Mexico!

Last week, Mike and Jeannette took a trip with Jeannette's brother Walter and his wife Natalie to a resort in Mexico.  More specifically it was Riviera Maya, which is just a little bit south of Cancun. We've got a lot of pictures to talk about so let's get started!

Since Mexico is pretty far away, we had to take a plane to get there.  The flight was a little over three hours long.  Mike is sitting across the aisle, so he was able to get a good picture of everyone else, including Brownie!

The plane also had little TVs in the back of every seat.  You could watch a few selected channels or a movie, but it also had a station that would constantly update where the plane was on a map.  Pretty cool, huh?  This picture was as we were just about to land.

From the airport we took a short van ride to our resort where we found a really cool fish sculpture in the lobby.  Brownie is riding one of the fish up front.

One of our favorite places at the resort was a bar right up next to the beach called the Bar-acuda.  It's a play on the word "barracuda" which is a type of fish.  We sat there for a bit every day reading or even just watching the waves.

They had giant outdoor chess and checkers sets that we could use.  Anyone reading this that knows about chess might realize that our kings and queens are in the wrong positions.  The last people to play had it setup wrong and we didn't notice until a few moves in.  My white side also had a knight and bishop in the wrong spot, how did I not notice that right away?!?

We played again in the daylight as well.

This is a really cool tree that had spines along the base of its trunk.  Brownie had to be very careful as he climbed it so he wouldn't get hurt.

This is the same tree from further away, as you can see, it's not very big yet.

Here's Mike and Jeannette hanging out one evening.

 We also spent a little time in the spa one day.  It's a more private area with things like a sauna, hot tub, and little waterbeds where you can relax.  They also had a private pool area where Brownie got his picture taken near a cool looking caterpillar.  Can you see it in this picture?

 Here's a little better shot of the caterpillar.

 Here's Mike sitting on the beach on the last day.  It was a very relaxing vacation!

 Here's the reverse view of what Mike was looking at.

  

 Of course Jeannette did some sitting around as well.

 This is a shot of just the beach that Jeannette took.  At night we could see cruise ships out in the distance and occasionally a cargo ship during the day.  We even played a game where we guessed how far away the ship was and then tried to calculate it with math to see who was right.  Mike was pretty close at 4 miles when the math worked out to be around 4.5 miles.

On the way back to the airport we saw the Mexican police!!

Here's a bonus picture from Natalie's photo album.  It's the view from our hotel room, pretty cool huh?  We had a great time in Mexico.  The people were really friendly, the food was great, and sitting next to the ocean was so relaxing.  After five days we came home.  We were happy to come home and get back to normal life, but we will never forget the Bar-acuda.