Cancun, Mexico May 14-17, 2011

After spending two days in airports trying to get to Kauai to join B&C and C&J, we gave up and chose another destination. Cancun, Mexico!  We arrived there in the late morning, checked into our hotel, and immediately took advantage of the free shuttle our hotel had to the hotel zone.  We spent the day on the beach at the Marriott there and even took a nap under the straw huts to recover from all the flights.  We took the free shuttle back to the hotel that evening not quite ready to venture out on our own, since we didn't have any real plans for our back up destination.  We relaxed at our hotel and made a game plan for the rest of the vacation in Cancun.

The following morning we woke up and took the bus downtown.  We found a church and went to sacrament.  We then proceeded to Isla Mujeres.  We scootered from the church to the ferry stations and took the ferry across the water.  It was a beautiful day full of sunshine.  Our main goal was to find some great snorkeling spots.  We rode our scooters to the south tip of the island, looking the whole way.  Apparently, all the beaches are privatized and you have to pay to gain access.  We weren't satisfied with this and just kept riding.  We made it to the south tip and continued up the east side of the island until we found a somewhat rocky cliff shoreline.  A mile or so up the shore, we could see a small family on a little beach and were determined to find it.  We followed some pathways behind some houses and eventually found the way down the rocky cliff to an awesome little private beach.  We were dying of heat at this point and immediately got in the water with our snorkeling gear on.  We found a few fish, but nothing spectacular.  The best snorkeling is on the West side of the island where the reefs are protected from the rest of the ocean.  We still had a great time though and had fun on our beach.  There were some neat formations there.

 Hunger took over soon and we packed up our gear and hopped back on our scooters.  We got snacks at little shops all along the way and eventually got back to the main part of town.  Here we ate tamales from the street vendors and ice cream. 

We took the ferry back to mainland and began the search for the bus to get back to the hotel.  We went to the spot we were dropped off and saw a lot of buses that had similar places, but none that were exactly the same.  We hadn't written down the exact name though, so we weren't 100% sure.  After about 30 minutes, we decided to get on the bus that we thought was ours.  It went the right direction for about 8 miles, then turned off the main road about 4 miles before our hotel into a small run-down community.  Brett and I looked at each other with concern right when it turned off the main road.  We decided to stay on the bus because we decided that it must wind through the community and then continue on down the main road.  We went up and down streets for about 15 minutes, winding all around until we were the last ones on the bus.  I was mentally keeping tabs of which way the main road was, just in case.  We pulled up to the main square and the bus driver told us to get off.  He said the bus was no longer in service.  At this point, we really had no idea how far we were from the hotel, it was dark, and we were in the middle of this poor community.  We got off the bus and rode as quickly as possible back to the main road.  We were both a little nervous and just kept riding toward the hotel while we tried to decide what to do.  We watched for another bus, but none ever came that would stop.  We ended up just riding the entire way.  It took us about an hour of hard riding because the street was quite busy and we couldn't ride continuously.  Needless to say, when we got back to the hotel we were exhausted and relieved to be back.

The next day we planned on going downtown again, but this time to explore all the shops and restaurants.  Before leaving, we sat outside our hotel and watched for the bus that would bring us back to avoid the previous nights adventure.  We saw it, wrote down the exact wording on it, took a picture, and hopped on one to go back downtown. We walked up and down all the streets and ate quesadillas, tacos, tamales, taquitos, enchiladas, etc...  We loved it.  We went to the grocery store and bought all sorts of cheap pastries too.

We hopped on a bus and went  to see the 'El Rey' ruins in the afternoon.  They were really neat and there were iguanas everywhere!  We literally saw hundreds of iguanas.  We took a lot of pictures and played around on the ruins until they kicked us out at closing time.

We ate more food downtown, then at about 7:00pm we decided to head back to the hotel before it got too dark.  We saw our bus and tried to flag it down, but the driver said it wasn't in service.  Twenty minutes later we saw our bus again, tried to flag it down, but the driver wouldn't stop or even look.  Thirty minutes later we hadn't seen another one of our buses.  You've got to be joking right?  Frustrated, we got on the same bus we had gotten on the previous day and just got off it before it exited the main road.  Once again, we rode the scooters all the way back to the hotel.

The following morning we woke up and laid out by our pool at the hotel, had one final feast of delicious mexican food, then flew out that early afternoon.