cindy's world

One of the memorable things about Cancun that I can’t believe I forgot to mention on the Cancun Thursday post was yoga that Thursday morning.

Diana and I met with the yoga instructor and walked to the white gazebo at close to 9:15a (the yoga instructor was again on Mexican time). I noted how the clouds over the sea were gray cumulonimbus clouds, and how fast they were moving. I told her I hope they hold out until we’re done.

They didn’t hold out. The gray was quickly over us, with light sprinkling. Since the weather’s warm and the rain is warm, we all said we didn’t mind a little contact with nature while we were doing our thing. The wind picked up, the drops got bigger and closer together. The gazebo ceiling became obsolete as the sheets of rain pelted us on a diagonal. Within minutes there was not one dry spot on the entire gazebo floor. Our yoga mats were soaked, all of us were soaked thru our clothes, and the torrential rain prevented me from even opening my eyes. We finally had to run for cover. This was only at 9:30a. The class stood by a covered station against the resort that gave out beach towels, discussing what to do next. The instructor and the other people in the class decided to continue their yoga in the ocean. I was not wearing a swimsuit underneath my clothes, as I normally would be. Plus it was getting a bit chilly without one square millimeter of dry fabric ANYWHERE on my body (and I don’t mean just damp; I mean DRIPPING, SOAKING WET), so Diana and I opted out to clean up and hit the gym and/or get breakfast.

On our way back to the room building, I remarked about the thoroughness of the resort staff to put cones on the outdoor walkways that say “caution: wet floor” into the 2-inch deep water collecting on the ground. I have never been that wet in my life, and that includes when I’m standing IN the ocean, cuz at least then water drips off certain body parts and leaves that area dry. The inside of my mouth was dryer than the outside of my body.

What a great experience.

“Raindrops keep fallin on my head
But that doesn’t mean my eyes will soon be turnin red…”

We hit the gym twice as usual. Because it had rained late morning and the outdoor activities had to be canceled, the resort activities directors came up with new activities that can be done indoors, such as table tennis and making friendship bracelets (remember the 80’s?). Brian, one of the directors, was inside doing his friendship bracelet thing and at his prompting, Diana walked around the table to join him. This was when she brushed her knee against a protruding staple at the edge of the table and ended up with 4-inch long scratch. The ensuing whimpering resulted in the appearance of the resort nurse, a lifeguard, and Fredy (one of the activities directors) all with huge first-aid kits in hand. I wonder if this is first-class service or whether the boys just ran all over themselves at Diana’s bidding. (Hint: it’s not the former.)

In the afternoon, we got our second spa treatment, called the Mayan Treatment (scrub, rinse, body mud, wrap, facial/scalp massage, rinse, lotion). Diana’s experience was great, and she was all aglow and happy. My treatment woman was weird. She didn’t leave the room when I had to get naked or shower like she was supposed to, she kept complimenting me on how beautiful my eyes were, she giggled a lot for no reason I could discern, and she gave me a 50 min treatment not realizing it was supposed to be 85. When the last thing was brought to her attention, all she could do to supplement the time lost was give me a 35 minute massage, which she didn’t give me the full time of because she didn’t make up for the time spent on clearing up the (her) confusion with the front desk person.

In the evening, Diana changed her mind about going out on the town with me because she wanted to stay behind and play volleyball with the boys. So I went out alone. I wandered around, got some great photos, got lost (what else is new?), went souvenir shopping, discovered a great mall and spent 30 pesos at their internet kiosk only to learn that Mike’s server is down so that I couldn’t even blog (I know, I’m a loser, but I wanted to say hi to you guys and touch base from Cancun!), sent a couple of emails, and wandered back to the resort at like 8:30pm. Diana was worried as I knew she would be since it took way longer than I had expected to find my way back to Dreams Resort. There was a detailed note on my bed about where she was going to be, even tho I did run into her just outside the entryway into our rooms building.

I’m playing with Jusspress.com’s features for webhosting photos. I can’t control the size of the photos, but that does take the pain-in-the-arse resizing step out of my photo postings. These photos are for the post entitled Cancun by Days: Wednesday 9-28-05 posted on 10-6-05. You can still sit your mouse over the photo for the caption.

More info on Chichen Itza

I left the group and took this photo as the crazy tourguide was rambling on and on.

Speaking of the crazy tourguide…

Getting ready to climb the pyramid (91 steps).

Even tho Diana wouldn’t venture out far from the “safety” of the wall, this is proof that she did suck up her fear of heights and was really at the top of the pyramid.

The view from the top was spectacular:

I hopped down real quick (mainly to avoid the slowpokes clinging onto the rope while descending on their asses at the speed of .00065 miles per day) to take a photo of Diana’s triumphant descent.

My favorite structure at the central quad is the Temple of a Thousand Columns:

I got in trouble for this pose. Apparently the rusty sign has some hidden symbol that allegedly translates to “do not climb.” *shrug*

Detail on a structural wall:

There were good things about our $10 tour to Chichen Itza and there were bad things.

Good things:
* amazing photos
* Diana got to conquer her fear of heights by climbing the 91 steps to the top of the pyramid, altho she was afraid to step out much to admire the view at that elevation
* I can say “veni, vidi, vici”.

Bad things:
* we woke up late (Diana’s alarm wasn’t set right) and ran the hell to the front of our resort to meet our pick-up at 7a, who was apparently on “Mexican time” (a lot of people were on “Mexican time”, which we learned means 15 mins late, treated cavalierly and without apology), so we sat idly for awhile wondering if we actually missed the pick-up, altho we were there punctually at 7a.
* the pick-up van dropped us off at a large tourist-sucking souvenier shop to assemble with other people going on the same tour…to wait 2 hours for the bus. We were ticked off. First of all, had we known this was their schedule, we would’ve just walked the 5 or so blocks from our resort to this meeting place and gotten there at 9, right before the bus came to pick everybody up, and we could’ve gotten more sleep and had a gourmet breakfast at our all-inclusive resort. Second of all, making us sit at the store in their transparent attempt to get us to spend our money is retarded because we’re not stupid enough to buy crap we have to carry around in the heat all day on tour.
* one of many indicia of bad planning by the tour organizers: the bus filled up completely and there were still 13 of us who had not boarded. Instead of riding the air-conditioned tour bus for 2.5 hrs to our destination, we went in a bumpy van following the bus which tossed us in all directions the entire drive out there.
* we had been told the tour included a buffet meal, and since we reached Chichen Itza at noon, we figured we’d have lunch there. After all, forcing us to leave at 7a means everybody skips breakfast, since the resort restaurants don’t typically open until 7:30a or 8a. But no. We were herded, hot, tired and hungry, to the grounds of the Mayan ruins.
* not eating and severe heat would’ve been tolerable, had not the tourguide completely ridden my nerves. Since he was a descendant of Mayan blood, he had a lot of pride in the ruins and lots, lots to say. Instead of an intro to the buildings’ history and architecture, we were subjected to hours in the hot sun of his favorite explorers (he walked around photos of these explorers), every build and rebuild history of the pyramid, and how he had “good look” (he meant “luck,” I’m pretty sure) because his Mayan gods saw to it that he had the blood of heroes running in his veins, on and on. While we stood there, unable to go exploring, I saw other tourgroups that arrived after us start going into the buildings as the place got more and more crowded. I grew so irritated that I tuned out his incessant rambling and walked away to take photos.
* we did not get our meal until close to 4pm, which was in the outdoor cafeteria restaurant of a nearby hotel. The hotel was rustic and pretty, there were peacocks running wildly among the patrons, but the food SUCKED. It made me miss the authenticity of Taco Bell.

The people on our van were so irritated that instead of going to the underground caverns of natural springs, which was next on our list, we opted to leave early and the van driver acquiesced by taking us back to our hotels. The people on the bus were apparently in good spirits and comfortable enough to finish up the tour. I tried to sleep thru the 2.5 hr van ride back to Cancun, but the severe jolts as I was nearly thrown from my seat in all directions on the x, y and z planes made the ride very miserable.

This was when Diana and I started referring to Dreams Resort as “home.” “I wanna go home!” “Oh, it’s SO good to be home!”

I really tried to get my images going, but the image hosting program is still giving me problems. I upload the photos and it seems to take, only when I go into the list of files online, they’re never there. I still have 90% of my allotted memory left. I don’t know what’s going on. I may have to find a new image hosting site.

Argh. I have Cancun’s Wednesday post all written and my photos selected and resized, but the image hosting website’s been having issues all day and I can’t upload the photos. Maybe I should just post the text and add photos later. Sans illustrations does make the post lose some of its flavor, tho.

Dreams resort provides myriad activities per hour throughout the day we can enjoy on its expansive private grounds. This day, our 9am hour was spent on yoga (Diana’s first time!) under a white gazebo, located on a protruding cliff called Punta Cancun, surrounded by water. This is absolutely the fantasy yoga spot. Unbelievably blue sky clustered with white cloud puffs hanging over a turquoise and emerald striped ocean. Iguanas sunning themselves on rocks around us. Beach view to the right. Cliff and greens view to the left. The sound of waves crashing lulling us into serenity.

After yoga, we actually did water aerobics at the urging of the resort program directors whom Diana befriended, as you’ll see in the photo of the cocktail class we took at 2pm. Water aerobics concluded with me having to kiss and be kissed by 2 women, whereas Diana did the same with the 2 men you see in the cocktail photo.

Diana (who got “volunteered” to do a cocktail demo by the guys) named her cocktail “Cindy’s Favorite Drink,” but I think it should’ve been called something like a Latin-Asian Sandwich.

After a little bit of sand volleyball and our classes, we had lots of beach time again. I fell asleep on my lounger and when I woke up (to Diana pouring bottled water down my back), I told her I have no idea what time it was or how long I’d slept. She said, “That’s the beauty of it. You don’t need to know.”

For dinner, we met the “anything waiter” at the resort’s Seaside Grille. We got kissed by this waiter (who tried to take us out salsa dancing but we opted to go back to our room to rest up for our excursion the next morning) and another random waiter who clearly had a huge crush on Diana. More on that in a later entry. On the walk back to the room after dinner, we lounged outside at the private “club-side” beach until we got chased back to our rooms by mosquitos.
The “club” is a more exclusive, VIP guest area with its own private lounge and infinity pool facing the gazebo.

(Do I need to remind you guys to rest the mouse pointer over each photo for captions?)

Hit the gym first thing in the morning, then walked 2 hotels over for our timeshare presentation. I got them to leave me alone by making myself their worst type of candidate: “I vacation, like, once every 7 years, so I’ll never be able to use your packages. I also can’t afford any packages, especially ones I won’t use.” Diana got them to leave her alone by folding her arms over her chest and saying firmly and stand-offishly that altho she vacations often, she’s unable to make any commitments or decisions of the sort on the spot, and furthermore, refuses to. After a couple of hours wasted on us, we collected our $10 Chichen-Itza excursions and scheduled it for Wednesday, then went back to our own much better resort.

We had scheduled a dual beachside massage for the afternoon, and that was incredible. It was done in a private cabana on the beach so that we’re listening to the ocean and had the incredible ocean view as we enjoyed our 50-min massages. We lounged in enclosed spa area afterwards and I enjoyed the complimentary fruit.

Check out the spa showers.

They’re open-air on one side!

Then we explored the resort and hung out at their private beach.

Arrival. Diana’s flight to Cancun was scheduled to land 10 minutes before mine, and she greeted me on the other side of Customs. At the airport, we allowed ourselves to be “suckered” into a timeshare presentation at another hotel order to score two excursions to Chichen-Itza for $10 each. (Average price for excursions: $80 per.)

The all-inclusive Dreams Resort & Spa was very appropriately named. See link for their photos. You’d think the colors of the water, sky, or resort are touched up, but they aren’t. We unpacked, worked out at their gym (not a bad gym!). We had our first drinks at an outdoors bar, then a nice seafood dinner at one of their amazing restaurants.

Cindy & Diana’s Cancun Vacation

First of all, I must say, it is good to be home. I really enjoy the cool SoCal air that breathes so much easier than the thick humid Caribbean atmosphere. But my skin seems to like the humidity. That being said, here’s my vacation, organized by days. (I will later hit categories when I have time.) This is a lot of work (piecing together my days and resizing/uploading my photos), so please be patient with me as I slowly put these posts up. And…prepare to be jealous. =)
Monday.
Wednesday.
Thursday.
Friday.