Cancun - Day 9 - Xcaret

Today we went to Xcaret. We woke up this morning and had another breakfast in the restaurant in the lobby and then caught our shuttle bus at 8:15am (he was early again and we're glad we were out there) that took us to another bus on the freeway. Today though, we made it there before the bus, so that was nice! Onto the tour bus, we found some spare seats and then began our drive to Xcaret. Xcaret is a very cool place - one of our favorite places we've been on this trip. It's a giant ecological park... there are animal exhibits, underwater rivers that you can swim/snorkel in, coral reefs, ocean inlets, beaches, a bat cave, orchid farms, jungle treks, butterfly pavilions, aquariums, sea turtles, fish farms, restaurants, Mayan Ruins, etc.

We started off our adventure in the main lobby/entrance to the park and we were given until 5:30pm to explore on our own. So glad there wasnt a tour guide for this day!!! We first walked through the jungle trek where we saw lots of cool plant life and some cool birds. Then, in the jungle trek is the Orchid Garden and the Mushroom Farm, so we took some cool pictures there. I enjoyed playing with my camera lens on the super close up zoom and I think a lot of the pictures turned out cool. It was hot in the jungle today - very humid and we spent our entire day soaking in our own clothes :)






After the jungle trek we explored the aquarium and after the aquarium was my very favorite part of this entire trip... the sea turtle exhibit. There were a half dozen large tanks filled with little baby sea turtles - they are too young right now and when they grow up a little, they'll be released into the ocean. Aw - they are SOOO cute!!! After the baby turtles came the giant exhibit with the 14+ year old turtles - swimming all around, coming up for air, graceful, beautiful. If you've ever seen a sea turtle swim in real life (outside of a zoo - in the real ocean) and swam along with them, you know exactly what I'm talking about. They are tranquil creatures and I absolutely adore them! I took a ton of pictures of the turtles and got some great up close shots of one coming out of the water. I could have spent the entire day at the turtle exhibit just watching them swim around. After the turtles, we found a cozy place to sit under a palapa by the inlet to rest our feet and enjoy a bottled water. I had a little iguana friend who came over and sat right next to me the whole time and that was pretty cool.











After that we walked over to the bat cave. This is a real bat cave and we followed a staircase down deep into the ground, then followed a dark path several meters in illuminated by faint red lights (it was incredibly difficult to see) to the bat lair where there were many bats hanging in the cave, sleeping for the daytime. There was no plexiglass like you get at the zoo - just us and the bats and it was awesome. I loved it. The only thing they had outside about the bats was a sign that asked us to be quiet and not use flash photography because the bats are sleeping. Pretty cool. Entertainment parks (zoos, theme parks, exhibits, etc) are so different in the US than anywhere else... so regulated and controlled. I find it fascinating how laid back things are outside of the US. For example, along the turtle area were relatively skinny foot paths that dropped off to water and rocks below, yet there was not a single hand rail. No signs saying "Watch your step", no employees standing around making sure people walk in the right areas. Here in Mexico - if you're clumsy enough to walk of the edge to your doom below - that's your own damn fault! I like that :) So back to the bats - same concept... just two simple signs that said "Sssh" and another with a picture of a camera with the flash ex'd out Nice!

After the bats we walked over to the butterfly pavilion. This place was super cool. One of the biggest butterfly exhibits I've ever seen with awesome foot paths that walked you all over the exhibit from the rooftop levels to the ground levels, through jungle that was netted off all around to create a healthy and safe environment for the butterflies. Beautiful ones too - bright blue ones, some with stripes, some pure white, some with flourescent orange wings, just awesome. And, it also had a waterfall, and a very cool lily pad pond with beautiful blooming flowers. Both of us really liked the butterfly area and we spent a lot of time in there.






Leaving the butterfly area we walked over toward the underground caves where we explored a little while (or should I say we got lost for a little while) and ended up back at the entrance of the park when we finally made our way out. We were way off track back there, but it was fun to get back there underground! So we ended up walking around some of the other areas by the entrance we didnt see before and took some pictures of the animals... a giant bull, spider monkeys, a wild boar, deer, a couple of very pregnant jaguars (which look like mountain lions - I thought jaguars were spotted???), some mackaw parrots, and some flamingos.














After that we made our way back toward the butterfly exhibit to get some lunch at the international buffet restaurant they had there. It was delicious food and sitting in the shade with the breeze felt nice. We ordered a pineapple drink that came served to us in the pineapple with a smiley face toothpicked to it and it was so delicious! It had pineapple, strawberry, peach, grenadine, orange and rum. MMMMM!!!!! It was so good! After that we were both sleepy so we parked ourselves at a couple of comfy chairs overlooking the manatee exhibit and took a little nap in the heat. It was really nice.






When we woke up, we walked down to the beach and found a couple of chairs right on the coral reef area separating the beach from the ocean - where the tide pools were. We sat there for a while and watched the snorkelers and snuba people swimming around, took some pictures of an ugly pelican that landed on the palapa next to me, and enjoyed our last moments on the beaches of Cancun.

By this time it was nearing the end of our day and we'd have to meet the bus soon, so we walked back to the entrance to do some shopping and found a great hammock to bring home. We met up with the tour bus (actually a shuttle) that took us and three other families home.

Back to the hotel, we walked over to the Sunrise side of the resort to do some shopping in the larger gift shop and picked up some great swag in addition to the things and such we'd found outside of the resort, then stopped into the Italian buffet dinner in the Sunrise lobby. The food at this restaurant was better than the food at the Italian buffet on our side of the hotel, but it was much more noisy, much busier, and the service was much worse. We actually preferred the restaurant on our side of the resort :) Our last dinner in Cancun - it was noisy but nice and we had a great conversation about our favorite parts of this trip. For me it was the ruins and the turtles, for Stanley is the was the ruins and the butterflies. Very cool! Of course, our most favorite part of all was getting sick and spending three days in the bathroom. Now that's some serious vacationing fun! Just kidding :)

Back to the room to get showered and lay in bed. What a day! What a trip! Tomorrow we'll sleep in, get everything packed up, check out of our hotel at noon, eat some lunch, meet the shuttle at 1:30pm to the airport and then catch our 4:30pm flight to Phoenix for a connection to SLC - home at 10:30pm.

Wow!!! I cant believe how slow and how fast these last 10 days have gone. This has been a very different kind of vacation for Stanley and I, and I wonder if this is the style of vacation for us. Will we embark on another resort style vacation again? Only time will tell - I can say for sure though that I'm counting the days when I can go back to Europe :)