part III: how we ate too much

The Monday right after the wedding is when we went on our honeymoon. All things considered, we would have rather gone a little later, but after that week I’m glad we booked it for right after because we needed a break.

We got to the airport ungodly early, because they still tell you to be there 2 hours in advance even though it takes about 17 minutes to clear security this early. However, this did give me time to talk to the lady working the gate, and manage to get an upgrade to first class (score!) because of our honeymoon. After profusely thanking the woman who helped us, she said “Just act like you’re supposed to be there; I’m not supposed to do this anymore.” I’ve never done anything first class, so I felt a bit like when you go to a restaurant that is generally WAY out of your price range, and you’re trying to go along with what the waitstaff says, only you’re sure they’ve figured out you’re a fraud and they’re just humoring you? It was kind of like that, but with more free booze.

We get to our destination: Riviera Maya. It is located just south of Cancun along the coast, so we get the benefit of gorgeous beach and ocean without drunk 16 year olds waking up in our pool. Our hotel was an all-inclusive, which I’ve never been to before. My family has always been of the DIY type, so our family vacations involved a lot of driving and making our own thing up as we went along. However, after the week of wedding, we did not want to have to make any more decisions about anything. The hardest choice I was looking to make was getting a tequila or rum beverage at the swim-up bar in the pool.

Here is our view from the balcony:

So yeah, pretty much what we were going for. And for the most part, I had rum drinks, but I threw in a few tequila ones for variety. Can’t get in too much of a rut, you know.

After two days of waking up and going “Where would you like to start today honey, pool or beach?” (tough choice, I know) we decided that we also want to get out of the hotel and explore some. Mexico is still in a place where they have wonderful natural resources and don’t have an EPA that tells companies they can’t exploit them. This means you get to do things you’d never get to do here, since we might accidentally make extinct a species that nobody knows exists yet.

Our first adventure started in the morning when a lady in a van came and picked us up. She also went and picked up 6 other people, none of which spoke English (which is spoken fairly common). My Spanish is not stellar, but I can understand about 2/3 of the nouns and can more or less piece things together; I can only speak it if you give me about a day to create the necessary sentence in my head first. Needless to say, this trip stretched the limits of that fairly well.

We take the van down a dirt road into the middle of nowhere in the jungle. When I say middle of nowhere, I mean that if our van broke down, we’d have to hunt iguana for sustenance while we waited for the helicopter to come get us. We then go down into this cenote (which is like a sinkhole/limestone cave system) to go swimming. The water is freaking is as cold and dark as you’d expect in a cave, and you’re in constant danger of swimming into a stalactite (I did once, it freaking hurt and gave me a pretty good welt on my forehead). It was also ridiculously awesome, because this cenote was pretty deep, and they gave everyone waterproof flashlights to look around underwater. Also, dive-bombing bats. We woke them up, and they were kind of cranky about it.

We climb out of the cenote, and slap on some of the worst smelling and foulest insect repellant I’ve ever experienced. When applied to the skin, it burned. Aside from the free chemical peel, you may wonder why are we doing this? Our next step in the day was to then go hiking through the jungle. The jungle has bugs. You do not want these bugs on you.

Here is Wife in a pretty tame stretch, where I actually felt safe enough to stand still for 5 seconds to take a picture. Even with all the bug stuff on, if you stood still too long, the mosquitoes would have time to hold their breath and go in quickly, much like you do at a gas station restroom.

Added bonus: we found out that the bug repellent works on bugs, but snakes apparently love the scent. So standing still for too long is a VERY bad thing. Keep it movin’.

We get to our next destination, which is another cenote, but this one is different. It has a bunch of areas where the ceiling has caved in, and is not nearly as deep. We go swimming around in here as well, without flashlights but still with the possibility of braining yourself on a stalactite if you’re not careful.

After climbing out of this cave, we get into this truck. Actually, let me rephrase that: we get into this vehicle that is half truck, half army surplus tank, and half Bigfoot. I realize that that is 1 1/2 trucks, but that is correct. The reason for this vehicle’s existence is the “road” we are about to go back on. The only difference between the road and the path we hiked there on is that the road is slightly wider. Oh sure, they cleared a few trees, but the stumps are still sticking up a foot or so, and there are river beds every 100 feet or so. The result of this is near whiplash, motion sickness, and one hell of a good time. I don’t think the driver ever took it out of first gear.

Then we came back and got drinks at the swim-up bar in the pool.

The next day we drove down to Xel-Ha, which is a Mayan word meaning “unsafe theme park”. The theme of the theme park is Sunburn. The reason this is the theme is because you have to wear biodegradable sunblock to preserve the water quality.

The park basically consists of this inlet which has all sorts of fish and water animals that you would expect. You go snorkeling around and annoy the fish. There are other things, like a river that lead to the inlet and cliffs you can jump off of, but you get the idea. This means that for the most part you are swimming around on your stomach looking down, thusly exposing your back to the sun. Biodegradable sunblock works about as well as you’d think (if you think that it works well, you’re an idiot).

Then we came back and got drinks at the swim-up bar in the pool.

I wasn’t burned too bad, but it was enough to make putting on shirts a delicate operation. But when you’re in a place like this, for the rest of the week I just loaded down the SPF 50 and went outside because screw it, I’m in Mexico. I just took some painkillers (Tylenol, ibuprofen, rum) and went about it.

If I was to tell you everything we did down there, this post would be far too long. The short and sweet is this was an incredible vacation, and was the best week of my life. I got married to a wonderful woman, and got to spend a week in paradise with her.

And when you eat your own body weight in pico de gallo and guacamole, life is very good indeed.