We're back from Mexico, sadly : (

I know this is insanely long for a blog post, especially with no pics or video. We hope to have at least some video/pics up by the end of the weekend, so please check back! In the meantime, we hope you have half as much fun reading this as we did living it. Also, hopefully, it makes sense. All the time we spent being pounded by the sun while we were pounding the cocktails, stuffing our faces, listening to people speak all kinds of languages (some resembling English), and generally being stupid vacationers trying to kill any brain cells that wouldn’t relax as directed…this stands to be a dribbeling bit of rubbish (Monica, thank you for the Top Gear book, the Britishness has rubbed off).

Day 1: 2 smooth flights, great weather, views of reefs from 37 thousand feet. We were given champagne while checking in. While we waited for our room to be ready we drank 2 great margaritas each and had chips, salsa, guac, and lots of water. While we enjoyed the great food and beverages, we basked in the view of the turquoise water and spastic guests trying to learn windsurfing…that may be us tomorrow. Once checked into our king room we changed out of pants (suitable at 3 am in the Rockies but not so much for the humid 86F tropics) and into bathing suits. We headed to the beach with snorkels/masks and whimpily made our way into the water. We saw 2 small rays while we tried to acclimatize our sorry asses to tropical water. Shortly after taking the plunge we saw schools of fish, lobster, crab, puffer fish, trumpet fish(?), and many others that I cannot identify. The buoyancy of the salt water allowed us to effortlessly float about and enjoy the sea life right offshore from the resort. We headed back in after watching the sun set from the water and had the serenity impeded by drunkards blabbering about Cialis, Viagra, 41 yr old sex vs 18 yr old sex and heart-attacks. We could only handle so much, back to the room to get ready for dinner…the buffet was good but not amazing. There were lots of options; another margarita for me and a mai tai (high-octane pineapple juice) for Julie.
The room is nicely decorated/finished, we’ll see how comfortable the bed is shortly. The ac does just enough, there is a balcony, shower and separate tub (great for all the dive gear).

Day 2: We slept well, until the tropical birds woke us. We nearly tripped over a 3.5ft iguana in the middle of the walkway just outside our room on the way to breakfast. It turns out that the signs on the property aren’t a joke. There were several around our table watching everyone eat and waiting for someone to disobey the ‘do not feed the iguanas’ sign; they didn’t have to wait too long. There were also some birds that appear to be descendants of velociraptors. They stared us down with their creepy dinosaur eyes while we ate bacon, croissants, pancakes, and fruit. We’ve now been here about 24hrs, the drinks are all varying degrees of excellent (so long as you can drink them before they fill with gnats) and the food ranges from fine to ‘oh my god, this is sooo good.’ We’ve been snorkeling just off the property, soaked up the sun (perhaps a tad too much), stroked an iguana’s tail as it hid under the walkway, broken a camera (glad we also brought the new one and it’s not what broke), and sailed on a Hobie Cat which we managed to get a pontoon fully out of the water. We watched the extremely orange sun slowly sink below the horizon as the resort staff raked the beach. Julie said the most work she did all day was sneeze, that’s a good day! I need to remember to get sunscreen on the back and we both need to reapply. After only one day, it looks like we are both
wearing red reverse-swimsuits. Tomorrow, we dive.

Day 3: Julie had a horrible and vivid dream about getting tangled in something and drowning while diving. The reality of it made her sick so she decided not to dive today, a good call. She wouldn’t let me not go so I left her alone sick in paradise while I went out to swim with the fish. A shot of patron helped cure her upset stomach and the sea life helped me not worry about her too much. I know I’m still an inexperienced and untraveled diver; no matter, there’s a reason people keep coming back here. The diving was amazing. Just surf the current, not so strong you can’t hold your position to see something really cool, not so weak that you have to use your fins to move about. The variety of sealife was astounding! I saw tons of coral, 2 turtles, 2 nurse sharks, a small moray eel, and thousands of fish (most of which I’ve never seen before and cannot identify).

Day 4: Another day of diving, this one started off with Julie. She slept much better and was really looking forward to it. The dive master/guide made Julie her special project, making sure to keep a close eye on her comfort and safety throughout the dive. Julie did great, she had great buoyancy control, had fun and saw lots of great stuff-including a ray, the one thing she really hoped to see! She even spotted a moray eel! Unfortunately, she got seasick during our break on the surface between the two scheduled dives. We took her back to the hotel so she could recoup while the rest of us went out for the second and final dive of the day, right off the beach from the hotel. I saw a couple more nurse sharks and a HUGE lobster that would have made for several meals. By the time we got back to shore, Julie was all better and waiting for me at the beach-side restaurant. While eating lunch, a couple, that was on the boat with us, came by to give Julie some seasickness pills that she can use for her next and final day of diving. Everyone is so nice, not just the resort staff and dive operator but the other visitors too. We spent the rest of the afternoon on the beach, drinking more margaritas than we care to disclose, dozing in the shade, listening to the surf, and occasionally watching fish swim around our feet as we tried to cool off. Dinner was to be an event, Mexican buffet served at the beachside restaurant (normally just lunch and drinks are available there), with a mariachi band. Normally, mariachi annoys us at Mexican restaurants…not this. They were REALLY good! Two violins, 2 different guitarish type instruments and a trumpet…they could sing and whistle and ayayay with the best of them. The food was great, as was the music and three more margaritas each…they probably made the former that much better.

Day 5: No diving today for either of us, so we thought we had the opportunity to sleep in. It didn’t work out to plan, housekeeping above and next-door were dragging all of the furniture around and it made a crazy loud deep rumple that woke and kept us both up at around 7am. After breakfast, playing with the camera, and updating this log, it’s time to bathe in sunscreen (we’re both already varying degrees of tan/red/peeling) it’s time to hit the beach again. Another nice day on the beach. We both read our books and sat in the hot shade and even hotter sun. There wasn’t much of a breeze so the sweat was dripping rampantly. We had a wonderful Mexican lunch (fajitas, tortillas, chips, salsa, etc.),\ and more yummy cocktails but decided to skip the whole fried Lion Fish. I became very itchy and noticed some red bumps that might be from some floating stuff in the ocean, but a margarita (or two) seemed to help me forget how itchy I am. We had a very yummy Italian dinner where Julie got the best balloon hat, pictures to follow. Now we are ready for bed and excited about another day of diving.

Day 6: The day got off to a good start, saw at least a half dozen iguanas and lizards on the way to/from breakfast. Julie nearly stepped on a 4 footer a couple days ago. Today we both dive and we’re hoping that the seasickness pills work for Julie…they did a bit, but not completely. She stayed on the boat the whole time and went on both dives! For whatever reason, I seem to not breathe at all underwater, I can make my tank last significantly longer than most people of my limited experience. This means I get to stay underwater longer and see some things that Julie doesn’t. I spotted several things before her dive ended, a HUGE (at least 2ft eye-to-tail) lobster, a large crab, and a ray. Our wonderful dive master found lots of great things for us, including, turtles, a sea cucumber, and a pretty black and white fish with a really long tail that we assume is rare. Dinner was pizza on a quiet terrace, tortilla like crust. It was as good as the accompanying margaritas.

Day 7: We were rudely awaken by the alarm for the final time (not including our departure day) to get ready for my last day of diving on this trip. We saw about a dozen lizards and iguana on the way to/from breakfast. We both have a mild case of tourista, which, fortunately, has not yet made us late for the dive boat. Off I went for another dive on the famous reef, second in size only to Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. The people on the boat were immensely entertaining. I’ve learned how to display the Mexican equivalent of the middle finger and that people will indeed name their dogs Poopies and Puddin’ Tang. I swam through short caves and through canyons, and saw a half dozen turtles of various size (perhaps the same one twice), a 6ft moray eel swimming about in the open, a huge grouper (sorry for the nightmares, Monica), a couple small crabs, lots of beautiful coral, and millions of pretty fish. One of the other divers spotted a lion fish, although they are beautiful, they must be killed on site. Apparently, some jack wagon dropped a fish tank in the water off Florida a few years ago with only five or six of the buggers. They are now found as far north as Maine and all the way down to Venezuela. They have a huge appetite for baby reef fish so they can devastate a small section of reef in about a month. Biologists actually did DNA testing to link them to the original fish dumped off Florida. Anyways, our dive master stabbed it with a prongy thing used for hunting sea life, gored it’s brain, and tried to find a mutton snapper to feed it to. Unfortunately, after swimming around with it at the end of a stick for 5 minutes, she gave up and carefully (they can sting you up to 3 hours after death!) laid it on the reef.
Sadly, or not so sadly, Julie sat on the beautiful beach reading a great book and listening to a stupid tourist who came to a romantic beach resort alone and with only the clothes he was wearing…for a week, annoying everyone by trying to sell them his camera when he wasn’t reading a book on the beach…or making fun of stupid Americans who are reading on the beach. Yes, you read that correctly. Entertaining for perhaps 5 minutes, after which point nobody can resist the ensuing fit of murderous rage.

Day 8: It’s taken this long for us to say we miss something from home, our bed. We spent most of the day on the beach, reading, sipping margaritas, and staying in the shade. Dinner was fantastic, I had some sort of fish and Julie had steak in a red wine sauce. The margaritas just kept coming despite us not ordering them. We watched bats zoom through the patio picking off moths flying around lights. There was also a toad that blended in so well we could only see it when it moved. A very relaxing and uneventful day.

Day 9: Apparently 3 margaritas with lunch is fine, but not dinner. We slowly made our way to breakfast; we watched the iguanas and birds as usual. The birds seem to be in the middle of their mating rituals, more on that later. On the way back to the room we saw a small turtle just off the path, that’s a first. After cooling off a bit, it’s time to pack, back to reality tomorrow and work the day after. We spent most of our final day reading on the beach under a palapa. We did spend some of the last couple days hunting for the king of all iguanas. It is approximately 4ft long, striped, a huge dangly neck bit, and very punk rock looking bright orange spikes running down its back. We’d seen the beast twice, sadly, we were camera-less both times; sorry there are no pics to share. Just imagine an old lady at a punk rock concert and you know exactly how it looked…tough skin, turkey neck, stripes of the prison meets camo green variety, and spray painted orange hair to the knees. Besides the nearly constant itch on my arms and chest that have given little relief over the last few days, it was a very relaxing day. No more boozing , we had to put a stop to that before AA did. Just before dinner, Julie wanted to take a last look off our balcony. She looked down and saw several 6 inch crabs crawling in and out of gopher sized holes in the dirt…dirt. Also, we are about a 2 minute walk from the beach. We walked right up to a table at the fancy pizza joint, despite not have a required reservation and blatant dress code violations. The food was great and the birds were entertaining. They sound like someone was trying to tune in a radio dial, going from static to an old school nuclear or tornado siren. By the way, they also steal sugar packets off the table, often several at a time, open and eat them in the trees. There were tons of empty sugar packets all of the forest floor next to the restaurant; creamers too, I guess they got thirsty. On the way to/from dinner we of course saw many iguanas, some new variety of birds, and many various sized geckos sticking to the walls and scurrying about in a hunt for bugs.

Day 10 (the return): Relatively uneventful, except it wasn’t. Tourista wasn’t playing fair, hitting me hardest as we were supposed to check out and catch the plane. I spent the good part of the morning in and out of the bathroom (sorry) afraid we would miss the plane. We checked out, caught a cab, went through security, bought some crap at the gift shop, and waited. The first flight was uneventful and got us to Houston on time. It turns out that the 1.5 hour layover was not enough. We had to claim our bags, go through customs, go through security, recheck our backs, run to the other side of the airport, and tell the sandwich guy to hurry his ass up because our plane was already boarding. We barely had time to find a bathroom. The flight then left late, so we probably didn’t need to rush-of course. The pilot made up some time in the air; this was immensely helpful because it allowed us to sit in a holding pattern before our approach to Denver. We had enjoyed perfect Caribbean weather for 9 days, 90 degrees and sunny as hell. We were looping above the airport waiting for a whole in the storm, it wasn’t too long. Eventually, a hole big enough for our plane and 3 others opened. Welcome home to (no joke) 43 degrees, tornadoes, high winds, buckets of rain, snow, and hail. If anything else were possible I’m sure it would have happened too.

Final Thoughts: I believe a vacation must be epic in order to make the torture getting caught back up to normal daily life worthwhile. We obviously spent this trip at sea level, we were completely unplugged from the internet, made zero phone calls and only a hand full of text messages. Getting back to gainful employment/full-time studying, paying for meals and booze, and trying to burn off the many metric tons of ‘vacation weight’ at 5300ft will be extremely unpleasant. Just thinking about this is making us sick. Was the vacation epic, given our standards? Yes. Is the awaiting workload, voicemails, emails, and bills epic? Most certainly. Was it worth it? Ask me next week, but I sure hope so. My face is a strange combination of brown and red, and it’s so tight it’s like I had a facelift. So much has already peeled off it would make Goldmember salivate. I thought my skin had color before we left. I now know that comparing one’s complexion to others who are at the end of the same Colorado Winter does not give an accurate assessment. We’ve had so much to eat that I’m afraid the pilot will make us move to balance the plane. Yes it is strange seeing men in Speedos who use what appears to be a women’s tube top dress as a cover up. It is also strange to being enjoying the serenity of the mild surf with a cruise ship on the horizon one minute and the next be filled with Federales carrying assault rifles over their shoulders and gunships cruising about. Although there are many other places we’d like to visit, we can’t wait to come back. The people are wonderful, the food…the beach…the diving and everything else are great.