Co and I head to Cancun for a semi-vacation. He’s on vacation, I’m at a conference 4 out of 5 days. Before we head out, we are both hoping he’ll be able to relax and stop shaking some of the time, and that we’ll be able to see some cool things on my free day.
There’s good, and bad…
Co weathers the airport travel with nary a shake. Wahoo! But, he gets really grumpy and lets me have it when the resort shuttle has my name on the list but not his. Boo! Their mistake, and we get to the resort, and still no shaking out of Co. Wahoo! We arrive at our all inclusive resort between mealtimes, and the only food available were burgers and hot dogs on the beach. Greasy. Tasteless. Boo! The conference is filled with people doing interesting research, and lots of good talks. Wahoo! The food is almost universally bad, including a cheesecake that might have been made from plastic gel, tasteless Mexican food, tasteless fish, tasteless wanna-be stir fry. And yet, we still seem to eat quite often. Boo! Our room is on the ground floor, and while the website stated that all rooms had views of the water, ours had a view of a little piece of lawn. Which occasionally had a peacock on it, waking us up early in the morning. Plus, our A/C did not work the first night (we called and had it repaired.) Boo! The conference schedulers wanted many professors to attend, so they scheduled it during the most popular spring break week. Thus, the resort was full to bursting with partying college students. Boo! There were wet t-shirt contests. There were 4 clubs at night to choose from, one involving foam. Many loud games of pool volleyball were played by girls in bikinis perched atop bare-chested tan boys. Mostly drunk, most of the time. Lots of loud singing and yelling late into the night. Did I mention we were on the ground floor? Need I say Boo? Boo! Hiss!
I never went “on spring break.” I don’t think I missed much.
Highlights of the All inclusive resort? The peacocks. The iguanas. The ocean. Everything else is worth forgetting.
So, for our last night, we decide to ditch the all inclusive poopy four star resort. We were desperately hoping for some peace and quiet, and some decent food. We booked a beach cabana at “Azulik” in Tulum, south of Cancun. No electricity. Private. Quiet. And close to the Mayan ruins at Coba that we planned to see Thursday.
Adventure #1
Renting a car. Now that we were not staying at the resort, we could not use their tour bus service, and we needed transportation. So, we head to the Hertz rental kiosk outside the hotel. We go for the 2 day rental. The attendant is very nice, explains everything. Fine, Fine. Then she says, we don’t have the car here. If you’d like, I will leave in 20 minutes to take you to our office, where you can pick up your car. Or, you can take the bus, which will get you there in 10 minutes.
Um, we don’t know where to get off the bus. We don’t have any pesos. We don’t speak Spanish, and we don’t have a Spanish/English dictionary. Ah, I think we’ll stay with you, nice attendant lady.
So we wait. No Big deal. We find out it is the attendant’s birthday (probably 22?). She’s going to go dancing. She tells us where the best dancing places are. She is getting antsy. She phones someone, and is getting frustrated. Then she says, “My partner was supposed to come and relieve me 20 minutes ago. I was going to take his car back to the office, and give you a ride at the same time. But, now I just want to leave, and the only car I have to drive is this one:
It seats two. Cute, and tiny.
Co and I say we are willing to give it a try. I sit on his lap. We are not comfy, but we are laughing. Poor attendant cannot get the car started. Inserting key and turning is not sufficient. We are now getting a bit warm. It starts to rain. We are still giggling. Ok, I am still giggling, Co is getting a bit uncomfortable. She manages to start the car, and we ride! It’s a zippy little car - My favorite kind. (On a side note, we’ve thought about getting one of these, but the gas mileage isn’t as good as we think it ought to be, only 44/31. Phooey. Maybe we’ll hold out for an electric car.) The car we rent is a non-descript 4 door compact. They give us a deal because of the ordeal in the Smart Car. Nice!
Adventure #2
More to come… when there is time. With Pics!
