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Trip Start Dec 20, 2009 Previous
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  Puerto Aventuras, Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico
Saturday, February 27, 2010

I'd like to take credit for planning such a short drive to get to our next and highly anticipated stop, Barcelo Maya Palace with my parents, my sister & my niece, but the truth is, I had no idea WHERE in Sian Ka’an CESiaK was when I was making these plans. Even though it was only about 1½  hours drive, I was anxious to get on the road and get to the all-inclusive resort.  We checked in before 9am but they gave us our wrist bands anyway and we went straight to breakfast.  After a quick walk through, Keara and I headed north for Cancun.  Since week 4 of this trip when Keara found out that her friend, Sydney was going to be in Cancun while we were in the Mayan Riviera, she’s been anticipating the rendezvous.  But it turns out that Cancun is not just a ride-to-a-friend’s house away.  And you have to pass through Playa del Carmen which in not a simple fishing village anymore. It might have seemed longer too because Keara was bouncing off the ceiling with excitement.  In their hotel lobby, she spotted her friends immediately and was off like a shot while I made the arrangements for her to get a day-pass bracelet.  The kind woman behind the counter offered me half-price since she was only 12 years old.  But when Keara came bounding up for her bracelet, the woman behind the counter’s jaw dropped and she said, "SHE’S 12?!"

I made the return trip to the Barcelo by myself and it was the most time I’ve had to myself in 9 weeks.  At the insistence of my poor little van, I stopped in at the Ford dealership and made an appointment for an oil change.  I could hear the little van breathe a sigh of relief.

I got back in time for a late lunch then on the road back to Cancun again to go to the airport and pick up my family.  It was a happy reunion except that everyone was hungry and nobody wanted to spend money on food on our way to an all-inclusive.  We picked Keara up on our way back south and, not surprisingly, she’d had a great day.  All in all, our short driving day actually amounted to almost 7 hours of driving for me.

I refused to drive anywhere the next day but the little van was back in action come Monday.  After his oil change, I dropped off our laundry at a Playa del Carmen lavandaria then my Mum, my sister and I went to Tulum.  These Mayan ruins are located right on the coast and are very scenic.  The iguanas must think so too – you can’t look in any direction without spotting at least one of these guys.

NOTE: when I got my stuff back from the lavanderia, we were missing two sweaters but by now (having driven through Playa del Carmen more times than I cared to) I figured they must have gone to someone more needy.

I won’t go on too much about our fabulous week (yes, a whole 7 days!) at our lovely resort but I will tell you about the only a la carte restaurant we were able to get into.  The Brazilian was a roasted meat parade of seven kinds of meat served fresh carved at our table, one at a time.  Adam was NOT impressed with having to put on a nice shirt and then WAIT for his food (he’s a big fan of the buffet) but the clincher that made me realize this might not have been our best choice (please remember it was our only available option for a la carte) was when I finally noticed my sister politely saying, “No gracias” for the 6th time to the meat – you see, she’s a vegetarian.

Of course the week passed way too quickly and I was way too lazy.  Before I knew it, it was the end of the week and I had not taken Keara and Nicky diving like I had planned.  The resort offered a cenote dive and we were all set to postpone our departure by enough time to do this, but the minimum age was 12, so we didn’t.

PS.  Surely you’ve noticed that there are photos in this (and past) entries… my parents brought me a card reader to use on our back-up camera.

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