A Vacation Finale

It's the post you've all been waiting for. It's the finale of our recent trip to Mexico, specifically, to Cancun. Thank you for your patience as we've been sharing our trip a little bit at a time.

Have you ever looked back at some significant time in your life, and suddenly wondered where all the time had gone? I have that sense as I put together this last entry from our vacation. It's hard to believe that it's now been two months since we were there, and I feel really bad that it's taken me this long to get this out to you all.

Friday of our vacation began with us waking up and getting ready for an adventure into the actual city of Cancun. Most of our time involved traveling to see some of the sites of the Yucatan, or simply enjoying the beach and pool around our hotel. Since the island part of Cancun makes a large "7", we hadn't really had an opportunity to go into the downtown area.

The only problem was, we didn't really know the stops for the local buses. By this time, we had taken the buses enough to have a vague idea about where they stopped, but we had a specific restaurant that we wanted to eat at. So we found ourselves at the concierge booth, asking how we should let the bus driver know when we wanted off. They were very helpful, giving us the name of the building which we needed.

So once again, onto the buses! We rode for a little bit, and as we got into the downtown area, Carrie shouted out the name of the place where we needed to exit. The driver graciously stopped there and dropped us off. Since we were still in the time right after Christmas, this is the sight we saw as we exited the bus.

That's a pretty big Christmas tree, isn't it? It definitely makes me look like a dwarf!

Next door to the tree was a small Christian church. The doors were standing open, so we thought we'd take a peek inside. Here is the view that we were greeted with.

It was a Catholic church, for sure, and you can even see that there were a few people in there, offering up their prayers. Having seen the church, we then turned off to find the restaurant that we had made this journey for.

It was only a short, about two block walk, to the restaurant. We were a little confused as to the entrance, since there were several doors and lots of people, and no clear sign. Initially we ended up in a hallway that must have been for some government service, since there were quite a few people waiting in line. So we tried the next door, which led us into the restaurant, Labna.

Since it was only about 11:00, we were the first people there. We had the place all to ourselves. So after getting one of the wait staff who could describe what we were trying to order, we put in our order and started to get our food. Looks yummy, doesn't it?

What you see in this picture are a number of native Yucatan dishes. Chaya water (from a spinach type vegetable) is in the glass on the table, which I drank, while Carrie enjoyed a glass of horchata. Carrie also helped herself to a bowl of lime soup, which was really delicious. I ordered a plate with a wide variety of items. Panuchos, with pork pibil (sort of like tostados) were found on my dish, as well as pok chuk (grilled meat). I also had papadzules (tortillas with egg in a pumpkin sauce), and a Mexican sausage. There was also a pumpkin spread on nachos (I should explain that pumpkin for them is not necessarily pumpkins, but also what we would call squash.). My sausage had the achiote sauce, which was really good. We also had Mayan custard with coconut for dessert as our way of celebrating this wonderful, authentic meal.

After our restaurant adventure, and with very full bellies, we then made our way a little bit further into the downtown area. We had seen that there was an open air market nearby, so we went and walked around down there for a while. We figured our safest way to avoid the salesmen was not to look them in the eye, but one man must have been on to our trick. After passing his stall, he hollered out at us that we could at least look at him and his merchandise!

Finally, we ended up buying me an authentic Mexican shirt. (I'll have to try to include a picture of it in a future post.) Then, tired from the walking, we finally made our way back to catch the bus back to the hotel.

Once we got back, the day had warmed up quite a bit. Knowing that we wouldn't see the sand and ocean again for a while, we put on our swimsuits and walked along the beach again. We enjoyed this time together, as did the seagulls along the way. (Notice also how high the upper level of sand is from where we were walking along the water's edge.)

It was a beautiful view, looking up along the beach. Don't you agree? Now, you may notice the flags along the upper level of the sand. These were to tell us if the beach was dangerous or not. This was the one day while we were there that the flags were green, which meant safe. We saw a few red ones (keep out) and some yellow ones (caution), but only on this last day were they green.

At this point, I finally had to do it! I went out and starting have a little bit of fun in the water. Okay, maybe 'little' is the wrong word to describe it. I had a lot of fun. I went out and started jumping into the waves as they were coming in, and in general, probably looking like a person who had never seen water before! But it was so much fun. Doesn't it look that way?

I wasn't the only one having fun, as you can see with the birds flying over me, waiting for me to throw them a fish or two!

Carrie is so good with the camera. Look at the expression she was able to capture on my face!

Ah, the fun of the sand and the water. Doesn't it make you want to go to Cancun?

After a day full of adventure, it was sadly time to pack up. We went back, washed out our swimsuits, and let them dry on the porch. We made our way up to the nearby mall for some food at the food court, and to buy Carrie a little bit of chocolate. Since we now were such experts on the bus, we of course took the bus to the mall and back.

Well, that's our vacation. Or maybe not completely. Check in shortly after Easter so I can share one more little fun thing as we left to return home. In the meantime, Vive Cancun!