Cancun bebe!

We left our kids behind and flew to Cancun to spend a week in the sun.  Despite a few minor hang ups, we had a lot of fun.  We arrived in Cancun on Monday afternoon.  Our friends, Terry and Claire, and their daughter Maddi, were on the same flight as us, and Dave and Elyssa (and their 2 boys) were on a different flight but arrived about the same time.  We made it through customs and after taking a shuttle to the hotel we checked in and were off to find some dinner.  We ate at an Italian restaurant at the hotel, which turned out to be pretty disappointing.  Dave and Elyssa weren't on the shuttle with us, and we hadn't seen them since the airport so we decided to try and find them.  After calling the front desk and asking for their room number, we were told there was no reservation under "Andrus", we got a little suspicious.  After calling a few other hotels, we finally found one with a reservation for Andrus.  Somehow we booked different hotels!!  We weren't able to get a hold of them that night, so Tuesday morning we got up and headed over to their hotel to search for them.  We found them lounging at their amazing pool.  Turns out, their hotel was a lot nicer than ours.  We left them in Paradise, and returned to the rock covered beach at our hotel.  

This is the entrance to our hotel.  It did look pretty cool, but the restaurants weren't good and the service wasn't the best.  (I forgot to mention we couldn't even get into our room for 4 hours after we checked in on Monday.  Our keys wouldn't work and they sent multiple people to fix the door, and kept telling us it was fixed, then finally moved us to a new room 4 hours later.  Ugh!)  Anyway, after we located the Andruses we came back and just hung out by the beach and did a little swimming in the pool. 

Wednesday - We woke up and headed to "Aqua World", a place where you can do all kinds of water stuff.  We decided on parasailing on the sky ride and swimming with dolphins.

We took this boat out a little ways in the ocean and then climbed into the little seat thing and were lifted super high into the air right from the back of the boat.  

Here we are being lifted.  The guy told us the rope from the rope to the thing you're in is 600 feet long!

Look how high we are!!!!  Yikes!

After flying in the sky, we took a taxi to Dolphinarius, which is located inside the water park Wet and Wild.

At Dolphinarius we got suited up and jumped into the pool with the dolphins where we got to.....

Pet dolphins....

Dance with dolphins...

Lay on our stomaches in the water, in superman position, while 2 dolphins put their noses on the bottom of your feet and push you out of the water.....

and get kisses from the dolphins.

We also had passes to the water park so we went on a few slides.

That night we decided to treat ourselves to the greatest steak you'll ever eat at Ruth's Chris Steakhouse.  We all stuffed ourselves way too full, and then topped it off with cheesecake.  Yum!

Thursday - We met up with Andrus' and we all squeezed into a rental suburban and headed to Chichen Itza to see some Mayan ruins.  It was about a 2 hour drive from Cancun.  When we got there we grabbed some lunch before heading out into the sun to melt.  
I had to post this picture because we are in Mexico, eating at a Mexican place, and here's Terry, munching on a hamburger!

And here she is, in all her glory!  This is what we braved the heat to see.  It's pretty amazing though.  Definitely worth the heat.  You used to be able to actually climb up it, but after someone fell off and died, they roped everything off, so you can't anymore.

Here's all of us...  Terry, Claire, Maddi, me, Trent, Elyssa, Tyler, Dave and Josh.

Here's us...

It was like a million degrees, and Elyssa poured water on Josh to cool him off.  He wasn't real happy about it.

Apparently the Mayans played some sort of ball game in this arena.  They had some kind of ball they would throw through this hoop thing on the side of the wall...

And the loser had their head cut off!  

The map showed a "cenote" a little ways from where we were and the guys and Maddi wanted to go see it.  I was very glad I decided to stay back and take a rest on a nice shaded bench when I saw that this is what they hiked to see.  I'm sorry, but that just isn't worth my time in any weather, especially not 102 degrees!!

Couldn't resist taking this pic of Tyler's little bum crack.

On our drive back to Cancun, we stopped at this great little Mexican restaurant in Akumal that was right on the beach.  It was so beautiful and the food was great.

Friday - We decided to do our own thing on Friday, so we rented cars, and Trent and I headed to see some more ruins at Tulum.  On our way, we stopped at the same restaurant in Akumal that we'd eaten at the night before.  

This is the beach right by the restaurant, so pretty!

We made it to Tulum (about and hour and 45 minute drive from Cancun).  This guy was there to greet us..

It's kinda hard to see him cuz he's in the shade, but it's an iguana.  It scared us when we first saw him, but then we saw like 100 more so we got used to them.

Here's Trent in the entrance tunnel to Tulum..

Tulum was not as big and impressive as Chichen Itza, but it was beautiful because it was right on the beach.  The Mayans that settled here had the right idea!  It was way hot, but the breeze from the ocean made it much more bearable.
They had a little path down to the beach right down from the ruins.  Trent wasn't wearing a swimming suit so we didn't go down and cool off, but it sure looked like a good idea.

It was very windy and although I did put on a few pounds this trip, I promise it's mostly the wind blowing my dress that makes me look 200 lbs.

How pretty is that?!  Seriously, that could be a post card.  The sky is so blue and the water is just turquoise and so clear and pretty!

I know it looks like I'm getting my pose on, but really I was just trying to keep my hat from blowing away!

Trent and Terry both read lots about the ruins we went to and the Mayan people that built them and lived there, so I should have let them put the captions on the pics from Tulum and Chichen Itza, cuz I don't really know much about what I was looking at.  They were really cool though.  That night when we got back to Cancun we ate at Bubba Gump Shrimp Co.

Saturday - Trent and I met Dave and Elyssa and their boys in the morning to take a ferry over the Isla Mujeres, a cute little island just off of Cancun.

Ridin the ferry...

When we got the the island we decided to rent a golf cart to get us around. (Sorry we cut your head off in this pic Josh, I'm not very good at the self portrait thing)

Pretty right?!

We went to the turtle farm and there were these cool white turtles.

Then we did a little snorkeling....

How cool do we look!?

Pretty cool!

We bought this new fancy water proof digital camera, and of course the second I stepped into the water and actually needed the under water feature, the battery died!  Elyssa and I also did the zip line thing here at this beach but I didn't get any pictures.  After playing at this beach for a while we went and caught the ferry back to Cancun.  We showered and decided to really try something crazy for our last meal in Mexico, Outback Steakhouse.  Wimpy huh?  It was good though.

Sunday morning we packed our things and shuttled back to the airport.  On our flight to Mexico we had to each fill out immigration forms and were given a little slip that apparently we were supposed to keep for the flight back.  Well, Trent misplaced his, and we had a layover in Mexico City so the lady checking us in at the airport told him she couldn't give him his boarding pass from Mexico City to SLC and that he'd had to find immigration at the Mexico City airport and pay a fee and fill out the form again.  Everyone in the Cancun airport spoke pretty good English, unfortunately, Mexico City was a different city.  We only had about an hour in the Mexico City airport and Trent and I basically spent that hour sprinting through the airport trying to figure out where we were supposed to go.  Everyone we tried to get help from seemed to talk really fast in Spanish to us, then we'd talk slow in English, thinking that would help, but of course it didn't, then they'd point us in the wrong direction.  Finally we made it to the immigration office, filled out a few papers, found the Delta check in desk, got Trent's boarding pass, and were told "you have to be there NOW!".  We made it to the gate and thankfully got on the plane and flew safely back to the US of A.  I'll tell you one thing, having kids to come home to makes coming home from vacation a whole lot easier!  I think I was more excited to see the kids than I was to go to Mexico.  They spent the week in Blanding with grandma and grandpa, Marilyn and her kids were also there all week.  Thank you all so much for keeping them entertained and safe.  I didn't worry about them once.  But I missed them a whole lot.  I enjoyed the sun and sand a lot, but was definitely ready to come home to my babies.