CanCun!

For the first time since becoming parents, Wayne and I took a vacation just the two of us. It's the first time EVER that Wayne has been away from the girls overnight for more than two nights in a row. It's the first time either of us have been away from them overnight without it being a business trip.


While we love them dearly, we needed a break. It was so nice to be able to sleep all night through, without having one ear being "on call" for cries or calls in the night. And we took a nap almost every single day, whenever the hell we wanted. Although I was irritated as all could be when our nap one day was interrupted by a phone call from the hotel informing of us of some special promotion we could get, a free steak or lobster dinner or something. I'm assuming there was some catch to it, like we would have to go listen to a timeshare presentation or something. All I knew was, this was my one time to nap and get up when I was good and ready, and instead I got woken up by a phone call. Needless to say, I wasn't polite, and they never called us again.


Unfortunately the weather didn't cooperate terribly well; it was sunny only one day, otherwise it was cloudy and it rained two of the four days we were there. But even when it rained, it was a WARM rain, and the breeze was always warm. I'm sure the locals thought we were all crazy, sitting on the beach in our swimwear, when they were all wearing long pants and sweatshirts.


My trip, however, was definitely colored by my experience in Honduras in 2002, in which I saw the abject poverty that many of these Latin American people live in. One day we took a tour bus to see Tulum and Xel Ha -- a normally spendy tour that we got for free through a promotion (but that's another story). As we were being driven back in the nice air-conditioned tour bus, we saw a lot of people walking across a pedestrian bridge over the highway, obviously all just getting off a public bus from a day's work in the city. Sure enough, just down a ways you could see the street where most of these people live, and I use the term "street" in the crudest fashion -- it was simply a path down which to travel. You could see the braced up walls, the "roofs" made of blue tarp, the cardboard resting along the side of the homes. These were the landscapers, the bellhops, the housekeepers, the servers working in those luxurious hotels that line the coast living in these hovels.


I can't imagine what it would be like to get a glimpse of how some people live, with running water, electricity, air conditioning, strong walls and a roof over your head, only to have to take a bus back to your own abode in which you have none of these things. It's amazing there hasn't been more labor rebellions in Mexico, but I think they are so beaten down they can't afford not to work, and for every person who has a job there are five more in line, waiting for any opening, ready to work under any conditions.


Our hotel was all inclusive, and everything we read said that the gratuity was included. I think they say that because people get tired of spending $100 or more per vacation tipping people, but I can guarantee you, if gratuity was included in our bill, it was not making it down to the people actually doing the work. So we tipped well everywhere we went -- the bellhops, the housekeeper, the servers at the restaurants.


I had forgotten that Hurricane Wilma had come through Cancun in October 2005 -- you would hardly be able to tell by looking at it today. Only a few resorts were still under construction, some were re-opened 3 months after the hurricane. We were told that the beaches had been entirely washed away, all you could see was the large rocks that are the actual landscape itself. The government spent untold money bringing beautiful sand in again and rebuilding the beaches back to their former glory. Like I said, you could hardly tell they had been decimated.


A couple of people told us about a Sheraton resort that had opened in August 2005, only to be brought all the way down to the ground by Wilma 3 months later. Only two resorts actually went down in the hurricane, the rest were damaged but mostly intact. Theirs had gone down entirely, and was still being re-built. Ugh.


I mentioned Tulum and Xel Ha -- I'll go back and tell you what those are. Tulum is a Mayan ruin south of Cancun by about a 1 hr 40 min drive (or 3 hours if you take a tour bus). They did not allow people to walk on the structures anymore, since some people were tapping off bits of the stone to bring back home w/them as souvenirs, and they even found graffiti on these beautiful buildings. The Mayan people were incredibly smart, mastering mathematics, astrology and creating a calendar based on the soltices and equinoxes that equaled 364.3 days (thus not needing a "Leap Day" every fourth year). Pretty smart, eh??


We then went to Xel Ha, touted as a natural aquarium. It's an inlet from the ocean that's quite craggy and full of caves. Because of this, sealife is naturally attracted to it, so you can snorkel to see the beautiful fish that you normally have to go out into the open ocean to see. They also have underwater caves that you can scuba dive in, if you can stand the thought of rock above your head instead of open water. They left as much of the natural landscape in place as possible, but created trails, shops, little restaurants and places to get scuba gear, towels, life jackets, etc, all around this inlet.


I was really interested in trying snorkeling. I'm not very comfortable in or on water, but wanted to give this a try and see what I thought. It had been cloudy most of the morning tour at Tulum, and as we got to Xel Ha it started to clear. We hadn't eaten yet, though, so we sat down to get a little something to eat, and that was it for the sun. The clouds came back over and it began to rain. Then it got cool enough that even looking at the water (which now appeared a deep blue, as it was reflecting the sky) made me feel cold. It was also quite windy, so I was more than happy to skip it under those conditions. Yikes!