Gonna type this shit up day by day, so I don't forget any of it! :D I'll put it under a cut so nobody has to read it if they don't feel like it.
Friday, April 10
I worked until about 3, then headed out to Appleton. Dad and I drove to Milwaukee and stayed in a park'n'stay overnight to avoid having to drive to Milwaukee at ~1:00 a.m. since we were flying out at 6:30 Saturday morning. Yay! I got bored of reading Mercedes Lackey garbage at about 11:30 and managed to sneak in a few hours of sleep before we had to get up.
Saturday, April 11
3:30 came around pretty quickly. -_-; We headed to the airport and did all the necessary crap with that. Fortunately there were no problems, we boarded our plane early and made it to Cancun by about 9:30 a.m. :D Quickly we got to our shuttlebus and headed out for the Grand Sirenis.
The ride was quite pleasant. I had never been anywhere as far south as the Yucatan Peninsula before, so the landscape was different and new. Also our van was air-conditioned to prevent my imminent death by heat stroke, since I was wearing jeans and it was humid and probably 90 degrees out. D: We saw a lot of shacks made of sticks, corrugated tin, and tarps along the side of the highway, something I had never really experienced before. The buildings in the urban areas were really different as well, tending to be shorter and more square than the buildings I was used to.
We arrived at the resort around 11 am to find that our room wasn't ready for us yet. We got swimsuits and shorts out of our suitcases, got changed, left our suitcases with the bellhops, then began our explorations of the resort. One of the first things we saw was an iguana the size of my forearm just hanging out on the sidewalk. Dad and I were pretty amazed at its size, but it turns out that Mexico has gargantuan iguanas all over like Wisconsin has squirrels. Geez. We also spotted a red hummingbird in a huge hibiscus. :D We found the ice cream parlor and coffee shop, very important things to locate! We had coffee then went out to the beach. At this point we were both ready for a nap, so we tried to get into the room--STILL NOT READY! Dad and I retreated to the lunch buffet, after which we were finally able to go upstairs and take a nap! The rest of Saturday was fairly uneventful, I woke up in time for dinner at the hotel's Cajun restaurant (at which I ended up with both a steak and duck breast through waiter error...) and went to bed really early after such an early day.
Sunday, April 12
Happy Easter! ...actually, I forgot it was Easter Sunday until mid-afternoon, oops... I spent most of my earlier day out in the sun by the pool that was right out front of our building (WHICH HAD A BAR BUILT INTO IT :D). Dad and I went out to the resort's spa at 2:00 or so and had a pretty good time messing around with the various weird jets and showers and saunas. I suspect most of their circulation treatments and whatever are just BS, but it was still fun, haha xD Also I saw a tiny little lizard the size of my pinky finger while we were in there! Aaah! Dad booked our trips to Chichen-Itza and for snorkelling for later in the week. We went to a beach barbecue that night, with live entertainment, and sat next to some uptight non-drinking vegetarians from Colorado. WOO! I spent some time just hanging around playing DS in areas where people would bring me drinks but got tired pretty quickly and went to bed. :D
Monday, April 13
I decided to spend the day on the beach since I hadn't been out there nearly enough yet. The beach out front was absolutely gorgeous, with lots of rocks and palm trees and the bluest water you could imagine. I floated around in the waves for at least an hour or two, really relaxing at the time but the later sunburn would instill some regret in my heart. Q.Q' This afternoon I started getting used to people asking me if I wanted drinks all the time. ;D Dad and I went to the Mexican restaurant that night, which was, oddly enough, not that good in my opinion! The resort's entertainment crew was doing the Lion King that night, so I hung around for that--it was kind of incoherent as far as plot goes but the music, dancing, and costumes were all very good. Overall pretty fun! :D
Tuesday, April 14
Dad and I got up early that day to go to Chichen-Itza. Much to my dismay, I discovered that my eyes had swollen up from the amount of sun I'd gotten on my face. x_x I got my shit together anyway and we boarded the tour bus. Our guide, a Mayan dude named Emilio Salazar who had reportedly been doing tours of Chichen-Itza for about 30 years, filled us in on some details of Mayan history on the ~2.5 hour drive there. I once again saw more poor people villages and the like than I'd ever seen before. Also I saw a parrot or something in a tree on the way! :D
We got to Chichen-Itza (
http://www.chichenitza.com/) and I basically spent all day pooping myself over how cool it was. There were more ruins there than I had imagined, and it was just the best. I kind of can't even say how awesome the ruins were--suffice it to say I took more pictures of this area than of anything else on the whole trip. My favorite ruins in particular were the Castle, of course, the ball court, the sacrificial well, and the wall covered in skulls.
Another notable thing about Chichen-Itza was the sheer number of people peddling their wares around the area. I bought some things and discovered that you really do have to haggle the hell out of the sellers there o_o I was a bit shy for it, I think... and made my dad do most of it, haha... I got myself a necklace with the aztec calendar, a ridiculously tacky porcelain skull, and a bunch of fake sacrificial daggers for myself and the roomies. :D One of the daggers met misfortune directly after purchase, much to my dismay.. but the break was pretty clean and we decided a little glue would fix it up later. ^^;
After we finished up at Chichen-Itza (we did not have enough time but what can you do?) the tour took us to an ecological park called Ik-Kil for lunch and a quick swim in a beautiful cenote, or sinkhole. (
http://www.wohlmut.com/Maya/blue_cenote.htm) The cenote was absolutely stunning, I was really surprised at how awesome it really was. I did their high-jump two times, and the water was just the right temperature. I wished we could have stayed here longer too but alas, our stop here was fairly brief. We got back on the bus and headed back to the Sirenis, arriving home around about 6:00. Dad and I had dinner at the Mexican restaurant (oddly enough, probably my least favorite), after which I wrote some post cards (which still haven't arrived...), drank some tequila in the common areas, and went to bed.
Wednesday, April 15
My eyes had gone down a bit today, which is good, because Dad and I decided to take a bus into Playa del Carmen! We got up early enough for breakfast and headed out to the street. The Mexican buses seemed really sketchy--you pretty much just stand on the street and wait for one to come by, then jump in--but it turns out they're really easy to use and a lot faster than the buses I was used to because they're more like vans and only stop when somebody inside wants to, if they're full. We got to Playa del Carmen a lot faster than we'd expected and went down to their 5th Avenue for some shopping. My dad is pretty bad at shopping, so it was a bit difficult to go about things like I'd like, but it was still really fun to see a city that was made up of mostly Mexican people and not all rich whities hanging around. ;D I got to use my Spanish for real a bit too, which was fun. We picked up presents for Kristin, Theresa, my mom, Brendan, and some others, then I got sidetracked in a few Mexican art/kitsch stores <3 We stopped for a beer/diet pepsi at a bar on the beach. I think Playa del Carmen actually had a nicer beach than our resort--the rocks at the Sirenis beach are very beautiful, but make for some scary swimming! Dad and I thought we might like to stay at a smaller place in Playa del Carmen next time we visit the area.
After Dad couldn't take the shopping any more, I decided I wanted to spend some more serious time on the beach, and that's what I did! After a few hours of alternating swimming and hanging out on the beach and a quick trip to the hotel's Lazy River, Dad and I went to the Brazilian restaurant for dinner. It was an interesting experience, the waiters brought out seven skewers of different kinds of meat. Weeeeird. :D After dinner, I clocked a little internet time, then Dad and I decided to hit the traditional Mexican dance show at the arena. xD It was totally touristy and all, but still totally fun--most notably there was a dude who did a lasso routine who was totally awesome. Dad went to bed, I went out on my normal night rounds, and so ended the day!
Thursday, April 14
Dad and I got up early again to go snorkelling! We had selected a trip that would take us to 3 locations--first another cenote, then a cave, then the ocean. Dumbly enough, I didn't think of asking for prescription goggles so I had a bit of trouble seeing at the first 2 places we went--the goggles and water do magnify things quite a bit but it's still hard for me to make out details like I wanted. The dude we went with, a nice man named Sevino (or Patrick Starfish, as he told us to call him if we forgot his name xD), did manage to scrounge me up a pair of the prescription goggles before we went to the ocean, which was great because I think it would have been bad to lose my glasses there!
The cenote we went to first was not quite the magical experience of the previous one we'd visited, but it was better for snorkelling and quite lovely. There was green algae all over the bottom, and little catfish swimming all over. This one had a zipline and high jump, both of which I did, of course! There was one girl with the group who whined incessantly and wouldn't go in the omg horribly cold water, and one girl who kept trying to do the high jump and getting scared, both of which I wanted to punt... but in the end I just did both and enjoyed myself despite how ridiculous it is to shriek about being grossed out by fish when you're snorkeling. Ugh. Dad tried the zipline and high jump too, which was pretty funny! (got a picture of that somewhere, haha)
Next, we went to the cave section, which was my absolute favorite. Right at the entrance we saw this beautiful bird that Sevino called a mot-mot (
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d5/Blue-crowned_Motmot_back_2.jpg/400px-Blue-crowned_Motmot_back_2.jpg), which I thought was exciting. The inside of the cave was lovely, with huge rocks everywhere. It was way deeper than I'd expected, and really clear. The cave also had catfish and not many other fish but the crevices and whatnot were really fascinating and lovely. We saw a few notable rock formations, one in the shape of a skull and one in the shape of a panther. Dad and I got our pictures taken by some really fantastic stalactites/stalagmites by their photographer guy, and then we decided to swim this awesome little tunnel thing with Sevino. It was still mostly open on top of the passage but the ceiling was so low through this channel that if you tried to lift your head out of the water at all, you'd hit it on rocks! There were more lovely rock formations and mysterious deep areas at the end, and then the whiny girl started whining about being cold so we went back for lunch. xD
Gonna stop typing for now, more to come ;D