Honeymoon pics!

I have been digging through a ton of photos lately – and we got our proof gallery from our photographer, but I’m going to save those until we get the full disc next week 🙂

But I did finally get all of the honeymoon pics up! So… here we go.

Sunday morning after the wedding we woke up in our beautiful room at the Madison hotel, we got dressed and had breakfast, and repacked everything up until my parents got there to take us to the airport.

It was a pretty gross day in Memphis – thankfully the bad weather waited a day!! It was very grey and drizzly and the temperature had dropped. We loaded up the Honda (after the bellman at the street held open the door of a stranger’s car for me to get again, LMAO) and headed to the airport.

Check-in and security were actually painless, yay! They’ve added new stores and stuff to the airport since last time I was there, so we wandered around and looked at stuff. I had developed a headache overnight (argh!!) so as soon as we got settled I took some medicine and we read until it was time to board. We were completely surrounded by honeymoon-ing couples, btw. There were two couples in front of us who had gotten married the day before, just like us – I quickly realised that being newlyweds and on our honeymoon was not going to be an unusual, “special” thing to anyone else where we were going!! LOL

The flight down was one of the worst I’ve ever been on – it was incredibly bumpy, and with my headache I actually got kind of nauseated! Ick! (At least my ears didn’t get stopped up.)

Ok, let me say – when we picked up all of our stuff from the travel agent, they told us, DO NOT stop and talk to anyone in the airport, go straight outside and find the people in the red NWA shirts – because there are all these timeshare guys in the airport who will claim to be NWA and will railroad you and try to get you to come tour this facility and in return you get blah-blah-blah and they get your CC number, etc… well we had talked about that and laughed about it, so as soon as we got our luggage I started looking for guys in the red shirts. Well I didn’t see any, but this guy came up to Chase and asked where he was going, and what does Chase do? He tells him, and follows dude over to his kiosk. After all of that! LOL So we have to stand there and listen to this guy’s stupid spiel until I finally just turned around and took my two suitcases and moved towards the door, and Chase finally said “we gotta go” to the guy or something like that, and I made fun of him the rest of the week, LOL.

So we went and found the real NWA guys and they put us on a van to our hotel. I slept most of the way, laying down with my head on Chase’s leg trying to make the headache go away. Our hotel was about an hour from Cancun. We got there and it was really pretty, we were happy. We were ushered to a desk where an employee got us checked in (and a bellman served us champagne, LOL). Once that was taken care of, they put us on a golf cart with our luggage, and one of the bellmen drove us around the major part of the resort, and showed us where everything was (the restaurants, bars, etc) and then took us to our room.

Here’s our room. It was really nice, though I stayed in my flip-flops most of the time because the floor was cold to me 🙂

The towel art on our bed when we got there – they forgot to do it one day of the week, and one we forgot to take a picture of (and it was my favourite!) but this was probably the nicest 🙂

If you stepped out on our patio and looked to the right, this is what you saw – we could hop in the pool and go down to the swimup bar there at the end – it was pretty cool!

Since we were tired, we decided not to go to any of the restaurants that night – we ordered room service and unpacked. The room service was kind-of limited, but it was good – I had a salad, a club sandwich, and cheesecake, yum 🙂 After that we put on our swimsuits and went down to the bar. Chase wrapped the roomkey up in a baggie in his pocket, so we could just walk around and open the front door of the room when we got back. Well once we finished our drinks and went back – he gave me the key and I went around to open the door.
Only he had deadbolted it. LMAO
We wandered up the path a ways until we found a maid – we told her what happened and she called the maintenance guys. They got there very quickly – and removed our back porch door LOL. The maid walked through and opened the front door for us.
Chase asked her, “Surely we’re not the first to do this, right?”
She said, “Yes!”
LOL Chase thinks she meant yes other people have done this, but it cracked me up!

Well I put on my cover-up and we decided to go check out the beach after that, LOL.

btw – we borrowed my friend Kristie’s little camera to take with us, because we couldn’t find the charger for MY little digital camera. It was a finicky little camera and took some getting used to, so some of our pics with it aren’t that great… but it was so much better than dragging the big canon around.

Me on the beach

Monday – I don’t have any pictures from (yet). We had breakfast at the quick outdoor restaurant (which was ok) and went to the beach again – this time we got some snorkeling equipment and swam around out there. It was really cool, there were some awesome fish just right there at our beach. We saw this one group of fish – like 10 big light blue fish, maybe like 3/4 of a foot long, and they were all just hovering in front of this “wall” staring at us. it was kinda freaky! We took pics with an underwater camera, but we haven’t gotten those developed yet (we’ve got 3 of those to take in)
After that we went and changed and had room service for lunch again, LOL. Then we just hung around, went to the swimup bar again, read, and we went to the Italian restaurant for dinner that night. The food there was good – that was the only place we didn’t take pics of our food, because we didn’t bring the camera, LOL. I don’t even remember what we had, now 🙁
So that was our nice leisurely day.

Oh also on monday, we went and found the NWA tour guy. We had booked all our excursions several months before, picked the days we wanted to do them – but we realised on our way down looking at our stuff, none of our tickets for them had dates on them. What our travel agent didn’t tell us was that when we got there, we had to REBOOK everything. We were paid for, but apparently picking out the days we wanted to do these things was a pointless exercise. When we went to the tour guy on monday, we thought he could just look it up and see what days we had put things on – no, he told us, we had to rebook all of these things. So our schedule got completely turned around and mixed up. More about that later.

So on tuesday we got up and went to the newer restaurant at the resort, Vida.

The main pathway from our room to the lobby/some of the restaurants.

We found a beach bed and laid out for an hour or so reading, that was nice.

Then we went and changed and went to meet our shuttle for our first excursion – the “Indiana Joe’s” ATV/Waverunner adventure. LOL. When we first booked it, several months ago, it was actually called “Indiana Jones ATV/Waverunner Adventure” – but apparently somebody either got to them or somebody told them they better not use that, because when we got there, it was Joes. LOL.

Anyway, the excursion was at Maroma (about a 30-40 minute ride away, depending on how long we got caught at the stoplights going through town.) Maroma was an absolutely beautiful beach. The hotel area was under a lot of construction so some of the areas weren’t as pretty as they could be, but it was a nice place. (The hotel was a sister-hotel of ours, but we wouldn’t want to stay there – we heard somebody say if you stayed there, you weren’t guaranteed whether or not you’d be near/right next on-going construction)

We were given helmets (of course, mine was the size of a normal human head… whereas, my head is the size of a child’s, so none of the helmets fit me) and then we hopped on the ATVs and went riding on a path through the jungle. We even saw a crocodile.

And Maroma definitely knew how to make some extra money off you – EVERYWHERE they had guys with NICE cameras taking pics of everybody on the excursions. And then you could buy them for $10 a pop (or a shirt, or a mug, or get one of everything for $60!) – they got us on 4 of them. The photos are really nice quality – unfortunately my scanner is crap, so just imagine that photo above is much nicer looking, LOL. (and my other maroma pics!)

The ATV was a LOT more fun than I thought it was going to be – honestly I wasn’t looking forward to it all that much (I was worried I’d get a headache from it – I’d finally shaken the one from sunday by this point) – but it was a lot of fun. We were really dusty by the time we got done.

After that, we were given lifejackets and led out to the waverunners. THAT was fun! I’d never been on one before (Chase grew up by a lake, so he’d been on them plenty of times). At one point we dove headfirst into a giant wave, and got DRENCHED… but it was a lot of fun.

After that — we headed back and rinsed off in the little showers, and realised we hadn’t considered bringing a change of clothes, or even a towel. We paid $5 to “rent” a towel to dry off 😛 And then of course on the shuttle home, the driver had the air blasting, so I was FROZEN by the time we got home – so I hopped in the jacuzzi tub again LOL

Then we changed clothes and headed to the mexican restaurant.

The best chips EVER…

And – my favourite dessert 🙂

Wednesday! We went back to Vida for breakfast again.

Oh, man!
THIS is why we kept going back to Vida for breakfast every morning. This was the best french toast, EVER.

Ok, now, here’s what happened.
As we went to get up to leave, I could tell my foot was kind-of asleep. As I stood up and went to walk forward, I didn’t lift that foot up high enough, so I stumbled over it, Chase caught me, but I managed to hit the table next to me with my hip (luckily no one was sitting there) which made a big noise (didn’t knock it over, just shook everything on it) so everybody in the restaurant saw me.
Well, I knew right away I’d sprained my foot when I came down on it wrong, I could already feel that – the hostess and waiter immediately came over and had me sit down on the couch right in the front of the restaurant, and it was there I realised that I had somehow caught or scraped my little toe in the middle of it all – I already had a blister on that toe from my wedding shoes, and when I tripped, I apparently caught that, ripped some of the skin off and was bleeding. Not bad, and I wasn’t at all concerned about it – I had stuff back at the room to take care of that, slap a band-aid on it and call it a day – I was more concerned about my foot being sprained.

Here I am looking pretty happy, in the front of the restaurant.

So anyway, I thought they just had me sit down to collect myself. Nope, they had called the on-site medic. I realise they probably had to do it to keep from getting sued – Chase had to fill out a form and everything – but I really didn’t need all that. But he came, Dr Paco, with his medical bag and his assistant, and apparently my toe was SRS BSNS…
(AND I already had a bandaid on my big toe – another blister thanks to my wedding shoes)

Oh god, I’ve got an audience! Seriously, the entire waitstaff and the bartender was peeking around the corner.

It’s one thing to sprain your foot on vacation, while, say, running around on the beach, or hiking, or doing something vaguely athletic. It’s another thing to sprain your foot while at breakfast. Geez.

So we limped back to the room and got changed for horse-back riding. We had time so we wandered down to the beach, and to have lunch at the outdoor restaurant.

We saw a show-down between 2 of these guys and 2 of the crazy blackbirds that were everywhere down there. It was awesome

You could rent kayaks. We declined.

Lunch at the outdoor restaurant – Chase had fish and chips, which was really good, and i had pizza, which wasn’t.

So off we went to horse-back riding, which was at Maroma again.

This is Maroma

Me on my horse, Cinnamon. The horses weren’t overly tired or bored or old… they were energetic and were happy to trot – Chase’s horse in particular always wanted to be in the lead. So it was a lot of fun, it wasn’t just plodding around a path.

Chase’s horse had one evil blue eye LOL

After we got back and dismounted, the guide walked us down the beach a ways – then two of the guys brought two new horses down —

And then they led us, two at a time, out into the ocean. It was really cool! I’d never been on a horse bare-back, so that was an experience itself – and then to be in the water, too. I’m really glad we had the chance to do this.

This time we were smart, we brought a change of clothes and our own towels 🙂

Oh, and I should point out that there was another resort that was a “part” of ours – it had a different name, but it was technically connected to ours. You entered the same way, and the signs were next to each other – well this resort was an Au Natural resort, LOL! As our concierge put it, “you’ll need a lot more sunscreen if you stay there.” We never saw anybody “au natural” over on that end of the beach, though. Kinda disappointing, LOL.
(although, we saw some really… um, interesting swimwear throughout the week.)

That night, we decided to go to the asian restaurant… only to get there and find out it was closed for the night. So we went to Vida, where I’d had my accident just that morning. Man they had some good rolls there too. And I got anything on the menu that had mashed potatoes with it, because the mashed potatoes were SO good, at all the restaurants.

Thursday! And now back to the drama with the tourguide. So monday when we went to talk to him, he for some reason only had two “tickets” to fill out for us, so he booked the tuesday excursion (ATV) and wednesday (horse-back riding) and we could come back either of those days and get the tickets for the other two. Chase went back wednesday, and he did indeed get the other two booked – but for some reason didn’t give him a ticket right then and there, he said he’d put it in an envelope and put it under our door, so it would be there when we got back from our excursion wednesday.
Well we got back from the excursion – and no envelope, no tickets. None of the bellmen or front desk folks know anything about it, and the tour guys are all gone for the day – the problem was, the next day we had our Chichen Itza excursion booked – we had no idea what time it left, but it was early, we knew, because it’s an all day thing – and we had no ticket to show to get on the bus. We were ticked to say the least.

So thursday morning we got up – EARLY, because we don’t know what time the shuttle comes, and the bell guys have told us anywhere between 7:30 and 9:30 – we bought some chips and gatorade in the gift store, and went and sat on one of the benches in front of the lobby. At 9, the main tour guy shows up – not our guy, but the guy who works in the main lobby – so Chase went and explained the problem to him. This guy was awesome, he got everything fixed for us, and when the shuttle did finally come, he was out there in case we had any problems with the tour guide.
(and when we got back from Chichen Itza that night, we did have a ticket under our door, for friday. I think the main tour guy got onto the other guy LOL)

So! Off to Chichen Itza.
We went to a resort a few miles down the road, and there we switched buses. Then we were off on the two hour ride to Chichen Itza.

Our first stop was a cenote.

You could swim in it, if you wanted. But we only had 45 minutes there – so basically it was jump in, change, and run back to the bus. And then you were wet for the rest of the trip.
Not like I’d want to get in that thing anyway – I’m a little freaked by water at times, and that to me was freaky. But it was pretty.

Then we were taken to this buffet for lunch. I just had watermelon, because I’d been craving watermelon all week.

And people danced with bottles on their heads.

Then, back on the bus and FINALLY to Chichen Itza itself.

Our tour guide was hilarious. Here he is – he just perched on this random scooter while our group assembled.

He would grab a little stick and draw in the dirt to explain whatever he was talking about.

I’m going to spare you guys the bulk of the pics – you can see the whole gallery below if you want to check out more of the site.

It was HOT. It wasn’t *unbearably* hot – every once in a while it would cloud over and a breeze would come through – but it was like a regular hot day in June here in Memphis.

The Coca-Cola temple, LOL. We bought ice cream here, and it was SO good.

I slept most of the way back, and they put on some video of a bunch of 70s/80s stars (starting with Blondie) performing on some show. It was entertaining, LOL.

Turtles. They might be humping. We don’t know.

So we rested for a while, and then got dressed and finally got to go to the asian restaurant.

OH MAN
I had to get eel sushi, because it’s what i always get anywhere that serves sushi, and so of course I got it there – and it was SO GOOD. I mean, it tasted like it usually does, but I guess it was just a little homesickness, because they were seriously yummy. Chase picked up his first piece of sushi, put wasabi on it, and as he was putting it in his mouth… he looked up and all four of mine were already gone. That’s how fast I ate those things. Yeah. good.

When we left, there was a cover band playing in the bar area, so we stopped and listened for a while. They played “Wild World” and “Careless Whisper” LMAO… we got video of it, it’s quite cute.

Friday!
Friday was our swimming with the dolphins – FINALLY! It was at Xel-ha, which was kind-of like a big water park, with biking and snorkeling areas and several restaurants, etc. We got there and got checked in and got a locker to keep our stuff in, and then went and watched the video on their dolphin program, and how to act around the dolphins (basically: don’t be an idiot.)

Our group ended up being really small – just me & Chase, one other lady, and a mother and son. That was pretty cool. Of course they had a guy there with a camera, and you could buy pics afterwards 😉

Chase getting kissed LOL

And then the coolest thing was you’d swim to the other end of the pool, lay flat, and the two dolphins would push you across the pool. I mean, you FLEW, most people went flying up in the air.

After that, we discovered the hard way that I had never called my bank to tell them I was leaving the country. So it didn’t work (we’d been going on cash up til that point) when we went to buy the photos & dvd (we also got the dvd of us swimming with the dolphins). We went and got a phone card and called my bank – after using up one card being on hold and having to go get a second one – I reached a very sweet lady at my bank, explained the situation to her (she said, “I can certainly understand!” when I told her it had slipped my mind with all the wedding stuff going on) – and within 15 minutes they had my card working. Hooray! So – stuff paid for, we went and had lunch and then Chase wanted to go snorkeling.

We don’t have anymore pics from that day, they’re all on the underwater cameras we have to get developed, btw.

Well, we got our snorkeling stuff and went out… and well, it clouded over, the waves were rolling… and I got nauseated. Keeping count? That’s twice this week, from someone who NEVER gets motion sick. So I made Chase haul me back to the shore. I told him to keep snorkeling – I went up and found a chair, wrapped a towel around my waist, one around my shoulders, one on my head and fell asleep. LMAO
Well it started raining, so Chase came and found me, we went and showered and changed into dry clothes, ate one more time, and then shopping for a few minutes before heading back to our bus.

That night, we had our dinner on the beach, which was part of our honeymoon package. It was pretty neat – it was really windy out, and you couldn’t see the beach at all (the moon was MIA) – but it was fun anyway. We had salads and then a cheese fondue which was REALLY good, and baked alaska for dessert.

Saturday
Saturday wasn’t a great day, LOL
Since I had liked the snorkeling monday at our resort, Chase asked if he could book another excursion for saturday morning – snorkeling, they take you out on a boat and take you to good spots, and the guide told us since you go so early in the morning, you’re back by noon and you’ve got the rest of the day to do whatever. Since he told us that, I agreed to it – it was our last day there, and I didn’t want to waste it, I wanted to lay around and enjoy the beach and read and relax.

So we got up, had our usual french toast, and went and caught our shuttle – well, turns out the snorkeling was at Maroma, which we didn’t know – so that’s a 35-40 minute ride – except it stretched into an hour there since we had to stop and pick up other people. Still, ok.
We got on the boat, and it took us to the first stop. We jumped in and swam out… well the waves were so big and choppy… I couldn’t keep my head down to see anything. I hated it, basically. I hated the water constantly coming over my head, especially. I tried, but after about 10-15 minutes of trying, I told Chase I was going back to the boat. I know, I’m a loser. Well I got near it and realised the guide was right there in the water, and he was still tossing fish food around him – so I was able to stop and linger for a few minutes…. so I DID see a few cool fish, before I got on the boat.
Finally they called everyone in and we went to the second spot. I didn’t go in that time – I stayed on the boat, unfortunately the wind coming in was very cool, so I was cold, and wet, and not terribly happy with the way the day was going.

After they called everyone in again, they put up this big sort-of parasail thing hooked to the mast, with a swing attached to it. A guy would hold the swing down in the water while somebody swam out to it, and then they’d let it go and the person would shoot up in the air and float there for a few minutes. Chase did it, it was really funny to watch!
(and even funnier to watch him and a few other folks bellyflop after jumping out, LOL)

And that guide who told us we’d be back by noon? The boat didn’t even get back to Maroma until 1. The guide there on the boat told us there was free drinks and chips and dip in the restaurant… and that our pickup wasn’t even until TWO. So we went and washed off and changed, and went to the restaurant – we were seated, placed a drink order… and we were then ignored for 20 minutes. We left and went and sat in the shuttle area and ate our chips and gatorade still in our bag from thursday.

So, after finally getting on a shuttle, dropping like 6 other people off at 3 other resorts, we finally got back to ours at 3:30. 3:30! Yeah, I wasn’t in a good mood at that point, because I felt like our entire last day there had been wasted. Chase was apologetic (which it wasn’t his fault, he didn’t know it was going to be that long, the guy had told him noon). I showered and we got changed, ordered some room service (I got cheesecake again)…
And this time, the cheescake came heart-shaped! It was cute… until I bit into it, and it did NOT taste like cheesecake… hmm.

Me, very pink – we both got sunburned out on that boat – me on my shoulders and the top of my feet – Chase all over.

Then we wandered around.

And I discovered that, right there at our own resort, I could have had my picture taken with monkeys. OH THE DISAPPOINTMENT

We were at the Cancun airport FOREVER… but they had pizza.

And Chase almost bought a $350 ink pen, thinking the price on it was pesos.

LT DAN! ICE CREAM! ICEEE CREAAAAAAAM

But the flight home was quick and easy, except going through customs where we discovered Chase had put all of his toiletries in MY carry-on (LIQUIDS!), had to go back through and check one of our carry-ons and go BACK through the long-ass security line – we were so glad to be home!

We had a fabulous time, and the little snags and stuff I find funny… to me, that’s what makes a trip interesting and gives you stories to tell when you get back 🙂

We’ve been talking about going back… and just doing nothing. We’ve done all the excursions and seen everything we wanted to… now go back and do nothing for a week, LOL.

So, that’s it!