xcaret

On one of our first days there, we decided to sign up for an excursion to xcaret. We got on the bus early in the morning and began our ride to the theme park adventure. When we got there, our driver told us that he would be back to pick us up at 9:30. Ryan said "It's 9:30 right now?" and the guy said "Si, 9:30 pick up." and Ryan said "You're not coming back until 9:30 tonight?!?!" and the guy said "Si, 9:30 pick up" and Ryan said, but we can get a ride earlier if we want to?" and the guy said "Si." then Ryan said "Great, so can you pick us up earlier? and the guy said "No, 9:30 pick up" It was at that moment that we knew we would be there for 12 hours. When we got to the entrance to the park there were signs everywhere saying "No Sunscreen Allowed in the park" and they had staff people collecting people's sunscreen upon entering. This was not a good situation. First of all, Ryan and I are white...and the 70SPF block that we had in our bag was too expensive to just hand over to the park rangers, so we lathered up and walked in without handing over the sunscreen. We are bad, but I would rather be bad than get skin cancer from walking around by the equator for 12 hours.

Once we were in, there was a lot to see. They had tons of crazy zoo animals, my favorite were the baby sea turtles that had just hatched. Then we went over to another pool and saw the huge mama sea turtles. Pretty awesome.

This hammock area is pretty much like some dreams I've had. We all took a little siesta in the afternoon. Glorious. We started getting thirsty from the 100 degree heat so we looked for a place to eat lunch. The buffet was $29 per person - which was ridiculous. The we found a little hamburger place. Max got the fish tacos, which was a brave choice.
After a lunch by the beach we checked out the butterfly pavilion. How cool does that blue guy look on Ryan's green shirt?!?!My favorite part of the day was the underground river. We put our clothes and shoes in our locker and walked to the entrance to the river. Once you're in, you just float along for miles in your life jacket through caves and jungle tunnels. Refreshing and scenic! The only problem was that the river didn't go in a circle, so we couldn't get out where we entered like we planned. This meant that when we got dumped into the ocean at the end of the river our shoes were in our locker at the main entrance to the park. We walked through the entire zoo barefoot wearing nothing but our swimming suits. We were definitely "crazy Americans" at that point. The good news was that we were pretty much all dried off by the time we put our clothes back on.

To top off the day there was a 2 hour show at the end of the night called "Pre-Hispanic Games" that took us on a journey through history of Mexican dress/dance/culture. Max and Ryan were pretty much done with the show about 36 minutes in...but then it just kept going and going...and going.

After the show we started our walk back to the main parking lot where we were going to get picked up at 9:30pm. We found our guy, got in our van and sighed with relief that we had made it 12 hours and were finally on our way back...then the van wouldn't start.

Hilarious end to a hilarious day.