Feel Feel The Sun
Posted on | April 22, 2008 at 1:39 pm | 6 Comments
I know you all really, really want another entry in the extremely popular Guide To Kayak series I’ve been running, but I have to take a break today. You see, I’ve actually been on an extended weekend getaway with my girlfriend to Cancún Mexico for the past 4 days. We were lounging on the beach and by the pool, away from the Internet and all the worries of life back in the US of A. Those Kayak entries were written in advance. Thanks to Sue for posting them, so that I could stay in competition with Steve for the blogging-every-day thing. No, it’s not cheating. I put a lot of work into those advance entries!
Anyway, we had a really good time. The ocean is beautiful. We stayed at an all-inclusive resort (Barceló Tucancun Beach) and so never had to worry about where our next meal was coming from. The only problem we had was a grave miscalculation of sunscreen application. We got pretty burned our first day out at the beach and the pool (Saturday), and so couldn’t do any more of that the rest of the trip. But since we came back on Monday, we didn’t really lose that much pool time. Plus it gave us some time to check out the surrounding area and do some shopping.
Travel went very smoothly. The only hiccup was a long line at immigration in Mexico on the way down. We had to wait for over an hour. Luckily, the transportation to the hotel that I had arranged was still waiting for us when we got out of the airport. The hotel is kind of showing its age and is definitely not one of the top-tier ones, but the staff was very friendly and efficient and dealt with our few complaints quickly. The Guest Services people kept wanting to bus us down to their property in Playa Del Carmen to do some sightseeing and shopping for a day, but since they were being so insistent and annoying about it, we figured they would try to sell us a timeshare or something once we got down there, so we passed on that. The food ranged from bland to excellent. But mostly I like being able to drink as much as I want without paying anyone. Aside from the sunburn issue, we didn’t have any health issues. But of course we stayed away from the tap water to avoid tourista.
The weather was in the high 70s/low 80s pretty much the whole time we were there, but of course the humidity made it seem hotter. Most of the time we didn’t even need to run the A/C in the hotel room. There were some clouds, but they didn’t stay long and there was no rain to speak of. The ocean was pretty rough, so it wasn’t good for swimming, though I did attempt to beat back the waves with my huge hulking body (see photo). Cancún still hasn’t completely recovered from Hurricane Wilma in 2005 – the beaches are a lot smaller due to the erosion, for example. And the dollar/peso exchange rate certainly doesn’t make a Mexican vacation as cheap or attractive a prospect as it used to be, but it’s still nice a place to visit. All in all, it was a great little getaway, but too short, and I’m not looking forward to going back to work and my normal life tomorrow. I’ve started a Cancún picture set at Flickr. There’s not much there yet, but I hope to add more in the next few days, depending on how long it takes me to catch back up on TV.
Okay, sorry for the interruption. I’ll get back to the Kayak Guide soon.
Más Adelante.
Comments
6 Responses to “Feel Feel The Sun”
April 22nd, 2008 @ 3:54 pm
This is how I’ve managed to stay sunburn free on my vacations to Florida, Mexico, Jamaica, etc.: http://www.coolibar.com/
They sell sun protective hats & clothing.
April 22nd, 2008 @ 4:54 pm
Those past few post titles would always seem to me, for a split second, to read “an Incompetent Guide…” and so I kept wondering when the band was gonna fall out of those pointy canoes and get wet.
April 22nd, 2008 @ 10:49 pm
Sweet! Those all-inclusive resorts are nice. We’ve done the Sandals/Beaches ones a few times. No need to try to carry a wallet in your swimsuit. No tipping either, at the places we went.
Sounds like you had a great time. Probably wise to skip the Playa Del Carmen come-on.
The last couple vacations we’ve used Banana Boat Quick Dry Sport sunscreen. You just spray it on and it works. No rubbing needed. As you spray it on you can see a glossy sheen which makes it easy to get complete and even coverage. But watch close because it drys quickly! It works quite well; we’ve gotten no burns since we started using it (even at the last resort we stayed at, where we got, shall we say, more sun than usual).
They had those shower dispensers you show at your flickr site at Desert Shadows (now Desert Sun), though they were more compact. Like a single unit with three buttons. Seemed more cheesy than cool to me though. Interesting that the ones in your picture are labeled in English. Was that in Cancún?
I hear you need a passport now to go to Mexico and back. Haven’t been there in ages, even though it’s a fairly short drive from home.
Though we all quiver in eager anticipation at the thought of the next Kayaking Guide, perhaps you could steel yourself to blogging some more about your Cancún experiences?
April 23rd, 2008 @ 7:11 am
Strange, I would have expected a heathen like you to be on the no-fly list with the rest of us.
April 23rd, 2008 @ 8:08 am
Seemed more cheesy than cool to me though. Interesting that the ones in your picture are labeled in English. Was that inc?
Yeah, that was in Cancún? I didn’t even notice the English until you pointed it out. Strange. There were at least as many Mexican tourists at the resort as English-speaking ones, at least while we were there.
As someone pointed out on my Flickr site, the dispensers are probably there to save money and keep people from taking the soaps and little bottles of shampoo back with them. Although they did also give us bars of soap.
Thanks for the spray-on sunscreen suggestion – we’ll have to try that.
Yes, you do need a passport these days, even for Mexico. We even had to swipe our passports through a machine at check-in at the Denver airport. The funny thing about that is that it wouldn’t recognize Nancy’s fancy new chip-embedded techno-passport and she had to enter the info manually, whereas my old fashioned about-to-expire low-tech passport had no problem.
April 23rd, 2008 @ 8:15 am
Strange, I would have expected a heathen like you to be on the no-fly list with the rest of us.
Yes, I guess our theocratic administration hasn’t been reading my blog.