Now that she is feeling great she wants to go and do everything. Now we have...at least for a while. We have abandoned Brandon enough for a few months. With that said, we had a great time in Cancun. Where to start?
Vivian left on Wed. the 28th and met me in Atalanta. We got up early the next morning and caught a free flight to Cancun. We were supposed to meet her sister LeAnn and her Brother Tom at the Cancun airport along with LeAnn's husband John. They all speak Spanish so no big deal. Of course you know of the Halgren curse. They are always late. Apparently there was a huge snow storm Denver (14 inches) John and LeAnn got to the Denver airport with just enough time to get on the plane. Unfortunately, they left their passports in the car. By the time John ran to the car and got them, the plane left with only Uncle Tom on board. John and LeAnn then had to decide do we really want to go or stay. They decided to go and paid walk up fares on a different airline which cost them a fortune. Both planes were delayed for de-icing. Uncle Tom arrived at about 6:00p.m. and John and LeAnn arrived about 12:30 a.m. The resort we stayed at was about an hour and a half from the airport. Vivian and I arranged for a van to take us, $100. Uncle Tom caught a taxi, $120 bucks. John and Leann caught the last bus south, $150. The story = priceless.
We hired an LDS tour guide on Friday morning to take us to the ruins at Chitza-Nitza (forgive the spelling) and then he suggested we go to Ek Balam. It was truly an amazing visit. We read passages from the Book of Mormon as we visited the sights and talked about the way these apostates worshipped and lived. It was fascinating. Some of the stuff we will have to share in person but I came away with a whole different picture in my mind of the Lamanites and Nephites 300 years after Christ's visit to the Americas.
On Saturday we went swimming and snorkeling at Turtle Bay and we saw several sea turtles a few sting rays, a sea snake, and lots of fish and coral. The water was clear and warm and we had a great time. In the evenings the resort served dinner at a central dining facility or you could make reservations at one of 4 different specialty restaurants. That first night together we at at the Asian restaurant, the next night at the Brazilian restaurant, the next was the Mexican restaurant and then we went back to the Brazilian restaurant because it was so good. We skipped the Italian place. Every evening they had some kind of program but we only went once to see the fire dancers. They were OK but not nearly as good as the PCC. We played a lot of games and just sat around in the evenings and talked.
Tom had to go home a few days before the rest of us so on Monday we went to the ruins at Tulum then went out to the forest and saw some spider monkeys and a Howler monkey. We saw a Cenote (a sink hole) that the Lamanites had used to bury some of their dead. They had skulls on a shelf down inside the hole. I played baseball with some Mayan kids about 10 years old. They had a rotted ball and some ratty gloves and they all looked at me like I was Nolan Ryan. Sunday we tried to go to church and we caught a taxi to get there. No one was at the building and when we asked our guide about it later he said, "oh yeah, it was stake conference."
We rented a car and drove all over on Tuesday and Wednesday. We went to the ruins at Coba and were able to climb the Yucatan's tallest pyramid. It had been closed for quite a while and we were lucky to be there on a day when it was open for tourists. You got there by renting bikes and riding through this rain (literally) forest. We were drenched. We saw the Stella (rock) from which they get the Mayan ca lander projection that everything ends in Dec 2012. I was not impressed. Who's going to believe a bunch of apostates anyway.
On our way to Coba we saw this big lake and a small rickety boardwalk that went out 30 yards or so. Our guide said, "hey, do you want to see some crocodiles?" Well who doesn't want to stand on a rickety pier in a jungle and see a wild crocodile? So off we went and paid this guy 10 pesos to stand on his dock. He tapped the edges with a stick and sure enough 3 big crocodiles came swimming up. Then he started feeding them chicken and beef on the stick. They came way up out of the water to eat. In fact they were higher up out of the water than the Pier so Vivian made her way back to the car. We saw several others hiding in the grassy areas. It was way cool. We needed to snorkel one last time before we came home and it was the best hour of snorkeling ever. We saw a whole weeks worth of sea life in an hour. All in all, it was a fantastic trip. We missed you all and I hope we can all go together sometime. Would one of you please become independently wealthy so all of us can leech off of you for trips like this?
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