A Southern Interlude

It's been a while since there has been a retro-update of the summer road trip. One of the main reasons for this was that for a week this past month, the five of us were fortunate enough to escape the cold Ottawa weather in order to head south to MEXICO!!! We traveled down to the Mayan Riviera with Auntie Laramie, Uncle James and cousins West and Reed to stay at the Grand Palladium - White Sand and had a blast. In terms of location, it's on the eastern coast of the Yucatan peninsula, south of Cancun and almost as close as possible to Cozumel Island, but on the mainland. Here is a link to the resort website. This was a VEEERRRY different experience from the only other time we went to Mexico for a vacation in 2007. For one thing, we had kids this time. For another, the size and scope of the resort was mind-blowing. It took some of us a couple of days to sort out where things were (and for some others, it took a few more days than that).

The travel days there and back were fairly long, bordering on nine hours due to the need to be at the airport early on both ends and the hour-long shuttle ride between the resort and the airport, but the kids (all five!) were total champions both ways. Of course, unlike the road trip, we leaned pretty heavily on the iPad and a wide range of shows to tame our kids, but it sure got the job done. We rolled up to the resort at about 10 p.m. local time (11 p.m. Ontario time) and the kids were still up...though as you can see from the pictures below, Henry and Leo ended up crashing on the lobby couches before long (while we were waiting to check in). Max was too wired to sleep right away and managed to stay up another hour or so, checking everything out. We think that one of our two rooms was actually some sort of romantic room as the whole place was covered in rose petals when we showed up. Max and I removed the towel animal and petals from the bed and everyone conked out right away.

The first morning, Max and Leo woke up and went flying outside to our ground-floor balcony to check out the view. Well, they found some grass, a tall bush, a couple of palm trees and a whole bunch of these animals that got up on their hind legs and were staring pretty intently at the boys:

I hustled the kids back inside, not knowing what these alien beasts were. Eventually, I found out that they were coatis (pronounced co-AH-ti) and that they were everywhere. They didn't cause much trouble, but did love begging for food. After we got ourselves together, we went out to explore the resort at 6 a.m. (yes, the kids slept fewer than 7 hours that first night...YIKES! Let's just say that it took the kids a few days to get themselves back on track). After the first day, we fell into a bit of a routine that went as follows:

1) Go get breakfast. We would typically hit the indoor buffet closest to our rooms, about a 10 minute walk away. Henry ate Froot Loops with milk, an apple yoghurt and some scrambled eggs. Leo had chicken, French Toast, watermelon, a smoothie, some mortadella and a churro. Max would have an omelette, a smoothie and fruit of some sort. Holly and I mixed it up a bit more (though the omelettes and cottage cheese with fresh fruit were both winners). On the last day, we let the kids hit the make-your-own-doughnut station, just 'cause.

Mmmm. Healthy.
2) Walk to the kids' waterpark pool. This pool was a 5-10 minute walk on the other side of our room, so almost a 20-minute jaunt from breakfast. It was a great way to burn off some morning calories. Occasionally, we would walk along the beautiful beach, where we took some of the following pictures. The beach featured very white sand that had an almost claylike consistency when it got wet - perfect for building huge sand castles! One other thing that the boys decided that they needed to do all over the resort was name every animal. Jaws. Scar. Babycute. Chester. Henry. Henry. Halloween. Henry. I swear, we named over 100 different animals by the time we left! They also decided to fight over naming rights to the animals they found. It was a riot. You can see Leo naming koi in the pictures below as well as a picture of Max clearly dictating what the iguana they found should be called.

No seriously, they were everywhere.

3) Set up camp on the edge of the kids' pool and relax. Okay, the first day it wasn't very relaxing as I hadn't quite gauged how comfortable and safe the kids would be in a pool of that depth, especially with waterslides mixed in. It turns out that they were 100% fine so by the second day I was more able to sit back and watch the fun. The pool was about 2 feet deep in the middle and featured two toddler slides on the perimeter and five waterslides further in - three open-top and two tubes. There was also a waterfall and a huge bucket that would gradually fill up before dumping all over everybody. Finally, there was a little area behind the pool that was like a foot-deep splash pad, but the kids didn't spend much time there. Most of the time, all of the kids would play together in the pool for a hour or so, but toward the end of the week, Max wanted more and more to swim around in the deeper all-ages pool nearby while Leo and Henry wanted to colour on the deck before the end of the hour.

Apparently, what Leo is doing in this picture is called manspreading. Sounds as offensive as a "man cold" to me.
4) Grab lunch. Typically, we would head to the open-air buffet closest to the kids' pool. They had a fairly decent selection of things that rotated a little from day to day. The open air eating was pretty cool too, except for the birds. They didn't cause much trouble except for the day one pooped on West, but when you get up from your table there, the birds descend on it for the scraps. After lunch, we'd mosey over to the bar to get a round of ice cream cones and then head back to the rooms.

5) Nap. This was definitely more necessary the first couple of days. We tried though to coax the kids into napping as much as possible, if only to set them up well for restaurant eating at night.

6) Swim some more, time permitting.

Yep, that's me and the big boys at the swim-up bar ordering pina coladas (Max), Caribbean Dreams (Max) or Orange Drink and 7-Ups (Leo's bevy of choice for the week).

7) Head out to dinner. Most days, we went to one of the resort's eight a la carte restaurants, each one featuring a different cuisine. We tried Southern American, Chinese, Japanese, Brazilian and Mexican. I think that the Chinese and Brazilian (soooo muuuuch meeeeat) ones were the winners. The kids started eating off the kids' menu the first couple of days, but preferred to nibble off of parents' plates towards the end.

OMG! They're all looking AND seem relatively happy...CLICK A HUNDRED NOW!!!!

I'm trying to come up for the right term here. Marielfie and Selfiachi are in a dead heat.

That's a paper napkin that a resort employee styled into a flower for Holly.

Me. The boys. A bar. Shirley Temples all around.

This is the Teppanyaki chef at the Japanese restaurant. He almost hit Holly with a flying spatula. Henry LOVED the show and kept screaming for "More Fire!!!"
8) Retire for the evening. Before bedtime, we sometimes took advantage of the rooms' amenities, such as the shower, jacuzzi or Tooncast, the Spanish all-Hanna-Barbera-all-the-time cartoon channel (although the kids were ecstatic to catch an episode of Pokemon once...it just seemed like the entire Hanna-Barbera catalogue was on exclusive rotation. We're talking Huckleberry Hound, Yogi Bear, Jetsons, Flintstones, The Perils of Penelope Pitstop, Dastardly and Mutely, Augie Doggie and Quick Draw McGraw...ALL IN SPANISH.).

Yeah, they look ready for bed.

Now it wasn't ALL about routine - occasionally we did some pretty neat things on the side. The biggest example for me was on the fourth day when Henry and I went off-site with James and West to go check out XCaret. XCaret is a theme park that is a little hard to describe. It's part outdoor museum, part zoo, part aquarium, part cultural performance place, part beach. We managed to take in a little bit of everything aside from the performances which, I think, happen a little later in the day. Some of the awesome animals we saw included parrots, flamingos, dolphins, sharks, manatees, stingrays, sea turtles, butterflies, cheetahs and pumas (most are pictured below).

Henry and West consult the maps in order to make sure we're going the right way.

Henry and West were both obsessed with "the underground", a series of caves done up to look like a Mayan village. This cave had a skeleton in it, so Henry got all serious.

We had to get at least ONE picture of ruins!

The boys were really into these jellyfish. Another couple wanted to take a picture here and waited for the boys to move without saying anything for over half a minute until I finally came over and asked the kids to back up. When the picture was done, Henry and West went right back to the glass.

There's this Adrenaline package that you can apparently purchase at Xcaret and one of its features is an opportunity to swim with sharks. That's a human. With a shark. In the same tank. I did not sign up with Henry. I think that makes me a good parent.

Henry as a sea turtle.

Checking to see if the skulls are real.
Holly also had an excursion of her own on the second-to-last full day. It was a shopping trip into Playa del Carmen that, due to the fact that it was sponsored by a jewellery outfit, involved a layover at a jewellery warehouse to see some of their wares. The trip was supposed to last from 1 p.m. until 5 p.m., enough time to get Holly back for dinner. Dinner came and went with no sign of Holly. We tried to figure out if her trip was delayed or the bus broke down but nobody knew anything. Eventually she rolled in at 8 or so because the only two other people on the excursion decided to look at EVERY PIECE OF JEWELLERY in the warehouse, delaying things by over 2 hours. Awesome.

Aside from the excursions, we got up to plenty of other shenanigans at the resort. Here is a potpourri of photographic evidence.

There was a poolside beanbag toss as well as a giant Connect-4 that the kids played with. They also had ping-pong tables and occasional dart tournaments as well as yoga, zumba classes, dance lessons and Spanish lessons. The highlight was definitely the drunk 60-something who decided to come and wreck Leo and Henry's game so that she could "play" and then fell over when she tried to leave. Helloooooooo all-inclusive!

Leo jamming with some musician sculptures.

In between meals, I would occasionally duck into the snack bar for some queso. With chips. Usually.

The resort had a set of dog mascots (Raggs and friends) who all played in a band and would pop up from time to time during shows or at the Kids' Club. Well, at least I thought they were the resort mascots, but it turns out they're characters from an Emmy-award winning kids show from Australia and later the U.S. (2006 until a couple of years ago). Apparently, the live touring show partnered with the Grand Palladium recently to bring the live performances to the resort. Go figure.

Me, winning the "name that song" trivia contest one afternoon. Prize was a too-small t-shirt, but I took it anyway!

This is "bartending lessons" at the kids' club. At least that's what Max and Leo said it was.

Somehow, in the 15% of the time that Max and Leo weren't fighting over something or other, we snapped our only two pictures of just them on the trip.

The sisters, posing with some resort employees plugging the kids' Circus Show that was happening later that evening.

The same resort employees came around on another day with a dragon puppet - here, the dragon is attacking poor helpless Max.
So that was Mexico. We had a fantastic time and it wouldn't have happened without the generosity of our co-travellers. Thanks so much guys! Looking forward to the next trip, wherever that may be.