June in Cancun

It has taken me nearly a week to finish this post.

I blame it on 3 things:

- slow internet that takes me about 10x longer to upload pictures

- the 5 or so transcription assignments that were awaiting me when I returned from Mexico

- and, of course, 3 children

Enough said.

But now that I have a spare moment, I can sit an reminisce about a week when there was no transcription or children or laundry or cooking or cleaning...

We arrived in Cancun to a rainy and muggy afternoon. The forecast for our first couple of days looked pretty grim. This is what we woke up to on our first morning:

But the rain stopped and we were still able to enjoy the day (sans sun). It was plenty warm enough to lounge on the beach and swim in the warm turquoise Caribbean Sea.

And if I was discouraged about a bit of cloudy weather, I needn't have been. The sun came out for the rest of the week and more than made up for that first cloudy day. By Thursday we were both sunburnt and wishing for a bit of relief from the heat...

We stayed in a beautiful resort called The Royal Sands in the hotel zone of Cancun. It was everything you imagine a tropical resort would look like...

We took a shuttle one day to a "sister" resort near Playa Del Carmen. The hotel was stunning and even nicer than our own, but we agreed that we liked the ocean area at our hotel better - where we had bigger (funner) waves and a nicer sandy ocean bottom.

I think my favourite part of our day at that resort was the hammocks. I need to get me one of these...

(this pale-skinned photo has been brought to you by Winter)

On Wednesday we spent about 5 hours right here...

We were very careful about staying in the shade and re-applying sunscreen since we were in and out of the ocean a lot that day, but my pale winter skin just couldn't handle all those UV rays and I was B-U-R-N-T that night. Erik was too.

ouch.

The next day we had a snorkelling trip planned. I wasn't too keen on having the sun beat on my back and legs for 2 hours, so I bought myself a water shirt and put on the longest pair of shorts I had along. Erik enjoyed making fun of me because as we were swimming I kept my hands over my forehead to keep the sun from burning it even more. I guess the image of me swimming fully-clothed and keeping my hands over my head was pretty humorous.

I decided it was best if we didn't take too many pictures of me that day.

A few photos I took while walking down the Cancun hotel strip...

Erik and I walked to this flea market one afternoon and quickly discovered that we really hated the whole bartering scene. I'm not sure how this push-me-into-your-store technique is really working for them. The more pushy they were, the less I wanted to buy something. In the end, we shamelessly bought all our souvenirs at the mall :) The experience was not quite as authentic and the items were probably slightly over-priced, but the ability to take my time and peruse the aisles uninterrupted was worth it!

Erik and I really enjoyed the culture of Mexico, as it reminded us so much of Peru (where we spent 4 months with a missions team before we had kids). The bit of Spanish that was logged away in our memory banks bubbled up to the surface and it was nice to be able to speak to the locals in their language, even though they could all switch easily over to English. One weird and little-known fact about me is that, for some reason, I take on other people's accents very quickly. Last year when we went to Atlanta, I was speaking like a full-on southern belle by the time we came home. I almost couldn't help it. So, after about 3 days in Mexico, I found it happening again. But, it wasn't that I was suddenly speaking Spanish without thinking, it was that I was speaking English with a Spanish accent.

Imagine Pedro on "Napoleon Dynamite". But me talking like that.

Without even meaning to.

Yes. I am officially weird.

We came across these guys digging up sea turtle eggs just down the beach from our hotel. The locals will watch for sea turtles that are laying and once the eggs are all laid and the mother has returned to the ocean, they'll dig them up and re-bury them in a fenced-in area to keep them protected until they hatch.

It's hard to tell, but there's actually a ton more of them still buried in the deep hole.

This area is protecting several mounds of eggs - each "set" (batch? litter??) was over 100 eggs! That's a whole lot of baby sea turtles incubating under the sand...

Overall, we had a great vacation. Great people, great location, great weather and fantastic food! (BTW - I think my homemade salsa and guacamole is pretty close to the authentic Mexican stuff since we watched them prepare it for us at our table, but I did get some ideas to make a few slight improvements!)

It was good for Erik and I to get away - just the 2 of us. Something about shared experiences really does draw you closer together. After nearly 10 years of marriage, I'm happy to report that Erik and I are still best friends. We had some good laughs during the week.

Especially after "mutual sunburn day".

Ahhhh.... good-bye Mexico.