Cancun: Day 1 (Wednesday)

We got up EARLY for this day (3am), so we could hitch a ride with Russ to the airport. He starts work at 4am and our flight left at 6am, so we figured we'd be getting there about 45 minutes before we actually should be there. Russ was very gracious to go out of his way to pick us up and we really appreciate it.

The flight was pretty uneventful. Alene and I tried to get a little shut-eye, but that's impossible for me. I was awoken by the loud snoring of a polynesian dude that decided since nobody was in the 3 seats behind us, he would lay down there and sleep.

I started to read this book I bought, Lone Survivor, about Marcus Lutrell, who is a Navy Seal and was the only survivor of one of the worst losses of life to our special forces in Afghanistan back in 2005. I'll have a synopsis of the book in another blog post. Needless to say, it's a GREAT book in my opinion.

Anyway, as we finally flew in over the Yucatan Peninsula, it was amazing to see the blue ocean and the jungle below us. There were many clear-cut areas where trees were just mowed down and huge open/rough fields looked like they were cleared to build houses, but no houses and no activity. As we landed and we started to get off the plane, the reality of being in another country started to scare me a bit. I have no idea why. I immediately noticed the smell of this new country and tried me best, throughout the whole trip, to have an open mind about this other culture. I mean, how different can they be from us? We're just above them.

My first fear was being approached by the Federalies. I hear they're notorious for trying to basically rob you of any money you have. When we waited at the baggage claim, one of them came by with a dog. He was making the dog sniff everyone as they stood by and sniffing the luggage as it went around the baggage claim belt. Every once in a while he would start tugging at someones stuff and saying things to them in broken english about what was inside their bags and he wanted to see.

We finally got our stuff and headed to get our passports stamped so we could officially enter the country. We were immediately approached by what seamed like 1 billion timeshare salesmen, acting like they were there to give us some information about the city and trying to get us to sign up for a free activity if we listened to their presentation. We declined and went out to find our shuttle.

The outside air was refreshing and warm. The shuttle ride from the airport to the hotel was about 20 minutes. I noticed that these guys have basically no regard for rules of driving. No turn signals, speeding, tailgating, flooring their car any chance they could get. I felt like I was home in Utah, but a little more frightened because I was the passenger.

When we arrived at our Hotel, we were greeted by "Roger", who was very nice, but little did we know he was another scummy sales guy, trying to talk us into a timeshare presentation or something like that. At first we were confused because he offered us breakfast as this place in the hotel the next morning. We were a bit confused because we thought he was helping us, but later we realized it was a timeshare presentation, so we decided to skip out on it (and it eventually pissed him off because when I told him over the phone, he just hung up on us).

We got to our room and found it nice enough for this trip. Alene loved the shower (black marble). My first observation about everything in the hotel was that the Mexican people are obviously known as hard workers, but when it came to building things, attention to detail was not too important. Just check out this paintbrush someone decided to leave when they last painted the place. It was stuck to the wall, in a little corner by the stairwell. I also noticed they like to use a lot of reebar instead of steel. Let's just say I was happy an earthquake didn't happen while we were there.

Enough nit-picking, because I really enjoyed the trip.

We immediately put on our swimwear and headed down toward the beach. All the food places were closed from about 4pm to 6pm, so we were hungry, but we decided to kill time at the beach. I didn't hesitate to jump in. I've always seen pictures of this clear blue water and I wanted to experience it. The funny thing is, you know it's the ocean in the pictures, but you never imagine it's as salty as the ocean of the pacific, even though it's still the ocean. I didn't go to gulp down ocean water, but I was immediately reminded it's JUST AS SALTY as the pacific, if not more. That water stung my eyes so badly and was terrible. If I stayed in it too long, I started to get nausious, either way, being out there made it worth it.

Here is a picture of me first getting in. It was after 5pm and the sun was setting, but I didn't care, I wanted in.


Here is Alene on the beach when we first got there.


Here is part of our Hotel (there were 5 separate buildings)


And finally, here I am attempting to body surf these toilet bowl waves. Notice the first day white belly and back.


I will post Day two when I have a chance.