Mexico

This month we took a week long vacation to Mexico!  For awhile we've been wanting to visit a Spanish speaking country so the kids could show off their skillz, so this was it.  We flew from Dalls to Cancun, rented a car there, and spent most of the week in Tulum, a town about 90 miles south of Cancun.  The trip was not exactly what we'd hoped or expected, but it was still fun.

The unexpected and not so great:
1.  Sargassum.  Sargassum is a sea grass that grows out in the Atlantic and occasionally washes ashore in the Caribbean.  In the last few years, it's been increasing quite a bit.  Unfortunately, we got to the Yucatan Peninsula in the middle of a big wave of Sargassum, which meant that every beach was covered in it (piled 3 feet high, 8 feet wide, stretching from Cancun down to Belize), and the Caribbean was thick with it.  When it gets on the beach it rots and stinks, and it turns the water brown.  So, we spent no time on the beach at all.  This was a pretty big disappointment, especially for me.
2.  Issues with authority figures.  One day we decided to go see some ruins and visit a lagoon (since it would be free from sargassum).  When we got there, there were three men standing in the parking lot telling us that the place was closed because of a fire.  They weren't wearing uniforms or anything identifying themselves.  They just wouldn't let us in.  Maybe there was a fire, maybe there wasn't.  We don't know.  But we didn't see the ruins or the lagoon.  At the grocery store one day Nathan laid a 500 peso note on the cashier's counter.  When he looked away she exchanged it for a 100 peso note and pretended like it had always been 100.  And on the last evening we were there we ate at a restaurant by the beach, parking on the street (along with hundreds of other cars).  Near the end of the meal the server told us the police were doing something with our car.  When Nathan got out there, they had our rental car hooked up to a tow truck and said that unless we paid 2500 pesos, they'd tow it.  The manager of the restaurant came out and helped translate, even telling Nathan that usually the police checked with her first to make sure the car didn't belong to a customer.  Oh well, at least we didn't get our car towed.

The unexpected and pretty cool:
1.  Cenotes.  Cenotes are big sink holes that have filled with water that's been filtered through limestone.  The water is crystal clear and the cenotes are gorgeous.  There are about 6000 in Mexico, all different and all gorgeous.  Some of them include underground/underwater caves in which people scuba dive, but we didn't go to any of those.  But when we realized the beaches wouldn't work, cenotes became our go-to entertainment.  They were great fun!
2.  The lagoon.  When we couldn't go to the planned lagoon, we ended up finding a smaller one.  It was gorgeous (I finally got my blue water).  The sand was so fine it was like mud, which was a little weird, and it smelled like sulpher, but it was so pretty.  I loved it.
3.  The pool at our condo.  Our condo was very nice and pretty much as it had been pictured on Airbnb, and the best thing about it was the pool.  Although it was for everyone in the condo complex, we always had it all to ourselves.  We swam every day (sometimes twice or three times) and the kids had tons of fun there.
4.  Family movie night every night.  Every night we watched a movie together and it was tons of fun.  We had some winners (Back to the Future, Fantastic Mr. Fox) and some losers (Back to the Future II, Ghostbusters), and some in between, but always a good time.
5.  The fruit.  Oh my goodness, it was delicious.
6.  Z's Birthday.  The boy turned 12 while we were there.  We had gelato for his birthday treat and he got a sombrero for his present (which is exactly what he wanted!).
7.  Animal sightings.  We saw many beautiful and unique animals including a capybara(!), something we called a Mexican raccoon (we need to look that one up), iguanas, turtles, fish, etc.
8.  The kids speaking Spanish.  The kids were our translators and they were terrific!  It was so much fun to watch them use their Spanish and use it so well.  It was great for them to experience Spanish as a regular language for regular people, instead of something they just do at school.  It all made me wish I'd gone to a Spanish immersion school!

The "Mexican raccoons"

The first cenote we visited.  It was pretty small but lots of fun.  You could jump from two different places or take the zip wire and jump from it.

Eden was a champion jumper!

Another cenote.  This one was bigger and had more little creatures in it, but the kids didn't think the jumps were as good.

This was a little local taco place we found.  The tacos were excellent!

We found a little clean section of beach one night.  The water was still brown and a little stinky, but we got in a little sand time, which was nice.

The lagoon.

Another cenote.

Little fish swam all around you and would nibble on your feet if you sat still enough.

This may sound a little prejudiced, but Mexico has the grossest flavors for their chips!  Z is eating some horribly flavored chips.  Bleh.

Z's birthday.

Our dinner on the beach (before our encounter with the police and the tow truck)

A sand castle made with sargassum.

The pool at our condo.