Tag: Mexico

It’s a Nephew Duty day so getting this out a little later than I planned.

OK, now for the trip itself.

First off, I must say, I can not recommend enough traveling on off-days during spring break. I believe we saved a little on the airfare by doing a Thur-Thur trip. More importantly, the airports were breezes to get through. Immigration in Mexico was a stupid easy; last year it took us nearly an hour to get processed. This year we got to the front of the line so quickly – less than 10 minutes – that we actually had to wave people past us when reached the front as we still had girls in the restroom. That’s the difference between two planes landing at the same time and 20 or whatever it was last year. Same on the way home: we switched planes in Dallas and, thus, had to get processed there. Even with us getting pulled to the “special” line – I assume because of S’s new passport – there was literally no one in front of us. We waited longer to drop our bags and get new boarding passes than we did to clear immigration and customs.

I had an interesting person sitting next to me on our flight from Charlotte to Cancun. She was a young, pretty biracial woman. Seriously, she had about the most beautiful eyes I have ever seen.[1] She was very chatty at first and I did not mind because that meant I got to look at her eyes. She told me how excited she was for her trip. She had been to Cancun several times with girlfriends but this time was with a boyfriend – across the aisle – and was ready to PAR-TAY!!! M was sitting next to me and my new friend nodded at her and asked if it was just the two of us. I think she assumed M was my partner rather than my daughter, which was a little weird. Or a lot weird, actually.

I asked where she was from and she said, “Bowie.” That’s it. I’ve heard of Bowie, MD before, but since we were in North Carolina I didn’t want to assume.

“Where is that?”

“MARYLAND!”in a tone like everyone knew that. Silly me…

Later in the flight, when we were filling out our Mexican immigration forms, she asked for some help. She didn’t understand the difference between nation of residence and citizenship. Which, to be fair, can be tricky. Moments later, after finishing her form, she noticed the airline safety pamphlet in the seat pocket with the aircraft model on it: A321. She tapped my arm and said, “That’s not our flight number, is it? Because I put something else on my form.”

Mercy. Good for her that she had pretty eyes and people have probably always been looking out for her.

We stayed at the Dreams Sands resort. If you’re familiar with the geography of Cancun, it is located just after you make the turn at the top of the “7” of the strip. It ended up being a fantastic location. We were protected from waves and tides, so the water was gentle all day long. One morning L and I took a walk around the corner, to the long side of the 7. About three hotels away, when you make the turn south, there were consistent, decent-sized waves coming in and a clear high-tide line.

As I mentioned, our old neighbors and some church friends of theirs were staying at the same place. Both families have daughters M’s and C’s ages, which worked out well. L went back-and-forth between groups all week. Since we are a family of five, we had two rooms and let the older girls have sleepovers with friends in their room a couple nights. L slept with us every night, naturally.

The resort was nice. The beach was fantastic. Every morning my old neighbor and I would head to the beach around 7:00 to grab a group of chairs. We would both usually start reading then and continue until one wife or the other came down to go to breakfast. After we’d return, slather on the sunscreen, and hang out until late afternoon. It was real, real nice, Clark.

Our actual beach was rather narrow, maybe 100 feet deep. But the water was classic Cancun water: shallow for about 200–250 feet. I could easily walk 150 feet out before the water even reached above my waist. And it was all beautiful, white sand. In the water were no stingrays to worry about and hardly any fish.

After a couple nights we noticed there were no mosquitos or lizards anywhere. It was really weird. We wondered what kind of biological agent they had dropped on our area to wipe out the pests.

There were lots of birds, though. And there was a guy who, we think, worked for the resort who would patrol with a blowgun and shoot something at the birds to get them to fly away. Which was also weird because we only saw him twice all week and there were about a million birds. One day one of our friends left her lunch plate at her chair when she left to use the restroom. Within seconds there were seagulls everywhere getting after her leftover guac.

The food was decent all week. I think the buffet at the place we stayed at in Playa del Carmen last year was better. But the regular restaurants were better this year. There was a second buffet right on the beach where you could get snacks all day, which was nice. I made a habit of getting french fries and queso each afternoon. Most nights the adults sat at one table for dinner, the girls at another. A couple nights we even let the kids go to a different place than us.

One of the things included in our resort were the use of small Hobie Cat catamarans. I think max occupancy was six. You had to reserve them a day in advance, and then only had them for 30 minutes. But our group took them out at least 10 times over the week. We would sail out about 15 minutes, get pretty far off the coast, then turn and come back. The water was absolutely amazing. We would cross some deeper, darker water and then suddenly break into shallow, sandy water that looked like a tropical screen saver from the Windows ‘98 days. One of our friends showed L how to manage the catamaran and she got to sail us for a little bit, which she loved.

On Tuesday we took our one excursion for the week, a large catamaran trip to Isla Mujeres. S and I took a similar trip 18 years ago, although that was on a larger, public ferry ship and then we took a smaller snorkeling boat out to a reef.

This time we had maybe 30 people with us, including a group of about 10 college aged kids that seemed excited about liquor. We stopped at a sandy area on the way out where people could snorkel. I was going to try – I hadn’t snorkeled since our honeymoon in 2003 – but realized that since I wear glasses now, the mask they offered me wouldn’t fit over it. And I wouldn’t see a damn thing without glasses. So I stayed on board and had another beer. L tried it, but she got in the water, got a little overwhelmed, and came right back out. M and C loved it, though. It was a quick swim, maybe 10 minutes. And they weren’t on a reef so there wasn’t a lot to see. But they still had fun.

We went over to Isla Mujeres for a couple hours. S and I had gone there in 2001, but only had about 30 minutes and thus avoided the town. This time we wandered around the shops, interacting with the merchants. Most of them were funny and good natured. “Amigo! Tequila!” “Special price today only, 99% off!” One even lured one of our friend in by saying, “Lady, come in because, what the hell?” That was good enough for her.

The only thing we bought were three beers for less than $5. Seemed like a bargain.

While waiting for our return trip, we ate chips and salsa at the restaurant near our pier. There was a guy sitting near us who looked almost exactly like a guy I worked with in the dorm cafeteria nearly 30 years ago. That guy was from Peru, but I could not remember his name. And it just isn’t in my nature to bug strangers. “Excuse me, did you work in McCollum Hall from 1989–1991?” I figured he wouldn’t remember me, anyway, as he never did a double-take when he looked my way.

We were sailing home at sunset, which was nice. Nicer still since the families all congregated at the front of the catamaran and the college kids stayed below decks near the bar. The captain pulled L up to his perch and let her pilot the boat for awhile. Again, she was thrilled.

When we got off the boat one of the college kids came up to us and whispered, “Hey, we weren’t assholes, were we? We didn’t bother your family did we?” I thought that was solid.

Along those lines, our resort was filled mostly with families or adults. Not a lot of dumb, college spring break nonsense. We only saw one alcohol incident. One night while heading for dinner we noticed a woman in her early 20s who was being helped to a wheelchair, where she collapsed and then puked all over herself. A fine teaching moment for our teenagers. “See, this is what happens if you drink!”

We needed some souvenirs so a few of us walked about half a mile to a big tourist-trap shop Wednesday morning. M got a t-shirt, L got a hat. But what I will always remember of that shop is the tiny Mayan women who were working there. I swear two were shorter than L, who is not a tall kid. L would look at me with big, wide eyes each time one of these señoras passed her.

Many of our waiters had little jokes to help ease the language gap. They were always willing to pour you some tequila, and would often joke that the water was tequila. One night at dinner, after our waiter had called water tequila three times, I decided to go along with the joke. “Señor, dos más tequilas, por favor,” clearly pointing at our water glasses and laughing. So of course he comes back with two shots of tequila and no water. I guess if you’re dumb enough to say the magic word they will hook you up.

Our girls got along fairly well most of the week. There was some arguing over the bathroom, which is to be expected. There was some tension between the sister groups at times. But they did a good job.

Until our last night. That was going to be picture night. We planned on getting pics of every family at sunset. The girls went down early to take their own pics. S and I were almost out the door when C returned, in tears. Apparently she had become fed up with being told what to do by her big sister all week and bailed. S summoned M to our room and sent me down to dinner, so I missed 30–45 minutes filled with yelling and tears between our oldest girls. Which, you know, is going to happen when you’re away from home together for a week. But I was just pissed that we left the trip with zero family pics and our only pictures of all three girls came on the catamaran with bad hair.

Yes, I will be reminding them of this for years. Especially next year when we don’t have enough pics for our family calendar. Seriously, these girls take 8000 stupid pictures a day to keep all their dumb social media “streaks” going, but can’t suck it up for 10 minutes to take a picture with their family that we can use to remember this trip for years to come.

No, you’re bitter…

We avoided stomach issues this year, which was a big win. No throwing up at the pool because of bad shrimp (M) or throwing up in the middle of the night (C and L). We did have a few missed spots with sunscreen issues, though. One day I apparently forgot to do my face and just got roasted. Real smart.

The trip home was fine. We were delayed about 30 minutes getting out of Cancun. Then we were a couple hours late getting out of Dallas. But that gave us enough time to eat and be sure to get through immigration without having to sprint to our connecting flight. We laughed while eating our meal at DFW. When we were done the girls started to get up and leave. “Wait, we still have to pay!” A week of all-inclusive dining had ruined them.

A few other notes:
* Mexico has boring passport stamps. And they’re trying to process people so quickly that you can often only see part of the stamp. Doesn’t make flipping through your passport very fun.
* It was funny trying to search for things online from Mexico. Web results showed prices were in pesos, and if you searched for a store it would pull up the nearest Mexican location.
* The hotel elevators had little video screens that ran constant commercials for activities on site. The volume was always cranked up to about 15. We all still have one song stuck in our heads.
* Every calendar year I pack on a few pounds in the last quarter. I know I’m not alone in this. The change in weather, holidays with lots of treats, and extra drinks are a bad combination when you’re on the back side of 40. It doesn’t help that every year I eat approximately 800 mini cheese cake bites in the days after Christmas. My January 1 weight was higher than it’s been in awhile. But I worked hard and had lost seven pounds by spring break. My post-vacation weigh in showed that I gained five of them back. Time to get back at it…
* Finally, it was fun to arrive home, walk inside, and still notice some new house smell.

Other than the no picture thing, it was a successful spring break. When we got home M immediately started counting down the days until her eighth grade trip to Washington, DC and C and L started counting the remaining days of school. Spring sports games start tonight. And we have a summer trip already booked. It will get here quick.

As expected, my Cancún summary is rather long. So I shall divide it into a couple posts for you.

Part one goes back to the pre-trip drama I mentioned before we left.

Two Sundays ago we were deep into the trip prep process. Packing, printing itineraries, making our 30th Target run, etc. As a part of this I pulled out our passports to make backup copies. I got through the girls’, threw mine onto the copier, and glanced at S’s.

“Hmm, that’s weird,” I thought. “For a moment there I thought this was out of date.”

I looked at the date on her passport again.

“Wait, what year is this? 2019?”

“OHHHHHHH SHIIIIIIIIIIITTTTTTTT.”

I walked out to the living room where S was, eyes wide and feeling as though all the blood had drained from my head.

“Umm, we have a problem,” I said as I handed her passport over. “This is expired.”

Yep, her passport expired in February.

What followed was a general panic. She quickly got her sister who works in the travel industry on the phone, who did her best to calm S down. I could hear her talking about getting on the website of the passport agency in Chicago. Not being a dummy, I quickly pulled up that site. There were two open appointments on Wednesday. We immediately claimed one. The sister said she had heard of other people going up and getting their passport the same day they requested one. But as I read the website’s fine print I noticed it said passports would be issued within 72 hours. As we were leaving Thursday that wouldn’t do us much good.

The rest of the evening was very stressful, as I’m sure you can imagine. I couldn’t believe we had let this happen. We just traveled across the border a year ago and I would almost bet we both made mental notes for her to renew the passport before our next trip. I think the issue was that we did not expect to travel this spring break, so we put that thought waaaaay in the backs of our heads. When we ended up scheduling a trip to Mexico for this year, neither of us thought to check passports and make sure we were good.

On Monday I did some research to see what our options were if she couldn’t get a new passport. I read that I would need a notarized statement from S to take the girls out of the country without her. I slapped one together and emailed it over. She responded saying a couple people in her office told her they had run into the same issue, had driven up to Chicago and walked out with a passport that day. Tuesday night, at the school play, a friend told me she knew of at least two people who had done the same thing.

Things were looking better, but we weren’t counting our chickens, or pollos in this case, quite yet.

Neither of us slept well Tuesday night, waiting for her 5:00 AM alarm Wednesday morning. She made good time to Chicago and texted me when she arrived. I responded, “Let’s hope everyone up there is in a good mood today.” A few minutes later I saw that our credit card had been run at the agency, so another step had been checked off. About 20 minutes later she texted that passports would be issued between 3:00-4:00 Chicago time. Luckily she took her laptop and a bunch of work. We weren’t out of the woods yet, but the stress was beginning to ease.

Over the next few hours she got some work knocked out. She took a walk – it was a nice day in Chicago – and got yelled at by a homeless woman for being “A motherfucker who didn’t buy me that house you promised me.” Weird. Shortly after I got the girls home from school S texted saying she had her passport and would be joining us in Cancun! Relief! I told her not to drive too fast on her way home. A speeding ticket would just be the icing on the cake of a crazy week. Three hours later she was home and we were doing final packing.

Thank goodness we live within driving distance of a passport agency that does same-day service. We learned a valuable lesson that I will reiterate for all: keep track of your passport’s expiration date. Apparently you can’t even travel within the last six months before it expires, so give yourself plenty of leeway. And if you book an overseas trip, check your passport when you’re booking to see if you need to get on the renewal process right away. Mine is safe for another three years, and the girls have four years left on theirs.

With that messy step out of the way, we were off early Thursday morning to Cancún…

We left cold, snowy Indiana for a week in the warmth and sun of Mexico. It was, almost completely, an excellent trip.

Our home for the week was the Paradisus La Esmerelda resort in Playa del Carmen, about 45 minutes south of Cancun. Our flight down was without incident, we navigated the hour-long line that was Mexican immigration, gathered our bags, and found our transport agent, a man holding a sign with our family’s name on it. The girls thought that was pretty cool. My sister-in-law who works in the travel industry had arranged the transport for us. I had to chuckle and wonder if she had tipped our driver about my musical likes, because as soon as we left the airport he switched the radio from Mexican music to one that played classic 80s and 90s music. The first song we heard was “Maneater” by Hall & Oates. Nicely done, Mexico!

The resort was very nice. Our room overlooked one of the resort’s several pools. Sadly we were also right next to one of the main walkways, so we got noise throughout the night from people strolling about. And our next door neighbors liked to keep their three-year-old kid out until well after 9:00 PM each night, which meant he had a full meltdown when they tried to put him to bed. As our rooms had a connecting door, we could hear every single scream and shout from the kid. The parents apparently decided that it was better to let the kid shriek and disturb everyone around them rather than lay down with him or find another method of soothing him. On our final night, when we were all wiped out and in bed early, this went on for about 20 minutes. S lost all patience and went over and kicked the connecting door over and over, which made me laugh. The parents did remove their son to one of the bedrooms so his screams were at least muffled a bit.

Anyway, the resort… Paradisus is an all-inclusive place. S and I had gone to all-inclusive places twice before with mixed results. Paradisus was excellent. There were something like 16 restaurants, although not all were open to kids. The food was always good to excellent. We had Asian-fusion, Mediterranean, modern Mexican, Japanese steakhouse-style, Italian, and ate at the buffet two nights. We also went to the buffet every morning but one. It was really, really good. I fell in love with combining chilaquiles and scrambled eggs for breakfast. It’s going to be my new breakfast thing here at home, too.

We also paid a little extra for the “family concierge” service. This got you some things like a fancy check-in service, a private pool that other guests were not allowed to use, and a personal concierge who was there to help you with all your needs. It was a slow week, so we “lucked” into having two concierges. I use quotation marks because that meant we got to tip two people at the end of the week. Lucky us! Anyway, Eduardo and Fernando were very nice. They brought the girls cookies and milk each night, although the girls did not like the cookies since they were Mexican-style and much drier and grittier than what they were used to. They set up dinner reservations for us for the entire week. They answered questions. And the big event was drawing the girls a huge bubble bath in our balcony jacuzzi tub, complete with balloon animals and cupcakes. There was an insane amount of bubbles involved: when all three girls got into the tub, you could only see their faces and toes poking out. They loved it.

Our days followed a regular rhythm: I usually woke up a little after 6:00 when the birds started chirping. One of the girls and I would then walk down to the beach to watch the sun rise. We never got a great sunrise, the point we were on looked east over a little grove of trees so we missed proper sunrise, but I got a few good pictures. Then we’d go eat right when the buffet opened at 7:00. After that, we’d take a walk, get our towels for the day, and claim some spots at the private pool. We’d usually head back to the room for a bit and then return to the pool around 9:00. We’d hang out there until noon-ish, eat lunch either right at the pool or at one of the outdoor restaurants, then continue hanging in the sun until late afternoon. We usually ate dinner at 6:30 and almost all of us were in bed and asleep by 9:30 most nights.

The girls did a few activities with the Kids Club, but they were kind of silly and aimed at younger kids. We didn’t take any trips into town or to visit any Mayan ruins either in Tulum or Chichen Itza. And the beach was a big disappointment. It was covered in some kind of nasty seaweed that washed up and rotted on the sand. So the area stunk and was full of small, flying insects that liked the rotting piles. Everyone told us this was unusual and was more typical of late summer than fall. There were crews out shoveling and using a Bobcat to move it, but it was a fruitless exercise as it just kept building up. S and I have been to Cancun and had told the girls about the beaches there, beautiful white sand and shallow, impossibly clear blue water that you can walk out into for several hundred feet and still just be knee-deep. So the expectation was pretty high for that kind of beach experience. They were disappointed, although we pointed out we still had a bunch of really nice pools. Even if the seaweed had not been present, the beach wasn’t nearly as clean as Cancun’s, once you got into the water it was very rocky, and the water was much more murky than 30 miles up the coast.

Although this was my third trip to Mexico, I did experience something new: coatis. We first saw them on Sunday morning at the pool. The girls started screaming about seeing ring-tailed lemurs. I said they looked like raccoons with long tails. Turns out I was closer to the truth: coatis are members of the raccoon family, although their tails are indeed rather lemur-like. They are active during the day and love to come out in packs of 5–20 and dig through trash, scavenge through leftover lunch trays, and take whatever you feed them. The younger ones, which have more colorful fur, are pretty cute. The older ones, which often turn gray and lose their fur, are borderline disgusting. One morning we found an old one hunched over on the stairs up to our floor. It looked like it had come in to die or something. We reversed course, took the elevator up, and then I walked down from above, slapping the stone steps hard until it scrambled back outside. There were also lots of big ass iguanas running around. One day one jumped up onto the lounge chair next to me. I heard scuffling, thought it was a bird, and just about pissed myself when I turned and saw this big lizard sitting two feet from me.

We did have the inevitable stomach issues during and after the trip. M likely ate something bad on Wednesday, and threw up overnight and Thursday morning. C and L both had lower GI issues that caused some trouble. And I think all of us have had lower GI “looseness” since we got back. I’m having some issues today, but let’s stop right there. Some of that can just be attributed to the amount of food we ate, I think.

C made a friend. The night we went to the Japanese steakhouse we sat by a family from the UK. We chatted them up and the next day their 10-year-old daughter and C started hanging together. They were kind of inseparable for the next five days. M and L also played with some sisters from New Jersey a couple days, but they didn’t get nearly as friendly with them as C did with her friend.

Once upon a time I spoke a fair amount of Spanish. Most of that is gone but I was able to recall and use a little last week. The waitstaff who were most comfortable with English enjoyed messing with customers who said more than “Por favor” and “Gracias” to them. Most of our meals began like this:

“Hola señores, ¿como están?”
“Muy bien, gracias, ¿y tu?”
“Bien, gracias, ¿hablas español?”
“Sí, pero muy, muy poquito. That’s about all I can do, your English is much better than my Spanish!”
And then we would all laugh.

One day at the pool our waiter came around and greeted us “Hola amigos!” I was talking to one of the girls at the time so instead of ordering a Dos Equis, I ordered “Dos Amigos.” I immediately caught my mistake and corrected it, but our man Alejandro loved that. “Dos Amigos, señor? Maybe dos amigas, right!?” The rest of the day he’d come by and ask, “¿Señor, quires más Dos Amigos?” and laugh again.

Folks also liked to ask where we were from. Apparently Indianapolis isn’t well known in Mexico so we ended up just saying “near Chicago.” Then they would ask if it was much colder up there. When we told them our security camera showed the front yard covered in snow Monday morning they were all amazed.

I believe those are the highlights. We had a very good week, the minor stomach issues excepted. It was relaxing, the girls were relatively well behaved, and we all came back with a little more skin color than we had when we left. Well C came back with a lot more, but she tans about 100 times faster than the rest of us.

We were supposed to jump right into spring sports today. It is Opening Day for spring kickball and we had three games on the calendar, plus L had a soccer practice we were going to try to make after her game. Naturally it has been snowing all day and although none of it is sticking, the windchills are down in the 20s. We’ve postponed all our games and are hoping the weather cooperates so we can get them in later this week. It is supposed to warm up quite a bit but there is also a chance of rain every day.

But we can’t complain after our lovely week in Mexico.