Cancun day 1 – May 28, 2009 - Arrived!!

Cancun day 1 – May 28, 2009

We left for the airport at about 7:00am for our 9:55 flight out of LAX. President Obama was being choppered in to LAX to fly back to DC that morning, so traffic was a little backed up.

Our flight was pretty uneventful, which is what you hope for in a flight. We were lucky enough to get an exit row, so poor Ryan wasn’t miserable throughout the entire flight. For us normal sized people, we have MORE than enough leg room. It was wonderful. EXCEPT, our row couldn’t recline, so I couldn’t fall asleep, and there was a bit of a draft coming from the emergency exit door, so my feet were freezing the entire time.


The flight seemed to go pretty quick and when we landed in Cancun, I felt like I was sucker punched with the humidity. I had jeans on and it was SO uncomfortably warm and humid, I couldn’t WAIT to switch to shorts. The airport was nearly empty. We hoped that the Swine Flu had scared most travelers away and that our hotel would be just as deserted. (we later found out it was! Of the 5 resorts in our complex, only 2 were open. The pools and beaches were pleasantly uncrowded. Swine flu really affected the hotels and tour companies in Mexico)


We took a Grey Line bus down here to Riviera Maya. It was about an hour drive, but it was fine because it was air conditioned. Our driver drove a little crazy…he seemed to like to get into the far right lane just to turn left. We got honked at several times. When we pulled into our resort, we had to wait at the gate for a few cars to go through before us. Once the cars went through and it was our turn to move up, we all noticed that the driver must not have been paying attention; Ryan looked over to see that he had FALLEN ASLEEP during the 1.5 minute wait. We had to tap him to wake him up. It was pretty funny. This hour long drive made me see that while walking around, we should pay extra careful attention to the cars in the road. These drivers don’t seem to respect the pedestrians like we do in America. I also noticed that people don’t really wear seatbelts and people hold babies on their laps in the car. That’s just something we don’t see in America.


When we finally got to the hotel, it was about 5:30 p.m. The lobby was very impressive, it was HUGE and had tons of couches. Our room was better than expected, but we were starving, so we didn’t take much time to check it out. We dropped off our bags and headed to the buffet. This hotel has three sit down and order restaurants, which are booked by reservation only, and it has two buffets. We didn’t have reservations for the first night, so to the buffet we went. This is a pretty nice hotel, so the buffet was kind of fancy. We felt a little under dressed in our shorts and flip flops, but there aren’t strict dress codes for the buffets (only for the 2 restaurants), so we knew it was ok. They had wonderful food, far better than I’ve ever seen in a buffet. There was a broad selection and Ryan’s favorite section allowed you to pick your cut of meat or seafood and have it grilled right there for you. I was boring and had pasta and pizza, but I have a picky palate. Of course, since this is an all inclusive resort, once we were done with dinner, we just got up and left. There was no bill to worry about.

After dinner, we walked around the resort a bit and then went for an evening swim. We turned in early in anticipation of a busy day ahead of us.