see and helping us with our Spanish. The resort was ridiculously expensive so we ate there as little as possible. We even found a Wal Mart and enjoyed some fruit, roast chicken and salad a couple of times. We didn't really have any problems with any of the food, though we were careful to stick to bottled water.

We spent over half our time in Tulum, which was about two hours south of our resort. It was a small town that hadn't gone totally to tourism so we really got to experience untouristy Mexican culture right up close and it was cheaper and friendlier than Cancun or Playa del Carmen. We stayed a night at an environmentally friendly, self sufficient place called CESiaK that was located in the Sian Ka'an Biosphere, which is a UNESCO or World Heritage sight or something. Very cool place. We had a bungalow right on the beach with fantastic ocean and lagoon views. There was no light pollution, no noise pollution, no nothing. Our bungalow didn't have electricity, a bathroom or anything. Basically it was a big tent on a raised deck with a bed, a rocking chair, and a hammock. The sheets were rough with salt and the bed was hard, but what a fantastic experience! The only thing is I was pretty sick with a bad cold and was a little miserable then so I didn't enjoy roughing it as much as I normally would have. The accomodations may have been lacking a little, but the food was great. Those cooks really outdid themselves in everything they did. They hand squeezed or pressed their juice (we had orange and watermelon juice-yum!) and the food was by far the best we had in Mexico. They caught all their fish right off the beach, pretty cool! The only bad thing about CESiaK was the mosquitos. It was kind of in a swamp/ lagoon area so there were a lot. I think they really liked me, unfortunately.

While we were at CESiaK we did a lagoon tour. There were probably eight or nine of us plus a fantastic guide who, though he'd only been working there for four days, did a superb job on the tour. He was VERY knowledgeable. We hiked out to some motorboats that had no draft whatsoever and took off into the lagoon and up into a canal. We saw all kinds of birds, fish and plant life and I never would've believed it, but it is really obvious when you pass from brackish water to fresh. The fresh water is so much clearer and cleaner! One of the cool things about the lagoon is there are a ton of freshwater springs scattered throughout it. So in the middle of this big brown lake there are little circles of the bluest, clearest water you can imagine just gushing out from the bed of the lagoon. Very cool. We sped up this narrow canal at what seemed an impossible speed-of course the captains had been doing it their whole life so knew the canals well- to an ancient Mayan ruin. Actually, one of the fascinating things about this particular canal is that the Mayans had cut and dredged it out of the limestone to get to the other/further inland side of the lagoon/swamp. And it was still a usuable canal! Amazing! Anyway, this Mayan ruin we stopped at was, they were guessing, a toll or tax station and was pretty neat. My first ruin! It wasn't really renovated, but that made it that much more mysterious, a little building reaching out of the past to captivate people. All I can say is that the Mayans were sure short people! The guide said that actually they were short and squat, but incredibly powerfully built, because the water they drank has so much limestone and calcium in it that it calcified their bones early in life so that they just didn't grow longer, they couldn't because they were so dense. But those dense bones could support a lot of heavy muscle or fat or whatever so they were a pretty physically strong people. I tried not to swallow any water when we went swimming. lol! After we had finished poking around the ruin, we all jumped in the canal and floated back to the lagoon. It was FANTASTIC! The water was warm and clear and sweet (oops, I swallowed some!) and it was just one of those experiences that you will never forget. We saw hummingbird nests and all kinds of neat stuff. And it started to rain when we were floating down the canal, which was kind of cool because we were wet anyway! You wouldn't believe how much rain splashes UP though. Then we headed to an old historic bridge, which was kind of cool but definitely not the highlight, and back to CESiaK for lunch. We were supposed to go on to swim in a cenote-underwater spring/river-but I was pretty sick and we were both ready to find accomodations with a bathroom in the room and clean sheets. So we headed back to Tulum and found Don Diego de la Selva.

Don Diego de la Selva became our favorite spot and we ended up spending more time there than at the resort! It was owned and run by French people who were very nice. We were able to communicate in an odd mixture of English, Spanish, and French (Joe remembers some of his high school French) and had a really nice time there. Not nearly as fancy as the resort, but much friendlier and more relaxed. They served a free continental (French) breakfast every morning which was superb and always came out to say hello and talk a little and were extremely friendly and helpful. A very nice place that we highly recommend.

We used Don Diego de la Selva as a base point to explore the area around Tulum. We visited three different archealogical sites in the area: Coba, Tulum, and Muyil. Coba was the most excavated and restored and definitely the most crowded. We had a fantastic guide there though who really did a great job in not only telling us about the ruins at Coba, but the ruins at other sites like Chichen Itza so that, between him and our fantastic Moon guidebook, we didn't need another guide for any of the other ruins we visited. He also taught us a lot about the plants and animals around there and the Mayan culture in general. It was a fantastic experience. The ruins are HUGE and the city is really spread out, so we got a lot of exercise that day. The Mayans arranged their cities around their temples and ballcourts. The priests and rulers lived in or nearest the temples, then the aristocracy and craftsmen, and then the lay people got the fringes. And that was how it worked at ceremonies, ballgames and any other important function. The Mayans made some fantastic stele, or tomblike blocks of stone with histories, legends and other important things carved into them. That is probably one of the more notable things about Coba, all the stele. Also important is that Coba was at the center of the Mayan road system. The roads, called sacbe, were raised two or three feet off the ground-so it was level-and were made of rock. They shoot basically straight through the jungle to other major cities, like Chichen Itza. You would think these roads would've been used for carts and wheelbarrows and things, but they were used by people on foot carrying packs on their heads and backs. The Maya knew of the wheel but believed it was sacred, so they never used it as an actual working wheel. Coba also boasts the tallest ruin in the Yucatan Peninsula: Nohoch Mul or "large hill"at 138 feet. We were able to climb it and it was pretty crazy! Very steep and a little scary, but well worth it. Coba was a nice site.

Unfortunately, it is getting on towards bedtime so I will have to do a "Part 2"! Hopefully this isn't too wordy. I will try to get pictures up on Photobucket soon too! Anyway, enjoy and goodnight!