Xel-Ha and Tulum

Today was an excursion day with Dan, Janet, Kenny and Denise. Doing an excursion didn't actually cross my mind until Dan emailed me a week earlier about it. In Cuba, Shannon and I did several excursions and didn't actually get to relax all that much so we would have been happy just hanging out at Barcelo. That would have been fine because the resort is actually quite huge. For example, I still haven't had the dinner buffet yet! No, I mean I'm sure there are still activities that I don't know about at this place.

But the Tulum and Xel-Ha tour had really good reviews so I was quite interested.

We got up just in time to scarf down some breakfast and get to the bus.

First stop was Tulum, an ancient Mayan city, and like most such cities, is currently in ruins. It was plus 100 degrees outside with the sun shining directly on Shannon's face. There was no escape. It was friggen hot with very sparse relief, where you'd have to fight with iguanas for a spot in the shade.

Our guide wasn't fluent enough in English to understand much, and the focus of the tour quickly became, why was he standing and talking out in directly sunlight and when would we be able explore on our own. Shannon was thinking when we could get to the water park. That's all Shannon could think of.

We managed to snap off a few photos before returning to the air conditioned bus to Xel- Ha. If we were to do it again, then Tulum, or probably any ruins now, could be skipped. Just to hot and really not that interesting. Especially since we've seen many already.

Xel-Ha is like a big fun water themed amusement park. We had lunch at the Mexican buffet followed by the rest of the day in the water. There was an inner tube mangrove forest that we started in, which was a lot of fun. From here we floated down to the main river. Along the way we went cliff jumping. Shannon was enjoying herself relaxing on the tube and living the life that she deserves. We snorkeled down to the bridge where we came across a lot of marine life like conch. At the bridge we were impressed by huge fish including a big ass barricuda! I think surprisingly, Xel-Ha had some of the biggest fish that we've seen snorkeling yet. There were sting rays, tuna looking like fish and really colorful tropical fish. Underwater photography yielded surprisingly bright photos. We were very impressed. It was a lot of fun. Shannon was a little bit scared of the bigger fish as she swam away very quickly. I guess she didn't want the barracuda to bite her in the face.

We returned to the Hotel and had Japanese themed dinner. The teppanyaki was good, but coming from Vancouver the sashimi wasn't quite the same.

We met up with Kenny and Denise at the lobby bar, talked about the wedding reservations and Wussy wiping his butt on the carpet leaving streak marks.