Sunday

We awoke Sunday to a beautiful day in paradise. To say the beds are firm is an understatement, so everyone seemed a little sore from the night. This was the first time we had been in the casa during daylight and the view was breathtaking. That's the view from our 3rd story pool (not a hot tub!). We started the day with a wonderful breakfast of scrambled eggs on the balcony. The eggs had been delivered to the casa before we arrived. Here's a picture of all of us eating on the balcony.

After breakfast, the plan was to head into downtown and explore the island. When we tried to start the golf cart, nothing happened. We tried multiple times to no avail. Eventually we called the owner of the cart rental company and he drove down to take a look. Turned out that the "pop" we had heard the previous night was the starter belt falling off. If we had stopped at any point after that, we would have been stranded. Luckily we made it home without stopping! They were able to fix the broken belt within about an hour. We also learned that we can't have more than 4 people on the cart at any time or the police might confiscate it. Jim and Kristen offered to stay home, and the rest of us made it downtown (about a 20 minute drive on the cart).

Downtown Isla Mujeres is a series of narrow one-way streets lined with restaraunts and shops that blatently target the "touristas". We found a spot to park the cart and went off exploring. One of our goals was to find a place for Brian, Kristen, Mom, and Jim to rent snorkel gear, but it turned out that none of the dive shops were open. Instead, we wandered around and checked out Playa Norte, supposedly the best beach on the island. It lived up to it's reputation of white sand beaches and clear blue water, but it was very crowded. We decided our time would be better spent at the grocery store stocking up on food for the week. We spent nearly and hour filling up a suitcase, backpack, and numerous grocery bags with enough food to last the first half of the trip.

Once we had all the groceries, we quickly realized that we couldn't get all the food back to the casa with all four of us in the cart. Since we could only fit 4 in the cart anyway, Christina and I set off in pursuit of a moped, or "moto" as they're called on the island. There was no shortage of options and we found a place that would give us a discount for the 5 day rental. Christina rode back in the cart to hold all the groceries and so that I could get used to the moto. The balancing took a little time to get used to, but it sure is a thrill to drive! The toughest part was going slow in the city (it has a natural inclination for speed!). I made it back to the casa in a record 7 minutes and had time to go for a wuick swim before the rest arrived in the cart.

Lunch on Sunday was sandwiches and chips using the recently-acquired groceries. In the afternoon, we headed right down the road to La Castille de Garaffon (a snorkeling and swimming beach). We all had a chance to swim in the water, take some pictures, and read our books on the lounge chairs (pictures to follow).

Christina cooked up a wonderful meal of spaghetti and broccoli that we all ate out on the balcony. After dinner, we read books and played some wild games of Yahtzee! Mom rolled 2 yahtzees during the first game a nearly doubled the score of Brian and I. Then I rolled 2 yahtzees in the second game and almost beat that score. After two games, we'd had enough (not to mention everyone else in the casa had fled the constant rolling of dice). After another day in paradise, we all drifted off to sleep.

Adventure to Isla Mujeres!

We decided to revive our old travel blog, so here it goes...

The trip started out with a rude awakening as the alarm buzzed at 3:15 am in Portland the day after Christmas. We lazily rolled out of bed and slipped into the clothes that were waiting for us along with the tightly packed suitcases. Mom and Jim picked us up at Evelyn's house and we headed for the airport. We found a parking spot in the economy lot right away and luckily did not have to wait long in the bone-jarring cold before the bus picked us up for the terminal. We made it through check-in and security with no issues and boarded our Continental flight to Houston (All-Boeing fleet, we were on a 737-900 from 2001). The flight went smoothly, but was a little too long for Christina's patience.

Once in Houston, we learned that our flight was about 40 minutes late, giving us a 2-hour layover. We made the trek to our departure gate (and were very glad our layover wasn't any shorter!). Given the delay, my mom, Jim, and I went upstairs to the Fox Sports Bar for lunch before our flight to Cancun. Just as we started eating our lunch, we heard Christina yelling from below that our flight was boarding for an on-time departure (so much for the delay!). Turns out they switched airplanes so we could leave on-time but neglected to tell anyone. The boarding area was pure chaos, as an additional passport check was required and the boarding process lacked organization. It got to the point where everyone was boarding at once. We eventually did make it on and took off reasonably on-time.

The flight to Cancun was on a 737-800, this one from 1999 and it had seen some better days. The weather was cloudy most of the way, so there was not much to see. We touched down on the newly-added second runway at Cancun and taxied to the international terminal. The customs process proved to be a lengthly ordeal with various checkpoints and verifications. We all made it through with the "green light" though. The plan was to meet up with Brian and Kristen for the ride to the ferry terminal, with their flight landing about an hour after ours. We thought they were flying Mexicana (which landed at the other terminal), so we boarded the inter-terminal bus and hopped over to Terminal 2. We sat down at a bar and had our first Corona's of the trip, only to discover that they were actually flying American, which lands at terminal 3 (the one we had just left!). After paying for the beers, we boarded the same bus (much to the amusement of the driver) and headed back to where we started. Jim and I found another bar to sit and have more Corona and a huge plate of Nachos while my mom and Christina went off to locate our van driver.

Brian and Kristen's flight was a little delayed, but we all met up and got in the van to the Punto Jarez ferry terminal. Driving from the airport, I kept noticing all the "Americanized" shops and stores (Office Depot, Starbucks, WalMart). Guess we had not landed in "authentic" Mexico. We drove past all the Cancun mega-resorts in the distance and got to the ferry terminal just in time to catch the high-speed catamoran to Isla Mujeres. Mom made the comment that it was the nicest boat that she had ever been on in Latin America.

Arriving at Isla Mujeres was a vastly different experience that Cancun. The streets were filled with golf carts and mopeds rather than cars and buses. The taxis left from a central terminal and we had to split into two groups to fit everyone with baggage. The taxi had 162,000 km on it (impressive figuring the island is only about 10 km long!) and had certainly seen some better days. Driving on the island is a combination of loosely-defined traffic laws and survival-of-the-fittest mentality. It was clear that the taxis were at the top of the food-chain, passing every golf cart in its sight as well as some of the speedy mopeds. Getting close to the southern tip of the island, the dirver turned down a dark and bumpy dirt road. We eventually pulled up to our beutiful villa that we recognized from the internet as Casa de los Amigos. Getting into the house proved to be an interesting challenge. The keys that were provided did not seem to open any of the doors in the house. After about 10 minutes of fiddling, we finally were able to open one of the front sliding doors. Only then did we find the note that mentioned each door has a unique key! The house is absolutely beautiful and is best described by the pictures in the link above, so I won't spend too much time here. The only quirks that we noticed were that the "hot tub" on the roof is not really hot (more like a pool), and the stove was a little difficult to turn on at first.

We had arranged ahead of time to have a golf cart deliverd to the casa and found it sitting right out front. None of us had any recent experience with driving gas carts, so it took some time and a phone call to the company to discover how to turn it on (turns out you just put the key in and hit the accelerator!). Christina and Jim stayed home that evening while Brian, Kristen, Mom, and I went in search of food. The cab driver told us of a place called "Maria's Cantina" just down the road, but we could not find it and ended up driving about halfway back to town to eat at a taco restaraunt. The food was great, if not authentic. Driving back to the casa, we crested a hill and heard a POP from the golf cart followed by a slight hissing noise. Not wanting to stop to investigate, we kept going and made it back safely. Fifteen hours after our rude awakening in Portland, we crawled into bed in Paradise for some well-deserved sleep.



More to come later...