YUCATAN Peninsula, a pretty little playground:
Tulum, Playa del Carmen and Isla Mujeres.
Our gang of four glided seamlessly in a stream of sweat from Belize in to Mexico by means of a sweltering boat ride and a stuffy bus. We trekked a few blocks with the sun beating down, cursing the shuttle that wouldn’t drop us directly to our nearby hotel. When we eventually arrived we found ourselves standing in the courtyard staring longingly at the hot, green, murky pool. Whyyyyyy!?
We found a funky little cushioned beach bar and had sunset drinks. With ice cold beers in hand, nestled in the fluffy white powder sand and surrounded by the impossibly perfect aqua blue ocean we once again toasted our good fortune to be on this holiday together.
Amber and I enjoyed the rare opportunity to take pics together! We kept declaring we would get a really good one worth keeping… and while we didn’t necessarily get any brilliant photos we took plenty of half decent ones for the record book. Counting down to the 30th, “let’s get a good pic for Mum”.
What else to do in one of the world’s most beautiful coastal regions but to enjoy the beach and climb the odd palm tree. We attempted several individual, couple, and group photos but alas, none of us are models and we missed the mark. Perfect postcard opportunity up for grabs but we let it slip through our fingers!
Despite technically now being on mainland Mexico Amber was still settled comfortably in island mode - taking a sunshine nap under a palm tree after eating fresh ceviche. This one knows how to relax.
With Amy’s stuffy old Spanish coming back to life and a few poorly placed words of my new Spanish we managed to get ourselves transported around more or less as we wanted. Ali slowly developed a special technique of speaking Spanish which involved adding “o” to the end of all English words. It’s a surprisingly entertaining technique that on one hand had us in fits of laughter at times but on the other hand it certainly had its limits.
On our grand tourist circuit we continued north without crossing paths with too much culture, history or local settlements. It’s a tourist trail for fly-by tourists and has been for a long time so we embraced it for what it was and enjoyed the holiday. One amazing natural thing we saw was El Gran Cenote.
A crispy cold, fresh, clear as glass, series of underwater caves near Tulum.
We swam around the caves for a long time with the water giving us goose bumps and soothing our sunburnt skin. We had a couple of snorkel masks and a pair of goggles and saw other groups scuba diving below us.
What a beautiful place! We stayed until we were shivering, wondering if we would ever warm up, then just moments later we were sweating the whole way home in the taxi wondering if we would ever cool down again.
We kept moving north to Playa del Carmen, a well renowned package-holiday destination for US tourists. As luck would have it (for Amber and I), Ali and Amy went ahead on an earlier bus and did the leg work to find hotels. To my delight I arrived in Playa del Carmen later that day to find Amy had scored us a cheap hotel room to share, while Amber and Ali went a little upscale to a different place with a glorious swimming pool. Splendid work team!
Our time in Playa was a little bit lazy and relaxing. Some of us spent time wallowing in the pool and searching for the ultimate taco stand while others took it in turns fighting off tummy bugs in bed for a couple of days.
When our awesome foursome was back in peak condition we jumped on the ferry to Isla Mujeres for the birthday portion of the trip! Well the whole trip was partly in tribute to the twins turning 30 but this is the island where it came together!
The girls trip continues! In hindsight this is the last civilised phase in our travel lives (for Amy and I) before we ended up being dirty surf rats back on the west coast. Amy - how very nice we once looked!
Amy and I kicked back with cold beers in hand enjoying the sunset while we let Amber and Ali take it in turns doing experimental hair dos on us.
I was a little dubious at some of the odd things the girls were hanging out to try but with the end result… well it was actually pretty cool what they could do!
Clever young ladies… Amber, maybe grandma was right when she used to say you should be a hairdresser haha! Anyway, career discussion aside we continued to sail through our Caribbean days enjoying each other’s company and living the island life.
One incredible experience we all shared was diving with whale sharks one day! We jumped on and off the boat swimming behind the sharks until nobody could swim anymore and the giants meandered out of our reach in to the big deep blue.
The last time we jumped off the boat we swam so hard with such focus that when we stopped to look around with an excited craze in our eyes, we realised the boat had gone. It had left us to drop other people at a different shark, and the other swimmers had fallen behind. Just us.
Wow, drifting way out in this huge ocean with a couple of cruising giants disappearing in to the distance. A tiny drop in the ocean.
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