The Tuesday after the wedding Nate and I headed off to Playa del Carmen, Mexico for our honeymoon. Playa (as the locals call it) is about an hour south of Cancun and has none of the Spring Break crowd but all of the local culture that Mexico has to offer. The hotel we stayed at was an all-inclusive resort called Playacar Palace. I would HIGHLY recommend this place. The hotel itself was very airy and open, the staff was amazing, the food was pretty darn good, but the location was fabulous! We were literally steps from the beach, half a block from the ferry to Cozumel, and a half block from Avenue de Quinta (5th Avenue) a six block long shopping strip with everything from high end botiques to shops that you thought were a little too, um, local looking. Our days were filled with, literally, whatever we wanted to do. The first two or three days we slept in, walked Avenue de Quinta, played in the ocean, napped, and played chess.
A view of our hotel room's living area. We had a great honeymoon suite with a wonderful balcony right off the bedroom.
I have to tell you about chess! I've never played before but the hotel had this huge chess set with pieces that were at least two feet high. The first day we played Nate showed me how all the pieces moved and then proceeded to kick my butt in the fastest game every played. The next night I did a little better but Nate still easily beat me. By the third night, though, I started holding my own a little and Nate had to pay more attention to his moves as I started to steal a few of his pieces. The last night we played I triumphed! Nate was getting a little cocky and I easily stole his Queen without him evening noticing my move! Then, I was able to take his Knight and he had no way to realiate. Finally, I was able to say check...mate? Sure enough, we looked, and without him evening beginning to fully realize my awesomness I had checked his King. Yes, in five nights I had not only learned the game of chess but the student beat the teacher. Woo Hoo!
The other neat part about playing chess was that the game was always in the same place. So when we played each night we happened to play next to the main outdoor bar. The bar tender, Carlos, was on each night and got to recognize us and our drink order. The time came when our drinks were empty and instead of waiting for us to come back up to the bar for a refill, Carlos brought a second round out to us. By the end of the week Carlos would spot us heading in his direction and begin our drink order while having those at the bar wait a bit longer. Yes, we tipped him well for this service but it was still pretty awesome of him to do so in the first place.
The view of the beach and the ferry to Cozumel from our balcony. Had we jumped we would have landed on the beach. 10 steps later, the ocean!
While we mainly dined at the hotel's restaurants, it being all-inclusive and all, we did get out onto Avenude de Quinta for food, shopping, and people watching. Pretty much every day found us leasurely strolling through the street, stopping to browse or shop some stores, and catching the local sights.
Here's a picture of Avenue de Qunita from where we stopped to have lunch one day. Notice how empty the street is! According to our hotel the area was only at 60% capacity. Definitely a smaller set of tourists.
During our lunch, these gentleman serenaded us. The only song ANY of the players sang (not just these three but any of the number of singers) was La Bamba in Spanish. I guess they figured we gringos would know it and therefore be happier.
Nate really liked this shop. They rolled their own cigars right in front of you. The other neat thing was that the climate was just right enough that they hung the tobacco from the ceiling to dry. When you walked into the shop it smelled like a gentleman's club.
We did get away from Playa on one day. We decided to go to Chi Chen-Itza, which is one of the most well known Mayan cities in Mexico. Our day was definitely an adventure. First, Nate woke up not feeling too well, but knowing how much I wanted to see the ruins (I did offer to stay home that day and head out another day I'd like to add) he said that he'd be just fine and we would continue to see the ruins. Then our 2.5 hour drive (which we knew about) to the ruins turned out to start out by spending about an hour or so picking up other tourists from their hotels on the way to the ruins. Additionally, we stopped for lunch at some buffet place that you know existed just to feed the people going to the ruins. A little different from my idea of heading out to the ruins on a small tour bus and getting meal tickets for the on-site luncheon. So by 1:30pm we had started out on our bus ride, picked up additional tourists, shopped (I didn't buy anything, though) at a gift shop, and had eaten lunch. Notice that there was no actual ruin touring yet. Nope, we didn't get the ruins until 1:45pm.
On the way to the ruins we saw this contruction site. A tad bit more lose on the safety culture than what I'm used to at work.
We finally got to the Chi Chen-Itza ruins and proceeded to get a guided tour by our tour guide. We learned about the importance of the snake to the Mayan people (the snake takes 360 days before it sheds its skin then five days to shed it's skin - where we get our 365 day calendar), the importance of the sun and equinox in relationship to the temple (as the year passes the sun sets further and further down the side of the temple - when it's planting season the sun shines on the snake statue at the bottom of the temple), the importance of the warrior from the Tuloc influence (the majority of the stones in the various buildings had carvings of the different types of warriors on them), among other things. Our guide was full of knowledge and really funny. He even made a cute little joke when we saw an iguana. "How do you tell the boy iguanas from the girl iguanas? The boys go like this (he nodded his head yes) and the girls go like this (he shook his head no). :-) About this time the sickness that Nate had felt earlier started to rear its ugly head. On the last ruin (the ball field - where they held ceremonial games) Nate had to step away and keep from throwing up. Due to shade and lots of water he kept his stomach down, but I knew it was time to leave the ruins and go sit a spell before the bumpy ride back. I think Nate felt better by doing so, but sleeping on the way home definitely did the trick. Rest was the plan for the end of the evening (and since we didn't get back until 8pm that's all we had time for) and by the next morning Nate was pretty much right as rain.
Nate and I in front of the main ceremonial temple. When explorers found it the jungle had taken over and trees and such were growing out of the sides of it. Archeologists used stones from two of the sides to completely rebuild the other two sides so we would have an idea of what the temple looked like.
Again, honeymoon-itis (or laziness) hit and we spent Saturday and Sunday sleeping in, playing in the ocean, and people watching. I have to interject that playing in the ocean was AWESOME!!! The first few days we were there the wind was really blowing and the waves were huge. So of course we had to jump them. I usually lasted an hour or so and then one too many big waves would knock me over getting water up my nose (salt water in the nose really hurts!) and I'd have to call Uncle and go sit on the beach for a while. The last few days we were there the waves were a lot calmer but every once in a while a sneaky one would come through and shove me to shore. Nate got a huge kick out of this. :-)
Well, early early Monday morning the sickness that Nate had came to settle in my system. I guess on the one hand I was lucky as I didn't have all the symptoms Nate had, but on the other hand the symptoms I had were much worse. I started throwing up at 1am Monday morning and proceeded to throw up every two hours from then on. At 12pm Nate finally decided that there was something really wrong and so he called the hotel's doctor to make a visit. One shot in the backside later and the nausea went from every two to every three or so hours. At 8pm I had a pretty bad episode that included breathing difficulties, so back the doctor came. This time with two shots in the backside. Yippee! One of the shots hurt so bad that it took me a good five minutes before I could do anything but moan. The funny part (yep, I see humor in everything) was that I had Nate make me an ice pack for one of the second shots. Since Nate had to pack for the flight home the next day I kept rearranging the ice pack until eventually I got it in a spot where the cold felt really good. About an hour later Nate wanted to make sure that the ice wasn't too close to my skin so as not to cause a cold burn. I twisted my hip and that's when we found out that the arrangement that had felt so good meant I was literally sitting on the ice. Needless to say Nate removed the ice pack :-) Oddly enough it took another two weeks for the one side of my backside to feel better. As I felt a HUGE knot I can only imagine I got some sort of muscle bruise from the shot that was just stubborn and didn't want to go away.
Me, Monday afternoon, not feeling well.
Finally, Tuesday morning arrived and it was time to come home. We both admitted that while we'd had a lot of fun in Mexico we were both excited to come home to our new house, our familar bed, and normal American food. So while we definitely recommend Mexico to people we also recommend taking anti-biotics, being extremely careful about not drinking any water, and not getting too upset with a day of sickness. Turns out EVERYONE we've talked to that has been to Mexico has gotten sick at least one day. Um, why didn't we hear these stories BEFORE we booked the honeymoon?! :-)
The sun rise from our hotel room on the last day of our honeymoon.
Now we're home and enjoying married life! I hope you've enjoyed these wedding posts as I've thoroughly enjoyed writing about all our activities. I suppose it'll be back to 'normal life' posts here on out, but I hope you stick around to read what we're up to. I enjoy reading about your lives as well!
