What is more beautiful and exciting than to have a dream vacation? Something that you can only do once every 5 or 10 years but that celebrates the culmination of goals met, things accomplished and an anniversary to remember. Something that you have worked hard towards, investing in a lifetime of relationship and dreams come true.
Okay, let me get to the point. We had planned last year that we would like to do something extra ordinary for our 5th anniversary, which was this past August. We went back and forth, not sure what we wanted to do, considering different options but not quite clear on what it would be.
We finally decided that we would like to experience something we had never done before. Go somewhere we had never been to and even get someone else to plan it for us and all we would have to do is to go along with it. Get a travel agent. That’s it!
That’s what got the ball rolling. We planned ahead about 3 or 4 months…I don’t remember exactly but after we had decided on a travel agent we picked our destination and after a few days of planning, research, and talking to our travel agent, we had our plane tickets and pretty much every thing came together in a short time. Sounds easy, right? It was.
We decided on a resort surrounded by 200 acres of rainforest and jungles, ocean front beaches, swimming, and about all the exotic land activities you could think of. I mean, how would it be to be casually walking to our breakfast buffet in the morning and a monkey would be sitting there watching you, swinging through the trees, and wrestling with it’s babies? How about the parrots and the exotic birds and wildlife that greeted you every where we went? How about a walk on the ocean floor, surrounded by hundreds of fish and ocean creatures and sea life? How about drinking coconut water out of a fresh coconut? Yes, we will take all that…and more!
When we arrived in Mexico, it was a reminder of how tropical it is and what a different culture we were in. I was so glad for Jabel cause he had a way of understanding the mixed up Spanish and English language better than I can. The public areas like the airports still required masks and trying to communicate to someone who speaks a different language, on top of having your nose and mouth covered, took extreme concentration! On top of that, everyone wanted to help you and sell you their best deals! It did go pretty smoothly though, and we had great flights, which we were so thankful for! Since we had gone through a travel agent, everything was already booked for us and basically we just had to tell them our last name and they knew right where we were going without any explanations. Our resort was about an hour drive from the airport. We had about a 15-20 minute wait at the airport, than after the shuttle van was filled, we left for the resort. The other passengers on board all went to different areas of Cancun so we got to see a lot of different areas. Most of the driving went pretty good, but coming into the back roads that were winding and narrow and speeding along and stopping and starting at swift intervals was not for the weak in stomach. Thankfully, neither of us gets car sick easily, but there was one passenger who got real sick and we had to stop by the side of the road so he could throw up. :{ I think I started to feel a bit green after that too, but I tried my best to not think about it!
The resort was just amazing! It was even better than we had thought it might be. Massive buildings with towering pillars and water features throughout the whole area. Plants and dining areas, sofas, bamboo and resort boats that floated by every 10 minutes for passengers. Colorful, towering buildings at every corner, and bright, colorful pairs of parrots to greet you in random places in the resort. Being the bird lover that I am, the parrots were one of my favorite things about Mexico. Tropical birds have the most stunning colors! More on that later but first check out the closeup of the feathers of this parrot.
Those colors truly amazed me! Later, we had an amazing time walking through the aviary but more on that later.
We had bought the all inclusive package with the Occidental resort, which included all the buffets and restaurants and an unlimited access into the xcaret park. ( pronounced ESH-CU-DET) . We did pay for any extra events outside of the park, which was not included in our package.
After we had unpacked on that first evening, we walked down to all the buffets and restaurants, trying to imagine what it would be like to eat whatever we wanted and not have to pay the bill. Well, technically, we did pay for it, but you know, it’s the idea of it that counts when you’re on vacation. 🙂 We quickly realized that American Mexican restaurants are not even close ( or most of them) to eating Mexican food in the culture. That first evening we ate at a taco place. I had a chicken quesadilla with fresh tomato salsa and guacamole, and Jabel had a sort of Mexican pizza… I can’t remember the name. I also had a sauce with my quesadilla that was so burning spicy, that just one tiny bite made my mouth burn through the rest of my meal! I stayed far away from that stuff afterwards! Jabel was very excited about all the special drinks and alcohol . He drank two daiquiris and a margarita. lol. 🙂 I think we might’ve both over done it in the food department those first few days because we both would end up feeling a bit too full afterwards. But it was soooo good!! 🙂
more pictures from the resort 
Unfortunately I don’t have the food pictures to show right now to tempt you but hopefully I will have them on a later date for the blog.
We spent the first two days walking the park, getting familiar with the area and eating. 🙂 Since we would be here for 8 days we decided to take two days to explore on our own than after that we would have events and activities that we would like to do. We did one new thing every day after that. It was so tropical, palm trees everywhere, monkeys, exotic birds, deer, butterflies…and mosquitos! We had ocean and beach access but decided to wait to go there until we had explored the park. I was excited to do some photography and couldn’t wait to get out and use my camera!
The first two days we went to the butterfly house and the aviary. My two personal favorite places within the park. I told Jabel it feels just like heaven! 🙂 We did decide though, that in heaven we wouldn’t be sweating so much because it’s so hot. 🙂 It was truly HOT!! And extremely humid! Most evenings after we got back to our room we would be soaked and we had to peel off our clothes. It was actually hard to drink enough water to replenish the amount of liquid we lost in sweat! But that was a minor detail in light of the fun we were having!
This concludes part one of our vacation. It’s like reliving it in a sense as I write. 🙂 I am looking forward to taking you along on this journey in parts 2 and 3. So stay tuned! You won’t want to miss it!