Advertisement
Published: February 26th 2012
Our trip was one of extremes.
Not in terms of high adrenaline extreme sports but in terms of a scale of enjoyment.
I should have known that what happened when we arrived at Cancun airport would not be the only time I would get stressed out this trip.
There are certain things that people should never say whilst at an airport, not even if they are a joke.
Whilst waiting to go through passport control a very drunk man struck up a conversation with me. You know what it’s like talking to someone when they are drunk and you are sober, add to that the fact that I had been travelling for 25 hours and to say it was an effort to be polite would be an understatement. As we neared the front of the queue he joked “How about I tell security you’re a terrorist with a bomb in your bag”. With the least impressed look on my face I said “NO”. “Not even as a joke?” he replied. “NO. Not even as a joke”. I did not want my first memory from my trip to Mexico to
be a search of my anus looking for drugs as a result of his “joke”. When we got to the front of the queue I could see the drunk man looking at us & at security, I cannot describe how much I hoped he would not say anything. We were called to passport control only to be joined shortly after by the drunk man. The security officer asked us if we knew him, Nikki and I both said as clearly as possible “NO”. Luckily the drunk man did not follow through with his joke, as we walked through passport control I heard security say to the man “Too many cervesas senor”.
Before I go in to the bad things that happened this trip I’ll talk about the good stuff.
On the morning of our second day we booked all of our trips & by the afternoon we were visiting the ruins of Tulum. They are the only Mayan ruins situated overlooking the sea & were only a few miles from our hotel. The ruins, like most Mayan ruins, are built to align with the summer & winter solstice, the whole area of the ruins
is relatively small compared to most other sites but this site is much more intimate & if you take your swimsuit you can even go swimming in the sea just under the ruins.
Halfway through the first week we had our next trip, swimming with dolphins, manatees & sea lions. Nikki and I have swam with dolphins before but this time we spent so much more time in the water with them plus, of course, we got to feed manatees & swim sea lions.
The manatees are big, slow animals & are distant relatives to the elephant. We fed them and posed for photos but let me give you a word of warning if you are planning the same trip. Do not open your mouth when you are feeding them. I smiled the biggest cheesy grin when I began to feed them and as I did, mouth wide open, the manatee let out a gust of air from its nose which went straight into my mouth. It was so strong I felt like I was chewing on its breath.
Next we swam with the dolphins, we spent quite a long time
in the water doing several tricks with them (my personal favourite is superman). The whole day is photographed by someone & you are not allowed to take your own camera with you, so you have no choice but to buy pictures from the company if you want anything to remember your day by.
After we finished swimming with dolphins Nikki and I were taken away from the group and told we had not booked to swim with sea lions. We then had to contact the company we had booked with to sort out the tour operator’s mistake, after several apologies the company eventually sorted everything out and we were allowed to swim with the sea lions. The sea lions had been trained to smile and to stick out their tongue, it was so cute.
Being an absolute nut when it comes to pictures I couldn’t wait to see our pictures and pick out which ones we wanted to buy. Our pictures were loaded up and we were ready to pick out the best. “$180 US Dollars for all of them or $25 per picture” HOW MUCH!!! We were not the only people upset with
the price, one family had bought the CD of pictures the year before and paid $100 for all of them. Hearing them argue with the manager of the photo shop I heard him lower the price. I didn’t think you could barter in shops, I always assumed that was just for markets, you learn something new every day.
I managed to barter our photographer down from $25 a picture to $4 and being someone that hates to barter I was pretty proud of myself lol.
I had an aim before we left for our holiday, try not to get too jetlagged. My aim of achieving this was to wake up early every day and go for a run on the beach followed by an hour of yoga, all before breakfast. Did I achieve it? Not completely, but I got close to it.
I managed to get a run completed every day, apart from days I was going diving or, unfortunately, on days I was ill & as for yoga, I managed an hour of yoga on five of the days we spent in Mexico. Add to that four sessions in the
gym and five dives and this was a pretty active holiday for us.
This was the first holiday we have spent in nearly two years where we have spent some time on the beach and it was much needed. We did manage to get some sightseeing in whilst in Mexico (those blogs will follow this) but a majority of our trip was for intended for getting healthy, relaxing & catching up on much needed sleep, at least that was the plan anyway.
The hotel we stayed at had the most amazing food of any hotel we have ever stayed at in our life, every meal was gourmet & was pretty close to Michelin star in my opinion. It was an all inclusive resort but you didn’t have to wear a fluorescent wrist band like other hotels. We had fruit smoothies every day and even pampered ourselves at the spa a couple of times. (Note to anyone wanting to try a hot stone massage, do not do it if you have been in the sun for anymore than two hours that day. There were a few moments when I thought I was going to scream
due to the pain).
Everything should have gone to plan right?
It’s not too much to ask for relaxation is it?
Clearly staying at a Dreams resort and asking for relaxation is too much to ask.
Unfortunately for me I am an extremely light sleeper, when we arrived at our hotel our room sounded like we were in a nightclub. Being exhausted after our long journey we decided to try to sleep through it. After a very uncomfortable sleep constantly being woken up by either the live band performing just under our window or the hoards of drunk people singing & shouting, we woke up at 6am (bloody jetlag).
We upgraded our room (for an extortionate amount of money) to get an ocean view. ALL of the entertainment was along the seafront and was on until late at night. When I think of a Dreams resort I think of luxury and tranquillity, Dreams Tulum was more like a clubbing resort & was full of people in their early 20’s getting smashed. I know not all people in their early 20’s like to get drunk and
party but all of the ones at our resort did.
We changed rooms to escape the noise of the all night entertainment & our second night in our new room was just as noisy. Now I know I sound like a boring grumpy old man but to a certain extent you can almost expect to be kept awake by a live band but I was kept awake by the nightly bingo game! I could hear the numbers as clear as if the compare was in my room & of course every time a number was announced the compare had to encourage all of the participants to cheer as loud as possible. Imagine how loud the music was if the bingo was keeping me up lol.
Part of the entertainment at the hotel consisted of bartending competitions & tequila tasting at 4 in the afternoon.
The groups of people in their early 20’s were all getting wasted from 4pm, or earlier, every day.
Dreams resort Tulum was more like Nightmare resort Tulum.
There is a term for British people who drink too much on holiday &
piss everyone off.
‘Boozed up Brits abroad.’
These Brits, although only a minority, give the rest a bad name.
I’d assumed that I’d escaped boozed up Brits abroad by coming to a place like this but clearly irritating drunken idiots like this hotel. Imagine my surprise when I hear the drunken group talking and it turns out they are not British, they are American. I would just like to stress that not every American at our resort was always get smashed & many Americans at our resort shared our distress at the drunk ones, but all of the people that were drunk and keeping us up every night were American.
An American couple we got talking to, upon realising that we were English, said “We love English people but they don’t seem to like us Americans much”. Nikki & I love American people & America is our favourite country in the world & one we would love more than anything to live in. I have never understood how anyone could stereo type a nation and say they did not like people from that country.
I
have heard in the past American people say that British people do not like them and have heard British people talk of their dislike of Americans and I never understood why anyone would dislike American people.
I think that the people at our resort were the American equivalent of boozed up Brits abroad as I have never met a more inconsiderate, rude or obnoxious group of people in my life, I can only assume that these people are the ones that are giving Americans a bad name with people from other countries.
I really hope this is not coming across as this being a rant about American people as I love American people but to say that this group turned my holiday from a trip to heaven to the trip from hell would be an understatement. I am currently writing this at the airport on my way home and it’s the first time I have ever looked forward to going home to miserable, cold England for a good night’s sleep.
Our resort was like a conveyor belt for weddings, one day there were three weddings in just one day. I was
appalled as I watched some weddings from a distance only to see some people letting their children play & build sand castles on the part of the beach where the bride was walking down the aisle, WHILST the bride was walking down the aisle. If I had kids and they even thought about doing that I would smack them so hard they would not know what had hit them. Another wedding party we saw at night, during the dinner when everyone was giving their speeches. This particular wedding party had decided to have their dinner around one of the pools, no more than six feet away from the groom giving his speech were four men in the pool still from the day all with a beer in their hand and all completely wasted. They were shouting to each other and slurring their words whilst watching the wedding. Do these people have no respect? If that were my wedding I would have been put into a Mexican jail as I would have kicked the shit out of all of them for having such little respect for someones special day, I felt so sorry for that couple.
Despite not
having one good night’s sleep in two weeks due to drunken idiots & part of the second week this was assisted by the baby in the room next to ours that sounded like it was getting murdered every night, this was actually a great holiday.
Our next blogs will detail our trips to Chichen Itza, Coba, scuba diving & also a very special blog about what we did for our one year wedding anniversary.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.082s; Tpl: 0.035s; cc: 14; qc: 32; dbt: 0.0341s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
The Travel Camel
Shane Dallas
Noise, noise, noise...
One of my banes when travelling - noisy hotels. I almost always avoid any accommodation that has a nightclub or live music. Same applies to any place on a busy road without double glazed windows. Sorry to hear that your holiday was not as relaxing as it otherwise should have been. Looking forward to the rest of the blogs from your time in Mexico.