10/01/08- Just bought the plane tickets to go to Cancun, Mexico. It was a spur of the moment idea and a few of our friends are joining us. We leave in less than 10 days.
10/11/08- We arrived at the airport ready for our 1:25am flight. The overnight flights were pretty smooth and our layover in Mexico City was not bad either. We zipped through customs without a line and continued on.
We landed in Cancun around 10:30am, grabbed our bags and took the shuttle bus to our hotel (Beachscape Kin Ha Villas). All was going very well until we tried to check in. We didn't mention to the hotel that we had 2 more people staying with us and when they saw our friends they immediately asked questions. We tried to act coy about it but they insisted we leave their bags at the front desk until they are ready to leave. Finally we had to just pay the $35 per person per night rate charge for them so we can all stay comfortably there without ticking off management.
The room was very nice. Full kitchen, living room, balcony and right off the white sands beach. We quickly got in our swimwear and jumped in the water.
After about a few hours of swimming and laying on the beach (which included ordering drinks beach-side), we got dressed and headed for downtown Cancun for some food. We took the bus which took around 15 minutes and found a few souvenir shops by the stop. One of the store owners was pretty persistant on helping us. He asked us all sorts of questions on what we were looking for. My friend Joe simply stated we were all looking for food and sure enough he was on his way down the road trying to show us his cousins restaurant down the street. We followed him for a bit through the dark streets and started to be concerned he was leading us astray when finally he pointed across the street to a well lit place. We thanked him and soon sat down to eat.
We ordered our food (all in Spanish by the way), the waitress didn't even speak English at all. One of the things we ordered turned out to be Octopus. I asked in my best Spanish if we could take it back and not be charged due to an error in ordering. She reluctantly agreed but asked if we could replace it. We did so with drinks. A huge Martini and Pina Colada.
We ventured back to the hotel and went back to the beach for a spell before calling it a night. We had an early wake up the next day for our trip to Chichen Itza temples.
10/12/08- We got up early, headed out to the front of the hotel and waiting for our pickup for our day trip to the old Mayan temples. After a bit of waiting I decided to call the tour company and found out that they didn't even have us confirmed on their reservation. The guy on the phone was pretty much no help at all telling me there is nothing he could do because the tour was already full. After persisting a bit on my part he finally told me he'll call to see if there were any cancellations. We went back to the hotel room for an hour of sleep before getting the call that there were indeed 4 cancellations and we were able to make the tour.
It took 2 1/2 hours to get there and we stopped at this souvenir shop first. We bought a few items and continued on to this hotel that is located just outside the Chichen Itza entrance. Speaking of Chichen Itza, we had so much fun with that name all day. We were literally calling it chicken pizza. We were all joking about how we spent good money on this tour and never got the chicken pizza.
Anyhow, at the hotel they served us an awesome buffet of food and had a little dance for us as we ate. Very nice. And just when lunch was done and we were ready for our tour of the temples it starts to pour down rain. We quickly buy some ponchos for $3.00 each and continued on the tour. We walked around the grounds for around an hour as the rain slowly dwindled down but as soon as we were done and picture time came it poured again. I was still able to get in a few good ones.
We made it back to the hotel, spent some more time at the beach and crashed for the night.
10/13/08- Our 3rd day here. Time has flown by very fast. We started off to the pier to take our jet ski tour but the rains cancelled it for the day. We prepaid to and they couldn't refund us since we bought from another website. I will just have to settle that issue later. We wound up at the mall where we bought a few more souvenirs and ate lunch there. Nothing much to talk about here though. Fast forward to the evening. We took a taxi to the Coco Bongo club and had a blast. The drinks were included in the cover charge (and I mean all night long) and it lasted to around 3am. Great shows (I think) and an awesome time. As we left the taxi driver wanted to charge us $15 even though it was just down the street. After bartering got us no where seeing as we were all drunk I reluctantly agreed.
10/14/08- Woke up around 11am and got our bags packed for the trip home. Our flight doesn't leave until 4:25pm so we had some time to kill. We ventured off to a nearby shop and grabbed some last minute souvenirs. Funny how many shops here have free displays of tequila as you enter.
We flew back hitting a bit of turbulence along the way but otherwise uneventful, watched "Hancock" on the tv screen and made it back to our house around 12 midnight.
END OF BLOG
