Day Three- Isla Mujeres

When we first started looking into going to Cancun, a few friends told us to stay on Isla Mujeres. They had some great deals but I just kept feeling like I did not want to be isolated and would rather stay in the main hotel district of Cancun. One of my TKD friends has been several times and loves the resort she stays at in the hotel district so I followed her lead instead but we still wanted to check out the island and we had heard lots of good things about the party catamaran trips over to Isla Mujeres so on Monday night we booked a trip for Tuesday.

The boat ride was awesome! You end up on the boat for about 3 hours round trip and that was actually my favorite part of the whole excursion. The water is so clear and blue all the way across.


There is an open bar on board the boat so the front of the boat is where the party was at. We did go and watch people drink and dance a little bit, but we mostly stayed in the back of the boat and since the party was up front we didn't have to fight anyone for room on the little back platform of the boat, which was my favorite spot.


 
On the first leg of the journey a girl was laying on the back on the boat with us but when we got back on she was elsewhere and we could lay out across the boat right there in the open ocean. It was gorgeous! Usually on a boat I am guarding my kids and would never dream of being right there where one of them could fall.


On the way over to the island they stopped the boat so that we could snorkel. When they gave us our life jackets they were just belts that went around your waist so I asked for a full life jacket and thankfully they had one. I have told you how I feel about deep water but I really wanted to give snorkeling a try and I figured that we would be right by the boat in case I panicked. But when I put the stupid mask on my face I started to hyperventilate because not being able to breathe through my nose freaked me out. I can't breathe in small spaces and that mask made me feel so trapped. The guides tried to help me breathe through my mouth but even that felt very restricted with the mouthpiece so I was going to go in without the mouthpiece and just peek under while holding my breath but while I was gathering my nerves I noticed that the snorkelers were not staying near the boat but being led WAY, WAY out in to the ocean. I sent Seth in without me. One of the guides jumped in with a life ring and offered to swim me out to the group while I held on to it and then pull me back to the boat when we were done but I couldn't get myself to get in. I do hate being a wimp but I was not the only one who backed out and lots of people never even suited up. When Seth came back he told me not to lose any sleep over it because I would have hated it. There were too many people bumping in to each other and he kept getting a mouthful of salt water fed to him through his mouthpiece.

We bought a new waterproof camera specifically for this trip but we failed to read the manual and didn't even realize there was an underwater mode we were supposed to use. Oh well, it was still better than our old waterproof camera and it kept me from having to haul the big camera on the trip.
 




 
After being submerged in salt water for awhile the camera did leave some blur on the bottoms of our pictures for the rest of the day until we could get back to the hotel and dip it in clean water.  I hate my old looking make up free face in this next one but look at that water! I grew up near the ocean but it did not look like that.


Once we got to the island we had free time for an hour and a half so we rented a golf cart to check out the island. Driving the cart by the ocean with a nice breeze in our faces was fun but we quickly learned that there is not much to the island and I was glad that I was a little bit pushy about staying elsewhere. Seth agreed.

 
I did manage to fulfill my life long dream of drinking from a coconut.




After free time we boarded the boat again and went to the other side of the island for lunch and beach time...tiny island, so kind of funny that we boated there but not everyone had golf carts. The restaurant was right on the sand and then we had time to shop or lounge. We pulled some lounge chairs in to the shade and took a little reading/nap break until it was time to head back to the mainland.

On the ride back the party continued and the all male staff members were walking around dressed in giant diapers and baby bonnets and grass skirts and all kinds of silliness putting shot glasses of tequila right up to people's mouths. We have not been pressured like that since High School. People looked at us like we were completely bonkers when we said we didn't drink. Also on the way home they did some low budget version of parasailing that Seth had been excited to try. They have a sail attached to a rope and they duct taped a towel around the rope. You swim out and sit on the rope and they hoist you up in the air for a few minutes and then you jump back in to the ocean and swim back to the boat, and no life jackets were allowed. So as you can guess, no way in this life would I ever try such a thing but I was pretty excited to get a picture of Seth. However, he was suddenly feeling sick. I teased him and the people around us were bugging him to get out and try it but apparently he really was sick. We don't know if it was all the salt water he drank, or the boat, or the sun, or the food but by the time we got back to our hotel things were not looking good. He rested while I got ready for dinner and we tried to keep our 8:45 dinner reservation but he had to leave the table a few times before we had even ordered. We finally got our order in and then he realized there was no way we were going to get through the meal. He asked if they could send the food up to our room which they don't usually do from the restaurants. You usually have to call room service if you want food in your room but our server could see that Seth was not well and he said he'd send our dinner up. So about 30 minutes later Seth was out cold and all this food was brought up to me.

 I ate about 15% of it alone in our little living room and then I spent a few hours on the balcony reading. I could also kind of see that night's show from the balcony as well. It was Grease and they were lip syncing the whole thing which was pretty amusing.

Here was that night's towel friend. His Head and body were separated when we came in so I am not sure how he was originally put together.

And we got suckered in to buying our souvenir pics from the boat. The first one is us leaving Cancun and the second is arriving in Isla Mujeres. They are pretty much the same picture so we tried to get just one but they kept insisting we could only buy them as a package.