Isaac and I decided that we wanted to travel somewhere really fun before he starts grad school and we have no time or money to go anywhere. So, we made plans back in February to go to Cancun for spring break between semesters this past April!
I had never been to Mexico before, but knowing that Isaac spoke Spanish really helped calm my nerves. We planned to leave the Saturday after Isaac's graduation. So this trip was also kind of a graduation present for both of us as well, what with Isaac graduating in April and my graduation (hopefully, if I pass all my classes) this month.
My family rented an AirBnB for Isaac's graduation in Idaho Falls, so the night of Isaac's graduation, we went and spent the night at the house with them because we had to get up before dawn to get to SLC Airport on time and we wanted to spend as much time with them as we could. After getting to the airport at 7 and sitting around for an hour, we learned that the first flight of our day was canceled due to a blizzard happening in Minnesota. Freaking Minnesota! Luckily, Isaac and I were able to rebook for the next day, and it was a straight shot into Cancun! Jackie let us go and stay at her house for the night, even though she and Tyler were still up in Idaho Falls with my parents. My family is literally the best :)
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| Finally in Cancun! On the ADO bus :) |
To save money, we decided to rent out an apartment via AirBnB, so we took the local bus (ADO) to the terminal in Cancun which was right across the street from our apartment for the week.
The next day, Monday, we rented a car and went to the ruins of Tulum and Coba.
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On our way! Driving in Mexico is crazy, the speed limits fluctuate way too often, and they feel really
slow compared to Idaho haha. |
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| Guardian Iguanas! First ones of MANY we saw at Tulum :) |
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| Isaac was loving all the iguanas. |
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We loved these game courts! Felt like we were on the set of El Dorado. Believe me,
lot's of quotes from that movie were shared that day :) |
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Everyone raved about the blue water of Tulum! It was very beautiful, especially with the white
sand. |
Next: Coba! The thing we were most looking forward to in Coba was being able to climb up onto one of the ruins! All the ruins of Tulum were roped off, and I knew that when we went to Chichen Itza we wouldn't be able to climb on any of the ruins, so this was going to be our one chance!
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| The ruins of Coba are a lot bigger than the ruins of Tulum! We were in awe! |
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After walking about a mile or so through the jungle, we finally came to the temple that we could climb!
The whole reason for coming to Coba :) |
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| Pretty steep incline! |
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Isaac was a lot faster than me getting back down. Some of the steps were pretty slick due to
all the foot traffic. |
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| View after climbing up the pyramid! So many tree's! |
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| Our view driving home from Coba. Literally the whole way was wall to wall tree's haha! |
On our way back into the city, we got pulled over for "speeding". We were going the same speed as everyone else, but apparently we missed one of the randomly placed lowered speed limit signs. They were going to take Isaac's license until Friday but since we were returning the car the next day, they decided to just take all our money. Let's just say, I'm extremely grateful that everything turned out okay, and we didn't end up in jail or something. However, as they took all our pesos, we had to go get more in order to do everything we had planned.... this leads to the next tragedy. Isaac and I only brought our Discover credit cards *face palm*. Literally NO WHERE accepts Discover. We were getting really stressed, driving everywhere trying to find an ATM that accepted Discover, but we were running low on gas and had to take the rental car back, so we headed to the airport praying that they had an ATM we could use. Luckily, they did! I was so relieved when Isaac came back to the car with pesos!!! So, we filled up the car and drove to Puerto Morales to snorkel.
Puerto Morales is a tiny tiny town, and half of it was under construction and the whole beach was stuffed with people. We were there for maybe a total of 30 minutes, half of that was spent putting sunscreen on LOL! I bet you are all wanting to travel with Isaac and I after all of this ;). There was no point in snorkeling because of the overcrowding, so we swam around for a little bit and then decided to move on to Cenote Azul, which we LOVED!
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| It was beautiful! |
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| Bracing ourselves for the freezing water haha |
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| Saw some big fish! |
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| And a ton of little ones :) |
After swimming, we drove back to a highly rated restaurant close to the airport so we could return the rental car. This place was a hut, probably built by the owners themselves, right by the water in the Hotel Zone. It was down the hill, and there were no big signs or anything so without our GPS we never would have found it. The bathrooms here were very interesting. To flush, you had to dump a bucket full of water into the toilet, so there's a huge rain bucket thing in the bathroom with you. I was so confused, so Isaac had to explain it to me haha. Apparently on his mission in Guatemala, they had to do the same thing all the time.
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| The women in the back cooking our fish tacos, and a very excited Isaac! |
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| This was the restaurant :) |
Wednesday, we just stayed in Cancun and walked to Mercado 28 to do a little souvenir shopping. We found an awesome blanket to get. A lot of the shops had exactly the same thing, so we didn't spend too much time here. Then we went back and relaxed at the apartment, until dinner. I was getting a little tired of Mexican food (I know, I'm the worst) so we found a pasta place to eat that was super cute and very yummy, after we sent the chicken back to be cooked all the way haha.
Thursday was our tour of Chichen Itza! We had bought this tour in advance, so they picked us up from a hotel close to our apartment and we didn't have to worry about driving in crazy Mexico again :). The tour bus was really nice, and it was nice to relax and get a little more history of the ruins we were seeing.
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| Part of the wall for the game court |
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This game court was HUGE! The acoustics were amazing too. Score keepers on one end
could talk to the people on the other side without shouting! Super cool. |
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| Our guide! |
We were dying hot! Tried to stay in the shade as much as possible :)
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| Observatory |
The next stop in our tour was a cenote! This one was sunken pretty deep into the earth, so it was
very cool, and I was so excited!
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I was trying to get a picture of the stairs haha. There was a winding wooden staircase you had
to descend in order to get to the water. |
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| Happy to be cooled off :) |
Next stop was the city of Valladolid.
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| Beautiful church in the city square |
Friday I was sick, so we stayed at the apartment all day watching Mexican Netflix, which yes, is VERY different from American Netflix. First off, they have The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air! It was nice to have a day to relax before flying home, but it definitely wasn't fun being sick.
We had to wake up really early in the morning because our flight left at 7. The ADO buses don't run that early, so we asked our AirBnB host if she knew of a good taxi driver to take us to the airport, and she totally delivered. Our taxi driver was super nice! Our flight went from Cancun to Atlanta Georgia for a super long (11 hour) layover. Luckily, my cousin Sydney is going to school there, so we were able to hangout with her for most of the time. She, and her boyfriend Ryan, took us to lunch at a yummy Chinese place, and then we went to check out the Georgia Aquarium, which is HUGE and was amazing!
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| Otters are my favorite!! |
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I don't know why I didn't have Sydney and Ryan turn around for this selfie...
Fail Emma. |
These whale sharks were AMAZING!
After the aquarium, we went back to Atlantas ginormous airport and waited for our flight to SLC. We arrived around midnight and went and got our car from long term parking and drove to Hopes house! We hung out with family on Sunday, and then had to drive back up to Rexburg that night so I could start my internship on Monday. Crazy right?
This trip was so amazing, and I'm so glad Isaac and I got to go on this trip together. I can't wait for our next adventure together :)
