Our vacation from our vacation life has come to a close. Our time away was another whirlwind adventure but we managed to squeeze in everything we had planned. We started with a week on the Mayan Riveria at the Vidanta Resort. As Bill will tell you, they do not usually let him into places as nice as Vidanta but we managed to spruce him up enough to get checked in without issue. Vidanta was made up of several resorts on one property. The highlight was definitely the pool which spread endlessly throughout the property. We were surprised how chilly 78 degrees felt to us now and the pool was very crisp compared to our bathwater pool in Grenada. We ventured out to discover Fifth Avenue which was a sprawl of restaurants and more junk for sale than one could ever want. The hawkers in Mexico have become much more clever than the last time I visited Mexico 20 years ago. Back then, they would follow you around and harass you until you finally broke down and bought something to make them go away. Nowadays, they spotted my Vidanta bracelet key fob and would say, “I was your waiter at Vidanta last night! Come, I want to introduce you to my cousin who owns this shop”….quite clever! I finally had to tie a scarf around my wrist to hide the fob because we had at least twelve “waiters” within the first ten minutes. The highlight of our Fifth Avenue day was lunch. Bill immediately spotted an appetizer called “fried cheese” which are two of our favorite things….fried and cheese. What was delivered to our table was a work of masterful engineering. It was parmesan cheese that they had somehow managed to roll into an elongated tube and deep fry. I swear I saw tears forming in Bill’s eyes as he ate it. Our next adventure was a long day to the Tulum ruins and Rio Secreto. Tulum was an ancient city located on the Caribbean. The ruins were still in very good shape and one could easily get the feel of the ancient city. Surrounding the ruins were a plethora of tourist trap vendors offering free shots of tequila so I was sure that I had my scarf wrapped around my fob again to avoid a new wave of long lost waiters and cousins. Rio Secreto was an underground river that flowed through a system of caverns that was discovered in 2004. We took a bus down a long, very rough road, donned wetsuits and helmets and proceeded into the cave. As we hiked through the cave, the water became deeper so we were swimming most of the time which was much easier than navigating the rocky cave floor. At one point, the guide has us all turn off our headlamps and sit quietly in the darkness of the cave. It was very peaceful but at the same time, the thought of being lost deep in the cave without light was a terrifying feeling. We rounded out our stay at Vidanta with more pool time, daily happy hours and some great food. We tried to play a round of golf but we were not allowed to play because we had no collared shirt….I told you we weren’t usually allowed in these fancy places! The final night in Mexico was spent at the Marriott in Cancun. It was another fancy joint and we had the added entertainment of a huge wedding taking place on the grounds that night. We watched as they erected a monstrous tent and hauled in massive amounts of food. At 11pm, we went to bed saying, “I’m sure they’ll call it quits soon” as the music blasted throughout the property. At 3:30am, they were still going strong! I hope the marriage lasts as long as the party did! The highlight of the next day was having the privilege of standing in line at Frontier Airlines for 90 minutes because we could not use online check in due to everyone needing to show proof of PCR test to get on the plane…do not get me started on this mess!
The remaining two weeks of the trip were filled with family and friend visits and lots of driving as well as knocking out all of our American food cravings including Chick-fil-a, Waffle House, The Varsity, my mother’s pimento cheese, Frosted Flakes and Lucky Charms. All is well with the world now for another 12 months! We returned to Grenada without issue and found Galt to be floating happily at the dock. We have also encountered the arrival of ARC 2021. ARC is a group of cruisers who join together to sail from the Canary Islands off the coast of Northern Africa to Grenada in order to avoid the cold European winters. Our quiet little marina has been swarmed by dozens of boats and we were told yesterday that a total of 72 boats would docking over the next few days. Luckily for us, the Europeans seem to like the bar more than the pool at this time! The coming week will be full of last minute boat preparations and finishing off projects as we look forward to taking on a new season of exploring. Stay tuned for further details! PS: We have calculated that our total PCR tests for the year of 2021 have now exceeded a combined 30 tests….sigh. ***More pictures on Picture tab PSS: I just have to brag. Check out the Top Ten Finds Worldwide in Archeology for 2021. The Charleston slave tag was found by my daughter's team! https://www.archaeology.org/issues/451-2201/features/10183-top-10-discoveries-of-2021
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AuthorSally Miller Archives
May 2024
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