Viva Mexico

Thought I’d write a quick blog about our recent trip to Cozumel and Playa del Carmen.

Months ago, I bought a Living Social deal for a black car service (for those of you who don’t know what Living Social is, it’s a website that sells one coupon a day for a city, so for example, the day I bought the black car service, I got a $75 gift card for $30). After 5 messages to Crown Black Car Service, nobody would return my call! Not a good sign for someone who you’re relying on to pick you up on time. Finally I got through (at 10:00 PM) and made my reservation. Well first the guy was late… so I called… nothing. He FINALLY shows up and I kid you not, 6 inch spiked white hair driving a crappy car (don’t known what it was, need to defer to Henry) that has been cheaply painted black maybe with a rattle can. This was definitely not the black town car I was expectings wias . I look and Henry and Henry looks at me and we shrug and I get in the car. A very quick 30 minutes later (dangerously quick) we’re at the airport. Here’s a link to the company’s website and you can see why it was an interesting start to our vacation. (their websites down right now, surprise surprise, so that link may not work)

Boarded our red eye flight on time to Atlanta and it went by pretty quickly since Henry and I were both half asleep (except for the terrible turbulence, mom you would not have been happy!) Made it to Atlanta and boarded our flight to Cancun with no difficulty.

Once we arrived in Cancun, we took a private shuttle to the Playa del Carmen pier where we boarded the ferry for Cozumel. This is the same ferry I took back in September and I should have learned my lesson. I felt like we were on the TV intro to Gilligan’s Island (…the tiny ship was tossed, if not for the courage of the fearless crew [Henry], the minnow would be lost!) Sorry, I digress. After some definite seasickness, we made it to Cozumel and checked into our ok hotel.

The first few days we relaxed and enjoyed the beach, drank our nasty all inclusive drinks and our nasty all inclusive buffet food. Really, the only redeeming quality was the coconut ice cream! We did go snorkeling one afternoon. A small (and somewhat sketchy) glass bottom boat pulled up at our dock to get us. Now when you think glass bottom boat, that sounds neat and fancy! NO! It was a crappy little boat with a 24 x 36” hole cut in the bottom and retrofitted with plexi glass. Fine for us, but I’m sure the immensely rotund family we went with (who didn’t snorkel) was pretty disappointed! On that snorkel trip we first went to a place where they had HUGE starfish. They were pretty cool and we got to pick them up and play with them. Next we went to Playacar, a famous reef. There we saw a school of 4 foot long barracudas. That was really neat. You know they always tell you to take off rings and jewelry and such since barracudas go after shiny things, but I always figured it didn’t apply to me. Nobody (except Henry) looks anywhere near attractive in a snorkel mask (see exhibit a below), so I of course left my cute accessories on. I mean what if I see a very attractive mer-man? Anyways, next time I'll take them off after I saw them going for a dive watch our guide dropped. I didn’t get attacked by a barracuda though, just in case you were worried.

After three nights on Cozumel, we were definitely ready to take the ferry back to Playa del Carmen. We spent three nights at the Royal there and it was superb. Great staff, no kids and amazing suites. The beach wasn’t as good, but it did have a good pool. Great people watching too! There was even a beach butler that pushed around a cart with magazines, books and sunscreen! Did more chilling by the pool and did a day excursion to Tulum and snorkeling at Akumel. Akumel is where the sea turtles nest. Although it wasn’t nesting season, we did see probably half a dozen turtles snorkeling and that was really cool!

That was our trip in a nutshell. I intended it to be shorter than that, but with nothing to do on a Saturday night, maybe I got a little carried away!