Mexico 2016

Just came home from Mexico late last night. This trip, the 8th, had some firsts. I went to Xel Ha, something I have been meaning to do for several years and my husband got sick. Really sick.

Xel Ha was amazing. Best snorkeling ever. Saw a stingray. Swam with a sea turtle. Tons of fish. I look forward to doing that again. Learned a lesson, see previous post. Take shoes you can attach to your life jacket. I think I burned the bottom of my feet walking on hot paths. Also, we turned our fins in before floating down the river. Those would have been helpful when trying to maneuver. But our lack of direction did lead to a lot of laughter. If you can't laugh at yourself...

Would have helped if we knew where we were going to. The map in my pocket, was not much help once it was water logged. We came upon a group of parrots in a little display area. They weren't there long, I don't know if the parrots come in to eat at a certain time, or what. But luckily, we happened upon them. Macaws, beautiful. And, we did our usual, we greeted them with, hell-o. One turns it's head and checks me out. I repeat, hell-o. Black beady stare. Then the light bulb ::bam:: Hello, to me, Mexican parrots. Hola, I say. Beady eye responds back, Hola. Who knew parrots spoke Spanish! ;)

As I mentioned previously, my husband got sick on Thursday. We were flying out on Saturday. You know it is serious when you call a doctor in Mexico. We were lucky, her English was pretty good. Medical terminology is often studied in English, or has roots in Latin. So we shared a common language. Her calculation from Celsius to Fahrenheit scared me, and was wrong. Not that I can do that calculation in my head either. Steve's 104 temperature, turned out to actually be 101.5. I know Fahrenheit has no more meaning to her than Celsius does to me. I knew looking at him that he was not running a 104 fever. He was breathing, alert and oriented.

We were discussing this afternoon how quiet it was at the resort. At least in our room. Our house is never quiet. You get so accustomed to the noise that you don't notice it anymore. We've not had the TV on all day. If seems like an unwelcome intrusion.

One bright to slightly woozy part of the trip was the Axel specials. Axel is an evil bartender (haha) but makes amazing margaritas. 

2 oz anejo tequila, he preferred Hornitos
2 oz Cointreau or Grand Marnier
1 oz fresh squeezed lime juice
Rim glass with salt and serve over ice

He says margaritas should not have syrup in them. Experience says he is correct, unless you want to drink more than 1 or 2.

Along the way, we taught a new English word to one of the servers. Eventually. She admitted that she did not know this word. Good to pay back, I have been taught many Spanish words. 

I almost forgot to mention the roller coaster flight into Cancun. There was a great deal of shaking, rocking and rolling. It was not a horrible flight, after all we remained in the air, But it was one of the roughest we have had. 

I also wanted to mention the unusual man at airport. Sitting at our gate waiting for our departure, this man walks up and sits down on the opposite side of the gate. Suit jacket, jeans, leather hat, sunglasses...here's the strange part, he's wearing boots that are so small his feet don't fit in them. They were those half boots with the zippers on the side. His were not zipped up, and his heel is hanging off the back. In addition, he is carrying a cooler as his carry on item. Then he started greeting people, like he knew them. Like they all belonged to a secret club that had a super, double secret, hand sign...only he was the only one aware of it. Nothing suspicious here. We boarded before him and wondered if they pulled him out for a random search. I was glad when he walked past our row on the plane.