Thursday September 15th,

The much anticipated summer trip to was a group trip to Akumal, which is roughly a 75 minute drive south from the Cancun airport. We flew through Atlanta, which was terrible – mainly because it was two hours of flying in the wrong direction of our final destination. Getting through customs in Cancun was surprisingly difficult, and took over an hour. I found it comical how strict they were regarding luggage and random searches considering the massive quantities of illegal drugs that pass freely over the US-Mexico border every day.

Getting the rental car was an adventure unto itself. You HAVE to purchase liability insurance. After about 25 minutes of back and forth negotiating, a premium of $120 was added. The comical part was that $40 of that was cash that the agent literally put directly into his pocket. Typical Mexico.

Of course we had to make the obligatory Costco stop. I love Costco and enjoy stopping by to peruse the wine selection. I trusted that Costco would be selling wine that was not affected by warm temperatures. We have had problems with wine that was spoiled by heat, most notably in Puerto Rico (Lindsay is still scarred).

An hour after stopping at Costco, we were in Akumal, touring the wonderful house that the group rented for the week. Lindsay and I had the mother-in-law-esque suite on the backside of the property, a separate dwelling from the main house. That night, we had a birthday celebration dinner for Emily and Andre.

The best part of the house on the beach was the collection of sea turtle nests directly out front. Every night, there were designated nest watchers patrolling the beach. These volunteers, as I was told, stood watch throughout the night protecting the turtle hatching and laying from people.

• Note – Photos in this post were taken by various people on the trip

Friday, September 16th
Tulum is 20 minutes south of Akumal. The Mayan ruins are the main tourist attraction in the area. We did a private, guided tour of the ancient city, which was very interesting. The tour began with a walk around the back side of the city, complete with suffocating heat and mosquitoes. But that didn’t dampen our fun. The city is in surprisingly good shape considering it was abandoned in the 1700’s. Inside the city it was also hot but cooler than behind the city because of the nice ocean breeze.

After sweating through the Mayan ruins tour, we had lunch at Los Agua Chiles in Tulum. The food was very good and incredibly cheap.

One of the things in Mexico we were most looking forward to seeing/enjoying was one of the famed Cenotes. These are freshwater pools, in caves and also out in the open, filled with cool fresh water that is an amazing escape from the Mexican heat. We ended up going to Dos Ojos Cenote, which was $10 per person to get in, and worth every penny.

The next three days we enjoyed hanging out by the pool, going into the Carribbean Sea, and drinking plenty of Pina Colodas.

JRL