Tuesday, November 17, 2009

The BEACH!!!

This is the entrance to the most beautiful beach I have ever seen :)


My sisters, Kelly and Carie and me in the Caribbean hehe For those of you that don't believe I actually went in the water, here is proof, that's me jumping through the waves :)




These are the Tulum ruins from the beach we went to, as you can see it wasn't very far away.After the beach, this was the restaraunt Marcos recommended to us. Mmmm it was SO good!!

Tulum Ruins

So these are the Tulum ruins. I can't even begin to tell you about all the cool things we learned about them! You'll just have to go and learn about it yourself ;) But it was awesome.Someone was feeding the iguanas and there were about 10 of them fighting for whatever the food was.
The view from the backside of the ruins, it was so beautiful!


There was also a little beach you could climb down to (literally, the stairs were very steep and long, we opted out of it)

Xel-Ha

Xel-Ha was the eco park we went to. It was tons of fun! Here are me and my sisters getting ready to go snorkeling, haha, aren't we good looking?? haha. Like I said, I do not like open water, gives me the heebie jeebies. But this was so much fun, well until the baracuda graced me with it's presence... But the other fish were so colorful and beautiful and kept their distance, we also saw a couple of sting ray.

The whole eco park was in a lagoon and there was just a probably 30 foot floating bridge seperating the lagoon from the ocean. But you could go to the top of the lagoon to the beginning of the river and float down it on intertubes. It was pretty cool because you first go to a little area where you can either wait for a tram to take you to where the intertubes are or you can ride a bike to them, it's only like a 5 minute bike ride. Then you get your tube and start floating, it's pretty slow going actually. But along the way they have different places you can stop at and jump off cliffs or walk across a rope bridge, it was pretty neat. After we had floated the river we decided to walk back along the paths and get pictures of some of the activities (since I obviously didn't take my camera down the river). So here is Carie, she conquered the rope bridge. I started to do the bridge but it hurt my feet SO bad I stopped after about 3 feet and turned around. And my sister Kelly jumped off a cliff!! My camera died just as I was getting a picture of her, it was very sad, but she did it! There were iguana's everywhere! I mean everywhere. They were at our hotel, at Xel-Ha, and ALL over the ruins.
A little hammock park that you could relax in :) (again, notice the lack of crowds...)

The Grand Mayan

The resort we stayed at was called The Grand Mayan and it was beautiful!! Here are some pictures of it.


This is the view from the building we were staying in, all those other buildings you see are part of the resort too.

Road side view of the building we stayed in.Throughout the resort there are tons of places to sit and relax (other than the THREE pools). Notice there isn't anyone sitting on these beds? That's because there was hardly anyone there. If you go to Mexico, go in October, it's perfect weather and there's hardly anyone there.
The resort of course sits on the ocean and it was beautiful. The only downside was that our beach was pretty rocky so it wouldn't be fun to swim in, that's why we went to another beach.


Carie, me, Kelly and my mom on the boardwalk

These are just some wierd looking rocks you could see off the end of that boardwalk. Isn't the water so clear and warm looking :)

Kelly, Carie and MeDown by the beach there are a ton of lounge chairs and also these soft beds and chairs, again, no one there it was wonderful :)
This was in the biggest of the three pools. This picture doesn't do it justice, you can't even begin to see how gicantic it was. It was the biggest pool I've ever seen in my life.
This was another one of the pools, our favorite one. The other one was louder and seemed more like the party pool. But this one was quiet and more serene, it was a beautiful thing :)
This crocodile was just outside our room, the sign read "Do not feed Crocodile" lol I totally thought it was fake because it sat there with it's mouth wide open like that and didn't move for a couple of minutes, but then it blinked.


Mexico!!!!

In October I had the wonerful opportunity to got to Cancun with my two sisters and mom. It was SOOOO much fun!!! We were a little nervous at the beginning of the trip because four girls that don't speak Spanish trying to figure out how to get places by themselves is a little scary, but it turns out we are braver than I thought (or at least I am). It was quite the adventure and so much fun! I can't wait to go back someday, but I'll take Cameron with me next time ;)

We weren't actually in Cancun, we were in the city just south of it called Playa del Carmen. Our adventures included:

*finding our way too and from Wal-Mart which in itself doesn't sound very adventurous, but let me tell you, it was! The resort we stayed at was about 20 min from town and it sat right on the highway. We had to stand on the side of the highway and wait for the "colectivo" or bus to pick us up, lucky for us there was one that just got there right as we were crossing the street so we didn't have to wait. We told the driver we wanted to go to Wal-mart and he just nodded and took our money. This bus doesn't have any designated stops, when you want to get off you just walk up to the front and the driver will pull over and let you off. When we started to get close to town we got a little nervous because we had heard the bus didn't drop us off right at wal-mart and since none of us knew anything about the town my sister Carie was brave enough to ask the man in front of us if he knew where Wal-mart was. Because luck was on our side the man spoke English! But he had never been to this town so he didn't know, BUT he did talk to the bus driver and eventually told us where to get off. We had to walk 4 blocks but we finally got there! After we got our groceries we decided to take a taxi back to the hotel since we weren't sure where to find the bus. Anyway, it was quite the day.

*shopping in Playa del Carmen. We of course had to get souveneirs for everyone so one day we went into town to do some shopping. There are little shops all along this one street and they just go forever it seems like. It was fun to see all the knick knacks and different things you could buy, but....after one evening there I was ready to leave. It was just very overwhelming, the people that owned or worked in the shops would sit outside and yell at you to try and get you to come in, and after a while it was just annoying and sometimes a little obnoxous. BUT, we did find some fun things and we ate at a delicous Mexican restaraunt.

*SNORKELING! For many of you that might not be a big deal, but for me, it was HUGE! I DO NOT go into the ocean past my ankles and I do not swim in lakes or rivers because the thought of things that I can't see swimming around and underneath me just CREEPS me out! But one day we went to this "eco park" called Xel-Ha where you can see dolphins, and swim with them if you pay extra, snorkle, float down a river, see manatees, swim in cenotes (underground rivers), go on nature walks, or just sit in a chair or lay in a hammock and relax. It was TONS of fun. I actually really enjoyed the snorkeling until I saw a 3 foot long baracuda swim next to me after that I was done I couldn't get over the creepiness of it.

*the Tulum ruins. This might have been my favorite thing we did. We saw the Mayan ruins in Tulum and they were amazing. For those of you who are LDS if you ever go to any ruins you must get an LDS tour guide! Ours taught us SOOO much! I was never that interested in ruins before, I mean I thoght they were cool and all, but after learning about who actually built them and that they were patterened after King Solomon's temple. There was SO much information that he shared with us that was just SO incredible. I would like to go back and just tour the ruins.

*swimming in the Caribbean. Like I said before, I DO NOT swim in the ocean, lake or river. But I could NOT resist the beautiful warm waters of the Caribbean :) The sand was like powder and there wasn't a single rock or even shell in sight. I was out in the ocean up to my head! The water was so warm it was like bath water. I could have stayed there ALL day. So I guess if I ever go back I would like to tour more ruins and just go to the beach.

*I don't know if it was very adventerous, but one day all we did was sit by the pool at our hotel. Literally ALL-DAY-LONG. lol, it was wonderful :) Actually we spent a lot of time just laying by the pool reading, sleeping, swimming and working on our tans ;) But one day that's all we did, literally. It was amazing :)

*befriending Marcos the taxi driver, haha. The day we went into town we decided we would just take a taxi into town instead of riding the bus. At our hotel you could just go to the lobby and tell them you wanted a taxi and there was a line of taxi's outside the hotel just waiting for someone to need them. We got the best taxi driver ever! His name was Marcos and if I ever go back I have his business card and I will call him and make sure he is my driver again. He spoke a little bit of english and my sister Carie could speak a little bit of Spanish (I think she was surprised by how much she knew) and between the two of them we were able to communicate fairly well and it also made our trips entertaining. So he took us into town and then told us that when we were done to call him, give him 15 minutes to get to us and he could take us back to our hotel. So we did. On the way back to our hotel we talked about how the next day we were going to the ruins in Tulum and he told us he would take us. We laughed and thought he was joking because he said that he would take us wherever we wanted to go and spend the day with us. After a lot of misscommunication, lol, we finally understood each other and we did have him take us to Tulum the next day and after the ruins he took us to the beach and just waited for us while we relaxed and then he recommended a restaraunt for us to eat at that was SOOOO good!!! I even liked the guacamole! (I don't like guacamole). When we were finally on our way back to our hotel we were saying our goodbyes to him and somehow it came up that we were leaving at 4 am in two days to head back home and he said he would take us, lol, we thought he was joking, who wants to get up at 4 am!! But apparently he did and at 4 am on the dot he was there to take us to the airport! We became very fond of our friend Marcos :)

So that was our super fun trip to Mexico!! I can't wait to go back someday!!

Okay now I will post the pictures, it was just easier to write about it all first.

Sunday, November 1, 2009

Flower Girl

Evelyn was a flower for Halloween this year, pretty much the cutest flower I've ever seen :)
I got this Nacho Libre mask in Mexico when I was there last week, lol, I just had to get it for Cam, hahaIf you can't tell Evelyn wanted NOTHING to do with the camera, all she wanted was her sucker and to run around.