Mikey, Calliope, & I went our of first vacation this week down to Palm Spring (technically Ranco Mirage). We spent a week at one of our time share’s sister resorts, The Westin Mission Hills. Jenn, Eddie and his niece Christina joined us for most of the time there and we had so much fun.
Calliope had her first time in the pool and loved every minute, except the getting out part. I think we need to get her signed up for swimming lessons very early on. She really loved being in the heat and slept so well poolside.
We played a lot of Carcassonne which is one of our favorite games. I think Jenn, Eddie and Christina all got hooked. We even resurrected Canasta after Eddie and Christina left.
We leave tomorrow for a 10 hour drive home (allowing for stops). Calliope did great on the way down and hopefully will be just as much a trooper on the way home.
You should have seen all the stuff we brought (especially me for all the kitchen stuff). We did end up using most of what we brought, except for maybe the pool toys. We leave tomorrow and I’ll be spending the morning packing up the car again.
Category: Vacation
VACATION! :-)
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Car Adventure Day
So today, instead of being tourists on a bus, we were tourists in a rental car. We grab a day rental and headed south towards ruins at Telum. Our original plan was to drive all the way down there, see the ruins and then snorkel a few places on the way home. Like all good vacation plans, this got derailed right from the get go because all of a sudden I needed food. So we pulled into a Mexican trailer park in Paamul. To be fair, were going to stop by on the way home anyway. We had a wonderful breakfast on the terrace overlooking a beautiful half-moon beach. After breakfast, we went snorkeling for a bit (tons of sea fans to the left of the boat channel). We then headed down to Telum and what a picturesque site Telum is. Wow, it’s just amazing. To finish up the day, we stopped in Akumal for some snorkeling. We headed for Yal Ku Lagoon which is where an underground river meets the see. The fresh and salt water didn’t mix and you could dive down and see and feel the different layers. The was a good amount of fish but it wasn’t that clear (partially due to non-mixing of the water layers and some sediment being stirred up). The place had a nice, comfortable feel to it. We will definitely stop by the next time we’re in the area.
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Total tourist day
So we booked a tourist trip to go see Chichen Itza which was actually really awesome. First off, it’s a 2.5 to 3 hour drive from Cancun to get there and we had a driver, plus a tour guide, plus food & drink, plus umbrellas when we got there. I had reservations about being with a bunch of touristas (shocker, I know), but we had a good time. After spending about 3 hours in Chichen Itza, they took us to a pretty rocking buffet lunch and then we got to swim in a cenote (a limestone sinkhole). We visited Cenote Ik-Kil It sounds a lot more interesting (I was expecting something more along the lines of caving), but it was beautiful and I got to swim in it. So all in all, a very good day of being a tourist in Cancun.
Today was such a better day (a little rain to start but calm seas). The dive part was much smaller too (5 people including me). Both our dives were to Manchones in Cancun. On the first dive dive we saw an underwater cross and some under water statues. The second dive, we was a TON of fish and coral formations and a school of massive fish that seemed vaguely human (they were other divers). And as a bonus, I am now a certified PADI open water scuba diver.
Did my pool session which was informative yet fairly uninteresting. We then did 2 ocean dives: Santo Remedio (35ft) and Chitales in Cancun (27ft). The ride out was rough and the diving was fairly mundane. But I didn’t manage to figure out all my gear and I think I got hooked on diving on my first dive.
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On my way to scuba diving….
So I managed to spend the day taking the online version of the PADI Open Water Scuba course. After an initial serious failure of their site (omg, did children build this for them), I managed to get through it. So I am excited to get the real diving side of things done while in Cancun. Scuba diver extraordinaire, here I come. 🙂
OMG, can’t wait to go on vacation but I have SOOOOOO much to do before we get out of here. Why is my life to crammed full of stuff to do?