Sunburns and Tourists

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Hi everyone,

as promised I'll try and keep you up to date about our when & wheres.
We've been here in Cancun for two and a half days now and I can tell you my spanish just doesn't cut it - which is espescially annoying since people here don't speak a lot of english, for which of course I can't blame them at all. The g'old hand&feet sure come in handy, I can tell you that!

But let's start at the beginning.
Amsterdam and seeing Tova, At & Joyce were great - we went to have some Greek food and talked a whole lot in the short time we had together. Great to know A&T are coming over for the Bakker-family-meeting this fall!

Our flight to Cancun on the 30th left at 9.40 in Amsterdam, so we didn't really have to get up too early - around half past six. Check-in & co all went smoothly and soon we were sitting in our comfort class - chairs (yeah, yeah, I know, we're REALLY spoiled this summer - but it wasn't as excpensive as it sounds and the extra leg-space as well as the "Personal Entertainment Player" (a little box with a lcd and a choice of about ten movies as well as music and tv-series) were well worth it!
The flight lasted a little under 10 hours and we didn't really get bored nor annoyed with each other - a pleasant surprise, that. We saw Cuba and the US-coastline on our approach to Cancun - the water looked excitingly blue and the beaches as white as on any postcard. Which is still true on the ground - having been on three Carribbean beaches by now I can tell you that the fairy tales are all true!

First thoughts and busses

Anyway - we arrived at the Cancun-airport around 1pm local time, in the blazing but not too bad heat, and were met by our driver after a wait of about 40 minutes. No problem, though, there were lots of other drivers who were very friendly - they kept talking, laughing and searching for our driver (by foot, phone and shouting). Of course they were fishing for a tip, but hey, a dollar really ain't much for a couple of phonecalls and half an hour of entertainment, right?
Our hotel is Kin Mayab, right in the center of 'cun, and it's really nice; the rooms are clean, the rates fair and the staff very friendly. It's not too close to the beach, but a short busride on the R1 takes you to any beach on the hotel strip. Those busses really are something - they cost somewhere between 20 and 40 eurocent a person and you just stretch out your arm if you want them to stop anywhere in the street. Thus, traffic seems pretty crazy to the european eye, but actually most drivers are very friendly and are always ready to break for pedestrians on the street - very different from europe, that! Anyway, the busses have blue plastic seats of the cheapest kind and it's obvious that a lot of locals take them, so a busride is always quite exciting, but quite safe, at least in the daytime.

Welcome to the Caribbean, love!

The beaches are beautiful, no doubt about that. White sand, azur-blue, quite shallow and very warm water and a nice wind, so it never gets too hot, if you stay in the shade.
Of course there's a downside, though. 'Cun is the tourist-capital of Mexico and thus worse than Lloret de Mar. On the Hotel strip (the one with the nice beaches) there is one big, ugly block of cement after the next and even now, in low season, the - usually drunk - all-inclu-tourists are almost EVERYWHERE.
We got lucky, though - yesterday we walked into a rocky stretch of beach by accident (behind the famoous Coco Bongo nightclub....) and a very cute Mexican (who would actually have been tall enough for me for once...) showed us the way to a very nice part of the beach which was almost empty, except for a couple of local families, who fitted very nice into the great view out to sea.

Gotta go - our internet time is almost up.
More tomorrow or one of these days.

By the way - we got quite a tan already!!!

And: I took quite a lot of pictures, I'll upload them as soon as I can.

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Photos

Amsterdam
beautiful as ever

First time at the beach.
Even in front of RIU-Hotel-Chains the Caribbean is stunningly beautiful!

Sunset...
of course we had to take a picture of that. ;)