Mexico 2012

On July 5th we headed back to Mexico for a relaxing vacation without the kids.  This time we went with Gail and Shaun Nordgaarden.  The flights there were relatively painless, in fact, they may have been too much fun.  (One word - Bailey's.)  The weather was so nice when we arrived, and was about 20 degrees cooler than the weather we left in St. Louis. (Here is the post about our last trip in 2010.)

Gail and Shaun on the flight there.

View from our room.  Not as much time in the lazy river this time, but still loved it.

Dinner the first night - Mexican!  The Mexican restaurant is open-air, so there is no roof.  They even had a vegetarian menu.

The resort has nine restaurants: French, Mexican, Japanese (hibachi grill), Thai, Italian, Mediterranean, Lobster House (over the pool), The Grill (steaks and more American food, also over the pool), and one more I can't think of.  We ate at the following: Mexican, French, Grill, Mexican, and the last night was at the hibachi grill.  Obviously, we liked the Mexican place.  The French was really great.  It was the nicest restaurant there.  I liked the hibachi grill as well.  The man who cooked our dinner was really fun and entertaining. 

Dinner the second night at the Grill.

While we did spend a good amount of time relaxing either at the beach or the pool, we did ride the hobie cat twice (once with Shaun and Gail, but I don't think Shaun enjoyed it...) and kayaked as well.  All four of us went out on the kayaks to a sunken ship that was about halfway to the island.  (You can see the island a bit in the picture below.)  I was really excited when we were told about the trip.  You could see a post sticking up so I imagined an old pirate ship.  It was not.  It was a rusted fishing vessel that bottomed out.  It was so shallow that parts of the boat were out of the water.  The post was the light warning other boats.  But it was still worth it.  And I can't believe how far off coast I was!  The entire trip was about an hour.  We didn't get any pictures of the boat since we didn't want to bring the camera, which was good since for some reason I kept getting splashed.  The water was only about 15 feet deep at the boat, and I don't think it ever got deeper than maybe 30 feet the whole way there.  (This may explain the sunken ship.)  Kevin and Shaun got out when we were there to swim around the ship.  I tried to get a picture from shore, but it just looked like a stick in the ocean, even with zoom. 
 

A view from our chair, with Isle Mujeres in the background.

Another picture of the island, and if you can see it, the stick indicating the sunken ship is just at the right side of the picture.

Lunch on the beach!

First day on the beach.

Second night at the French restaurant.

A very relaxing moment that neither Kevin not I want to forget! (He had his own book and legs, though,)

Kevin getting one of his naps poolside.

We kept meeting people from St. Louis.  This is a popular hat.

We played a music trivia in this pool, and I got a tan line from my sun glasses because of it.  The trivia was fun!  Shaun and Kevin were a pretty good team.  Notice the swim-up bar in the background...

With the exception of Saturday, there wasn't a crowd anywhere.  If you wanted a front-row beach chair, you had to get there early, but otherwise there was always something on the beach or near the pools.  Even all the cabanas and swinging beds (like the one hanging in the trees in this picture) were available.  We only had to wait for dinner one night (French), and hardly waited for drinks.  And at one bar, the popular one in the main area, if we didn't want to wait we would go outside to the bar about 200 feet away with no line.

Reason #378 why Kevin and I are married: we both said this looked like a Jim Henson character when we saw it. 
(Doesn't it?)

Last night there!  Thankfully we got a flight the left at noon the next day so we were still able to go out and enjoy ourselves instead of packing and worrying about missing our 7am flight the next morning.

On the flight home: sad to be leaving but crazy-happy to see the kids.

One last picture, taken from the Grill our third night there!  Can't wait to return!

Things we may not be able to explain, but don't want to forget: chocolate cake, Kevin knowing how to say the most awkward things ever (corn, "Are fedoras still in style?"), Samuel's honeymoon shots (all 36 of them), Electric Lemonade (cough cough, Gail, cough), our friends Talker, Sugar, Tattoo, Yellow, the Cougar, and Parker Lewis, our friends from Chicago, Atlanta, and Dallas with the passport problem, "They're called women." and finally, the side-string bikini and the dent in the car.