Cancun: Day 1

Buenos Dias! We're back from 5 lovely days in Cancun, our first trip to Mexico for both of us and also our first beach/Caribbean vacation. It was a success and we enjoyed celebrating Ryan's 30th birthday with such a unreal location.

Day 1 - Our flight left fairly early and we had booked with the low-cost carrier Viva Aerobus, which started flying non-stops earlier this year to Cancun and Monterey. I was admittedly wary of flying on a new airline, one that isn't a U.S. company, and one that doesn't fly out of the normal Austin terminal. Instead, you veer to the south of the airport on some backroads, enter a military looking part of the airport and look for a bright green building. As we parked, we were literally the only humans in sight. I thought that maybe the airline went out of business and never told us. Not buying trip insurance was starting to eat at my sensibility...but we walked from our car in our new luggage - the bags for Germany -- approached the terminal.

Life - people - ok, the flight was on. We checked in, went through the nicest TSA crew I've ever met - seriously, they were so nice! It was empty and we had all the time in the world. They even complimented us on our new TSA liquid pouches. Around te corner, we peruse duty free, grab a seat, and wait for the plane.

After boarding, the takeoff was smooth, thing were good...until about 1.5 hours into the trip and high above the gulf, it starts to get turbulent. Bumpbumpbumpbumpbump...we tighten our seatbelts...and then the plane dropped. The lady across the row, who had not put her seatbelt on and was stretched out, bounced up and into the ceiling. Another guy ahead of us, who was laying down too, slammed up into the air vents. Up a few rows a luggage bin door opened and a lady reached up to close it...but ended up meeting it with her head. My Sol beer had flown up in the air and rained down, landing in Ryan's hands. Holy shit, we held on for dear life as the plane quieted down a bit.

We looked around and saw a guy (another non-seatbelt wearer) with blood weeping out of his head from hitting the sharp air vents above. A flight attendant held her arm as she went for the medical kit. More bumpbumpbump but no sudden jerks. Puffy clouds met us as we descended, and we rumbled through a dozen of them. My damn Xanax was in my bag in the compartment and there was no way in hell I was going to stand up. I kept listening to Radiohead on my iPod, which added a strange serenity to the whole scene. Sort of like a TV show.

The lady across from us (who had hit the ceiling) whispered if I had flown this before. She said, "Is it a safe airline? Have they crashed before?" I reassured her that this stuff happens often (not to me with all my airline travels, but I've heard stories) and the airline did not have a bad record.

Cancun approached and we did marvel at the lack of fences, the ongoing forest, as we dropped, connected with the runway, and slowed down. We literally ran off the plane, sped through immigration and customs (Press the button to choose your fate on whether they search your bag or not. We were both green.), fend off fake porters, taxi drivers, grey line hustlers, and try to find our pre-arranged transportation. "But if they aren't here, they're not coming - they usually are here an hour ahead of time" a slick guy pestered us. Finally, we found Jaime (I know it's pronounced Hymay but he said it Jayme...) who waited with us until the car arrived. Jaime spoke great english and learned it working on a farm in eastern Ohio. He thanked us for spending our money here. He was so sincere.



Oh, and it was pouring like a monsoon while we waited. And then it got so steamy that our glasses fogged. A quite 20 minute ride in a towncar and we approached the J.W. Marriott hotel and we immediately fell in love with it.

The view from our room on the 8th floor was magnificent. The grounds are gorgeous. Everything looked and smelled beautifully. We unpacked and went for a walk.







A windy lunch of burgers and beer near the beach was nice (our cute seagull friend, with earmuff markings on his head, joined us and became a nice companion for the next few days) and following that we got in our suits, and went for a walk. The day was pretty grey but we staked a spot anyway, enjoyed the ocean, read, played two hands of Phase 10. We were finally relaxing.






A shower and bit of a rest later followed by dinner at Mikado, a hibachi-style restaurant in the nextdoor CasaMagna Marriott hotel.





The mother-daughter combo that shared our table were very nice; she was a gymnast for Stanford. Then, we took the "walk of shame" to the Oxxo (like a 7-11...which there actually was a few doors down, but I didn't want to support them) for some cheaper beer. (OK, actually we went to the 7-11 first and then the beer said $13.00! I was thinking it was in dollars and could not believe it!! It certainly wasn't pesos because 13 pesos is like $1.30 and I highly doubted that. So, then we went to the Oxxo and saw the same prices and Ryan finally figured it was a per beer price...duh!!!) We grabbed a six pack, some Lift drink (a drink we had in Germany that you can't get here in the U.S.) and walked back to the hotel.

Drinks on the balcony, a little TV, and then bedtime by about 10:30. We were finally relaxing.

More to come...

Tschüß!