mexico 5/20/08: buenas noches!

Hola guapos!

Oh dear, its back to those tricky keyboards. Im writing you all from Cancun, Mexico! que divertido. Also, I will not be using...quotation marks? Flying comas? What are those called? Oh well. Either way, I cannot find them. Although, I do have nice access to the ¡ and the ¿.

Anyway, Cancun is just beautiful. We re staying at this great resort with Aunt Joanne and Uncle Dean, and their kids April and Allen, and their significant others Ben and Melissa (respectively). The weather is very warm and tropical and humid, which I just love. Although, it is a bit sweaty. But still, I think its great. The resort has a bunch of huge pools, too, and we re right on the beach. The beaches are white sand and the sand doesnt get too hot, which is kind of amazing. But at the resort, the pool is the coolest thing. We have a swim up bar AND a swing up bar~ how lucky are we? Pretty lucky! The swim up bar has seats built right into the floor of the pool, and the swing up bar is actually just a bar that has swing instead of seats. Im not sure if its actually called a swing up bar, but thats what Ive been calling it. The pool also has a volleyball court, so April bought one of those colorful inflated balls and weve been playing volleyball. woohoo!

So, the trip has been very fun so far, although the hardest thing has probably been coordinating eight people. We are lucky enough to all be easy going, but its still tricky trying to keep track of everyone without cell phones. (Some of our cell phones work, but the rates are expensive so we dont use them). It was all sorts of craziness flying in! Almost all the "couples" were on different flights, though Amy and I were with Dean and Joanne. For our flight, we had to be at the airport at 800 am California time, and we didnt arrive at the resort until 1130 pm Cancun time! It was a very long day, and we all laughed at how exhausting it is to sit around doing nothing much all day.

We ended up taking some R&R time at the resort the first couple of days (delicious food! yummy drinks! crafts! pools!) though we also had fun going into town and bartering. Today we had our first big excursion, to Tulum to see some of the Mayan ruins. They were so neat! We had fun poking around them and looking at the different carvings and things. But, the coolest part was going to the beach. There was a beach just below the cliff that the ruins were on, so we took this steep wooden staircase down to the bottom and left our things in the sand and went into the ocean. The water was warm and blue and the sand was soft and the waves were PERFECT for body boarding. I hadnt really intended to bodysurf but one swelled right in front of me so I dove with it and it carried me all the way to shore! And of course, all of this was with the ruins overlooking us. It was very neat.

I also got saved about $5.00 on sarongs, but I need to try Shannons trick. April told us her friend Shannon was the best at bartering--even if something cost fifteen dollars, Shannon would say "one dollar" and (according to April) it usually worked! I will have to try it at some point.

Hasta luego, con amor
Sara