Mexico!

I can't quite believe that it's all over already!  Just yesterday morning we were sitting by the pool, soaking up the last of the sunshine, and now we're back in Germany, and it's cold!  At least we have another week off until we're back at school.  For now, here are some photos of our wonderful holiday at the Bahia Principe Coba 5* hotel in Akumal, Mexico.

There are lizards everywhere, some of them are enormous!  There are also things called coatis, which are like lemur/racoon/ant-eater-nose creatures, and things that are a bit like guinea pigs, but bigger.  The birds are beautiful.  I saw a yellow-beaked bird, which I think may have been some sort of toucan.  On our last night there was even a bat flying around us!

We spent most of our days lazing around the pool.  The sun rises at 7am, and sets by 7.30pm, so we were rising with the sun and going straight out to the sun loungers before breakfast.  By 12 it was too hot, and we learnt the hard way that not even the umbrellas or gazebo type shelters were enough to keep the UV rays off of us.  We did get a bit sunburned before we realised what was happening!  The routine worked well for us, and we were in bed by 10.30 most nights.  In between time on the sunloungers, we just ate and ate and ate.  There was a buffet for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and we got to dine in 3 al a carte restaurants per week.  We chose some great restaurants, and one not so good one.  Peruvian was delicious, but our reservation was at 9.30, so we were pretty much asleep in our dinner!  The Italian was the worst.  The food wasn't great, and we had to wait an hour and a half between our soup and main courses, only being offered one drink in between.  Everything else was superb though,  The Mexican restaurant had a mariachi band who serenaded us at the table.  The Brazilian BBQ was incredible.  They come round to the tables with meat impaled on swords and cut you off a bit of meat.  There were 8 different things to try, including the best beef flank I've ever had in my life.  There was also beef steak, beef New York style (completely pink, not a fan), delicious lamb turkey, chicken, pork and chorizo sausage.  You get a card on your table, and they just keep bringing meat until you turn your card to red.  On our last night we ate in Le Gourmet, which was all silver service and champagne. Matt had a dessert that they set on fire (picture at the end).  The best restaurant by far was the Japanese.  We sat around a big flat hot plate and had our dinner cooked in front of us.  There were fire and knife tricks and tricks with the eggs that made our fried rice.  The sushi too was delicious, and the whole experience was fantastic fun.  I tried some food that I never thought I would - eel.  Another night I had cactus salad.  and gigantic shrimp too.  Each of the buffet days were themed - Italian, Gala dinner, Mexican, Canadian, American, Asian.  I guess catering to the mostly Canadian and American guests.  The buffets had a huge selection.  They had an omelette station that I made use of in the morning, and a pasta station too.  There was too much to choose from if anything!  And they were offering tequila at breakfasst (which we dedclined, although we did have Mimosas a few mornings).

From 3.30 onwards, once the sun wasn't so strong, this is how we'd spend our time, in the pool, at the swim up bar drinking Pina Coladas, Margharitas, Mojitos and Mango Tangos.  We bought a waterproof case for Matt's phone, so had an enjoyable few afternoons messing around taking underwater photos.

Scuba diving was probably the most I've ever had to push myself to do something.  I was so far out of my comfort zone, as you can see from the photo below; that's not the face of a happy diver!  This was on the boat before diving, and it was rough going. We were only on board for 5 minutes, but I felt so sea sick!  Even Matt felt unwell, and he is usually fine on boats.  Boats for me are my arch nemesis.  I hate them.

I'd spent the previous afternoon paddling about in the pool with a very chilled, and completely cool guy called Charlie.  I wanted to see if I'd be OK underwater before we spent the money on the actual diving day.  I really enjoyed it, so we booked for the following day.  On the day, we had an hour in the pool learning safety, emergency procedures and being explained in great detail the procedure for the dive.  I was pretty nervous by the time we went to the beach to get into our wet suits and wade to the boat. I thought that the throwing yourself into the sea backwards to get off the boat would be awful, but it wasn't actually too bad, because you don't actually go upside down like I thought.  We then had to swim to the back of the boat, where there was a buoy with a rope attached that you could hold onto all the way 40ft down to the sandy ocean floor.  By this point I was feeling really quite unwell, bobbing about in the waves. It was very odd because I had my regulator in so I could breathe fine, but still found that I was trying to hold my breath every time a wave crashed over me. It's just natural instinct.  I put my head under after having found the rope and went straight into someone's air bubbles, so couldn't see anything.  That was it; panic, head up again, hyperventilating.  Matt says that he started to panic, but saw me panicking and it made him realise that we couldn't both panic, so he was OK.  One of the men on the trip had to come up too because he was in a panic.  I was properly freaking out,and was so close to packing it in.  The thing that stopped me was the thought that if I got out, I would have to sit on the blasted boat for an hour, and diving as it turned out was the lesser of the two evils at the time!

I had trouble with my ears as I went down, going down two feet, then coming up one to balance my ears out.  It took me so long to get down that everyone else had already left for their tour of the reef and I had to catch up with one of the three fantastic instructors who all had to help me at some point during the 45 minute dive.  Pathetic really!  Oh, and then I got cramp in my foot, so had a panic about that too.  Time went very fast under the water, but I'd say it took at least 15, maybe even 20 minutes before I started paying any attention to the coral and fish at all.  I was simply trying to calm down and breathe.  And then it was wonderful!!!  The feeling of being in the cool water surrounded by beautiful bright coral and wonderful exotic fish with just your own thoughts for company is quite exhilarating.  We saw some shoals off fish, and a catfish and puffer fish, as well as many other brightly coloured delights.  No turtle though which was a shame.  

We were surfacing before we knew it.  Matt had to go up faster because he was the first to get down to his air reserve.  I still had a huge amount left - no idea how with all that hyperventilating!  It was quite hard work getting out of all the gear, while clinging to the side of the boat on the choppy water.  I'm actually now feeling a bit queasy just thinking about the boat ride back - so choppy.  It took us a couple of days to recover from the experience!  But what an incredible experience it was. It was terrifying, but I'm thrilled that  I pushed myself to do it.  And yes, I would do it again.  

This is us post-dive, looking quite frankly relieved to be alive!!!

The water looks wonderful here, but the day we came back to the beach there had been a storm out at sea that had washed up a huge amount of sea week.  Teams of workers including 2 tractors were clearing the beach from 8am, and were still at it non-stop when we left at 4!

The second of our action-packed days was a trip to Chichen Itza one of the new wonders of the world.  The coach took 2 hours to get there but we couldn't go all the way to Mexico and miss out on such an archaeological treat.  Our tour guide was great, and kept us entertained on the bus, and around the site which is 23 square km!  We didn't walk all of it because it was very very hot, and so humid.  There are Cenotes (sink holes, directly translates at bat-house) all over the region, connected by underground rivers, which make the air humid - up to 90% humidity in the summer apparently.

Below is the great pyramid of Kulcucan, the most well known image of the site.  The Mayans were big on astronomy and order, and there is a big observatory, where they studied the moon and the constellation Orion - these studies enabled them to align the pyramids 4 corners perfectly to North, South, East and West (it's perfect - we checked on a compass).  There are 91 steps on each side, and one step at the top, adding to 365  - the days of the year.  Many things at the side add to 20, which was the number of days in the Mayan month.  What struck me the most was that they knew to add in a leap year day every 4 years to keep their calendar on track - this was a civilisation that died out in the 1300, and who didn't even have animals to help build these magnificent structures, and they knew about leap years! Incredible.

The site is wonderful - the Mayans loved their sport, and there are 13 pitches including one huge one for a game sort of like basketball, except the winning team got sacrificed to the gods!

The reliefs all around the site, like this one on the games pitch show sacrifice in great detail!  It was a huge honor to be sacrificed.

Below is the observatory.

There are stalls covering every part of the site that doesn't have archaeological ruins on it.  I really loved that.  I do enjoy a market, and a haggle, and I don't get stressed by the constant 'hey lady' of the stall owners trying to entice me over.  Matt isn't a fan, but I can just smile and walk on, feeling no pressure to buy.  We did buy some mugs from the site.  The Day of the Dead is a huge thing in Mexico, so there are skulls everywhere (including carved into the reliefs at the site).

After the park, it was another hour (after some cold water and beers) to visit a Cenote (sink hole) called Zaci.  It was a real surprise - it was stunningly beautiful!  You could walk all the way around - Matt's bit of fear conquering of the holiday) via a narrow ledge, sometimes without a wall!  There were swimmers jumping from the ledge!

We were only there for 30 minutes, and after that went for lunch in a town called valladolid, where we sat at a table with some lovely New Yorkers who were on their honeymoon (they had dated as teenagers, then married other people, and now married each other in their 40s).  We didn't get back to the hotel until 8pm, after our pick up at 7.50am, so it was a long day.  We needed the rest of the holiday to recover!

The gigantic buffet!

A watermelon. These were in new shapes every day!

This was at the Japanese restaurant watching our dinner being cooked.

On Thursday night we attended the Fiesta Mexicana.  There was a big stage set out, with the first 4 rows of seats accompanied by tables. We were at one of these, and had a fantastic meal while we watched a great show.  There were singers, a mariachi band, traditional dancers, Mayan style dancers, knife dances, a lasoo man doing tricks, and fireworks to finish the night.  A really fun evening, topped off with a trip to the casino where I lost all my money, and Matt doubled his, to fund his very expensive spa massage habit!

This was our last night in Mexico at the Le Gourmet restaurant.  We had such a great holiday, and I can't believe we're home already, wearing jumpers and trousers and with the heating on.  It's really cold for late April!  We've still got the rest of the week off, and we've got lots to do such as getting our medicals for China, and closing our extra bank accounts.  For now, we've managed to stay up much later than I thought we would, and it's time for sleep!