South of the Border!

We had a wonderful week long trip to Playa del Carmen Mexico at the end of February with three couples from our neighborhood. 

It was so fun vacationing together and relaxing. 

We flew through San Francisco to get to Cancun.

Tom loved checking out the NFL display in the SFO airport

 

We arrived in Mexico on Saturday evening and finally made it to our beautiful resort after some chaos at the rental car company.

We all went out to dinner together once we got to the resort to start planning our week in paradise.

 

Sunday morning we all headed to the church in Playa del Carmen.

Our neighbors George and Iciar Totorica aren't LDS but willingly came to church with us and really enjoyed the service.  Iciar who speaks fluent Spanish tearfully told us what had been said in the talks because none of us could understand.  She was truly touched by the spirit as the speaker spoke about the importance of family.

Here she is recapping the talks in Sacrament meeting

 After church we drove into town for some lunch.

We ate at a place we found last time we were in Playa del Carmen

Cuevo de Chango, the cave of the monkey.

Me with my friends Lorri Carr, and Melissa Hathaway waiting for lunch at Cuevo de Chango

 It was yummy

 

 

After lunch we headed to the grocery store to buy breakfast and lunch food for the week, then we went back to the resort and relaxed.

 We took some pics on these cute swings they had by the pool

 

 

Later that night we all went out to dinner at a cute Cuban restaurant at the resort.

Monday morning we were raring to go so the Carr's and us, headed south to Akumal, a great snorkeling place. Unfortunately everyone else has discovered Akumal and it was CROWDED.  All the cruise ships dump their snorkeling tourists there.

We snorkeled (which wasn't very good) and explored the beach for a while

Akumal used to be this little undiscovered town.

I bought my Mexican nativity set at this store, years ago.

We drove south of Tulum and found a private beachclub called

 Papaya Playa Beach Club

We ordered some guacamole, chips and drinks and had a picnic 

plus had our own private palapas

This is what I'm talking about, private beach!

We spent the afternoon relaxing and then met everyone in Playa del Carmen for a delicious dinner at El Fagon, a place we discovered with Devin and Sarah 6 years ago. It has delicious grilled meats and is cheap!

We walked on 5th Avenue in downtown Playa after dinner

and took some pics in a cute Mexican beetle

Tuesday we spent the day at the resort, the Grand Mayan.

The grounds are beautiful!

Tom and I took lots of walks

The pool

The beach

We saw lots of Iguanas and Alligators

We all did water aerobics at the pool

It was a happening place!

Later that afternoon we drove into Playacar (where we stayed with the Gabrielsen's) and went to the beach.

Our beach selfie!

We stopped for dinner in Playa del Carmen at Carboncitos (another place we had eaten at with Devin and Sarah 6 years ago)

 

The waiters would bring the drinks out on their heads.

It's a fun place!

 

We explored some more of 5th Avenue after dinner

 

Wednesday morning, we took another walk  around our resort

  

and then Tom and I drove to Puerto Morelos for some more snorkeling.

We found a beautiful white sand beach and we took a snorkeling boat trip.

It was awesome snorkeling

and a gorgeous beach! Perfect!

That evening we drove to Xplor a truly Mexican Adventure Park.

We couldn't take our cameras because you get very wet, plus the fact that it was the only night that it RAINED and the wind BLEW!

But we had an awesome time anyway.

We ziplined on 8 different zip lines.

It was crazy!

This one goes through a waterfall and ends up in a cenote.

 and rafted in underground caves

 

 Then we ate all you can eat dinner at a delicious buffet,

then it was a crazy Jeep ride in the jungle
.  We kept saying, "you could never do this in the US" it was crazy.  We saw two jeeps go off the road.

 

 It is quite a place!

We did the rafting one more time before calling it quits and heading back to the resort because we were freezing!

In spite of the weather, we had a wonderful time.

 Thursday morning we drove back to Puerto Morelos with everyone. 

We had told them about the great beach and 

snorkeling so they wanted to come too.

We took a long walk on the beach.

That night, Tom and I drove back into Puerto Morelos for some authentic Mexican food at Cantina Habenaro (we met a flight attendant on our snorkeling trip who recommended this place)

It was seriously the best Chile Relleno  and fish tacoes I've ever eaten!

 

That night we met everyone at the Cirque de Sole's show, JOYA.

The theater was right by our resort and it was a beautiful venue and show.

These trampoline guys were awesome!

Our last day, Friday, 

we drove the Carr's into Cancun since they had never been before.

We stopped at the public beach for some pictures.
It is a beautiful beach!

We did a little shopping in Cancun and then drove to the port and hired a boat to take us to Isla Mujeres.

It was quite an adventure.

The wind was blowing so hard it took our little, passenger packed boat, 45 minutes to make the 15 minute ride over to the island.

We were glad when we finally made it.

We hung out at the beach for a while

And then went snorkeling

After snorkeling we got pictures with the shark

(poor thing)

And then waited for our delicious freshly grilled fish dinner

It was an adventure!

 

We got back on the boat and drove to the resort.

That night was our "Farewell to Mexico" dinner so we splurged and went to a fancy Italian Restaurant at the resort.

Lobster bisque

I had lobster for dinner.  YUM!!

Saturday morning we packed up and

took one last walk around the resort

We flew back to Boise and got home on Saturday night.

We had a wonderful trip south of the border with our friends!