Vacation was a Blast!

(Had to crop this bad boy, my arm was looking ginormous!)


Hey! I’m back from vacation!

Ok, it was two months ago, but I had a blast in Cancun and I feel I must devote a little blog space to the fun times.

Cancun is my ultimate vacation spot. I’ve always gone with my BTF (best traveling friend) Ericka, who I’ve been on countless of vacations with because we travel well together. We go right before the spring breakers come and tear up the town and the deals are great, all-inclusive, pay one price and everything is included. Air, hotel, food and drinks on the resort (drinky drinks too). Basically we sleep, sun trying to get as dark chocolate as possible, eat and drink, repeat the next day. Add an excursion or two and that’s it. It’s ridiculously relaxing and if you’ve never jumped calm waves in the ocean, slept to the sound of them crashing against the shore while bathing under a warm tropical sun and breathing in the salt air, then you haven’t lived!!!!!

So this time we stayed at the Oasis Viva Beach and Cancun being such a tourist area the hotels are usually very nice, this resort being no exception. We had a great ocean view, the room was clean and pretty, the food was great, the service was awesome, the drinks plentiful, all that.


A few notable events:

The weather was, for the first time since I started going to Cancun, kind of rainy. Rain and Cancun doesn’t cross ones mind since it’s sunny there like 364 days a year. So the days it rained me and Ericka would sit looking stupefied because we didn’t know what to do with ourselves. We just stayed in the room, watched movies and ate during those days, which is exponentially better than being at work for sure.

We also went to the flea market to shop and got lost on a bus on the way there (a scary yet minor inconvenience). The market itself was crazy chaotic! Music blaring and colorful merchandise everywhere! As soon as you entered everyone wanted you to check out their wares, see that they had the best prices and were willing to deal. We quickly found out you’d be a fool to pay what anyone asked at first! If a price was too high, they’d go down…which we found out as we tried to leave several shops. Our intent was to browse several stores and go back to our favorites, but that was an almost impossible undertaking. The store owners basically didn’t want you to leave without buying something, anything. Say you like an authentic Mexican purse, the first price quoted would be seriously high, like $35 for a cloth bag. You didn’t even have to counter as the price would drop to $30. As you’re walking away the bag gets cheaper $25…you still haven’t decided if you really want the purse because you just glanced at it in passing in the first place. So if you include the tactic of a counteroffer, well, well, now you’re bartering until you’ve bought something within your budget.

And every trick in the book was used by the sellers. You’re everyone’s sister from another mother, you’re being outright flirted with, and I even had one who tried to dupe me with some exchange rate trickery. In the end there were good deals to be had, although you know you still paid more than you probably should have, but it’s vacation and you need to bring back souvenirs, right?

We took two excursions. One was the Pirate Cruise where you get a dinner and pirate show, complete with dueling ships and cannons. There was this great game that Eri was picked to play where she competed with two other contestants to see how many pairs of shoes they could collect from the passengers. The one with the most pairs was the winner. Then you went and tried to find you shoes in this pile of 80 pairs of shoes and really, it is fun. Ericka won, yay! I didn’t get seasick because I was hopped up on Dramamine, but someone neglected to take some and should have. ;) There was lots of drinking, dancing with strangers and gorgeous faux pirates, huzzah!

So my Cancun vacation was a pure blast and if everything goes as planned there will be yet another in 2011.