Whirlwind Tour of Yucatan

After our first trip to the baseball stadium (see last post) Paul and I worked extra hard to get ready for our Whirlwind Tour of the Yucatan with our good friends Maggi and Fer. We (read: I) decided we should go to the beach and de-stress for a couple of days before they arrived so we stopped in Playa del Carmen for 2 days waiting for Fer and Maggi to FINALLY get to Mexico. It was a great time. Very relaxing, great hotel (Luna Blue) and weather and I got to wear my new bathing suit with matching bag. Excellent. Here are my toes, eat your heart out…
On Friday we went to the airport and waited for Fer and Maggi. We waited in the airport café for what seemed like a long time because we were so excited. Finally Fer and Maggi arrived in Cancun. They were the best guests ever letting us shuttle them in a literal circle around the peninsula showing them interesting (to us) sites and towns all the while babbling at top speed about, well, everything (Paul and Fer discussed baseball, real and fantasy, A LOT and Maggi and I planned all sorts of fun activities for the summer including knitting club (read: women’s wine club), gardening club (read: women’s outdoor wine club), and home improvement club (read: Melissa-and-Maggi-make-lists-of-chores-for-Paul-and-Fer-while-drinking-wine club). So the summer is pretty much set!

Saturday at Chichen we babbled some more, saw some ruins, and went to check on our pups. The Worley’s will remember pregnant Mama who had had pups when we went to Chichen for the Equinox. Here they are 3 weeks later. Super-cute!






After Chichen we hung out in Merida for a couple of days for touring and shopping. Here’s Paul on the tour bus. Not sure why he looks like he wants to kill me, but we had a good time ducking the tree limbs and low-hanging power lines! Look out! Then we were off to Dzibilchaltun where Paul and Fer discussed more baseball under the guise of ruin-climbing (can we say insider trading?) It should be noted that on day 4 Fer and Maggi still like each other, yay!


After touring Merida, we took a break and went to Celestun to the flamingo reserve. This was a special treat because Paul and I had wanted to visit but had never gotten around to it. We took an hour boat ride around the lagoon to see the flamingoes, mangroves, and a natural spring, which was gorgeous and then came back to Merida to relax in the evening. Although I took about a million photos of flying flamingoes, I have several photos of just sky (they fly faster than you think and on a moving boat, it was hard to catch them in the air!) Here is a photo of an actual flamingo, not just blue sky!


The next leg of the trip was the highlight of the Yucatan. We went to Santa Elena where Mariano and Fidelina Bonilla live and had lunch there. We stayed at Chel House at the Flycatcher Inn (amazing), ate a FABULOUS dinner at the brand new restaurant The Pickled Onion, and an AMAZING lunch with hand made tortilla at the Bonillas. We also visited Uxmal before heading back to Merida one last time. Here is Maggi making tortillas! Doesn't she make a great Mayan woman?!

That evening Maggi and I went shopping and Paul and Fer went to Trompos to have tacos al pastor (never mind they play baseball on ESPN there) and then it was off to Cancun the next morning. We stayed at a nice hotel in Cancun and Maggi and I checked out the pool after getting thrashed around in the big ocean waves. The water was lovely but the old men circling around us like vultures talking about "business" got old quick. Gross! Old men! Ew! Luckily Fer had his "old men are circling around my wife" radar on and came and rescued us. We decided to move to the hot tub where the old men promptly followed us. The first old man in the hottub said (and sadly I'm not kidding) "Stop all that farting! Look at all the bubbles!" Oh Cancun... oh old men...

The next day we dropped Fer and Maggi off at the airport with two bags full of our stuff to take back with them and then headed back to Merida. Vacation is over, classes begin again tomorrow, need to pack for Costa Rica. Stay tuned for Costa Rica photos!


M

Happy April Fool’s Day!

and to you baseball fans, Happy Opening Day!
Paul got his baseball fix on Friday night when we went to a Leones game here in Merida. The Leones are the defending champions! We watched them win last season (on TV) when we had just arrived in Mexico. Friday night we finally made the trek out to the stadium and sat right behind home plate. The game was great! The Leones were socking it to the Pirates of Campeche (local rivally even!). The food was worth mentioning since we had a very eclectic smorgasbord of snacks including: french fries, pizza, popcorn, tacos al pastor, and the best deal of the night, $1.25 Corona. It was the closest to nickel beer night we’ll ever know! ha! The game was fun to watch and the breeze was great but the innings went by super slow. It started at 8pm and at 10pm we were in the 4th. We didn’t stay for the whole game because we had to take a taxi back to the apartment but it was a fun time. We are hoping to go back this week or next when F and M are here.

NCAA Tourney: Noah the Gnat and Grandpa Oden
Baseball has been a good replacement to the NCAA tourney. My bracket is so messed up I can’t even check my standings anymore and I do not give a crappy crap which team wins. I think Noah is an annoying freak and I think Oden is a really good basketball player for being 38. I guess I want Ohio State to win only because a Florida repeat might mean that Noah stays another year to do it again, and I really don’t want that. (that’s a joke)

The Good Shepherd: D+/C-
Yesterday, seeing as it is getting brutally hot here, we decided to go to a movie in the air conditioning. We saw The Good Shepherd with Matt Damon and Angelina Jolie. Paul’s comments, “It wasn’t like Munich, I didn’t feel like hours of my life had been stolen…” Paul gives it a D. If you ask me, it seems like the movie made sense at some point and then the editor got high or something and went a little crazy with snipping clips. I give it a C. It was okaaaay, but nothing to hop off the couch and rush to the movie theatre to see. One annoying aspect of the movie was that I had read on Yahoo a while back that Jolie was having trouble getting a visa to the Congo for filming. Well, I kept waiting for her to end up there because I had read about it online, but in the movie it doesn’t make sense how she would end up there at first, so that was distracting and misleading. That’s what I get for reading way too much “news” on Yahoo.

For real news, I consult this guy.

We are off to the beach on Wednesday for some relax time and to wait for F and M to get here (hurry up!). We’ll have lots of adventures to relate then!

Much Love

M