Akumal Mexico, Here We Come
No money but need a vacation, so what to do? Sell the kid,
no can’t do that, he’s already moved out J
I have an idea.
Having accumulated 16000 air
miles over the years, we can finally
use them. After hours on
the phone with the Air Miles rep, we book an All Inclusive Package in the
Riviera Maya area nearest Akumal Mexico.
We’re not big on all inclusives, but hey, at this point, we’ll do
anything to get out of the cold.
We receive our
itinerary and reality sets in. A
direct flight… that’s good, but we know the bus from the airport to the hotel
will take forever because of all the stops at other hotels to drop vacationers
off. We will have to keep
reminding ourselves, “tranquilo!”
It’s the day before we leave, finish work and look at the forecast
for the Cancun area, “Hot and Sunny”.
Great, we pack light and hope… Oh yah, drop our 13 year old dog off at
the babysitters; she’s already sulking because she saw the luggage.
It’s the morning to leave and we do the usual things, unplug
all unnecessary electronics and program the thermostat to stay a 55 degrees.
Our friends arrive to take us to the airport, we load our suitcases and off we
go.
No problem checking in, we just have to get through the
security.
My turn, here we go again, my underwater camera, strobe and
attachments are questioned. “Is
this your case sir?” “Of course,” I
say, “yes, I can open it for you,
no problem”. The problem I
do have is how rough they are with my equipment and I politely ask them to be
more careful. They oblige but they don’t like my Phillips screwdriver which is
so small about 2” long and about as thick as a toothpick.
They won’t allow me to take it though, I told them to keep
it. Seriously, what can
anyone do with that?
Now that that’s behind us, it time to eat breakfast, I order
eggs and bacon, guess what I get to use for utensils, a metal fork and knife.
Now this really makes sense, they keep my screwdriver but allow metal cutlery
in the restaurants.
Full from breakfast and all coffeed out, we board the plane
for the five and half hour flight. Everything goes smoothly, wait for our
luggage at the carousel and 20 minutes later we hit the go or no go button,
were lucky again, its green and we go through the doors and ignore all the guys
that have that great deal for you.
We head out the exit doors and go looking for our hostess, and
after finding her, she shows us what bus to get on and wait.
And wait we do, about 45 minutes later we are on our way. An
hour and a half later, we are finally arriving at our hotel. “The Bahia
Principe Coba.”
Check in is
effortless. We need to catch the
motorized train to get to our room and 5 minutes later we are there. The room
is clean and large, within a couple of minutes our luggage arrives and we tip
the porter.
We get freshened up and decide to get some food and have a
drink to finish the evening and discuss what we should do for the first full
day in paradise. We decided for
the first day we would take it easy and relax and swim at the hotel.
Ah, we wake up to a beautiful sunny morning and start our
day with breakfast at the buffet restaurant. We finish up and go to the room, grab our snorkeling gear
and walk to the beach. What do we find? every lounge chair is gone and it’s packed with people.
We finally get a place to sit and grab some drinks. Of course I want to get in the water and
check things out. I hit the water
with my mask and snorkel to find very little of anything alive. I want to go
under the rope and head to deeper water but there are lifeguards keeping anyone
from doing that. With so many
people in the water and seeing the fake boulders that are placed in the
swimming area (which I’m sure are there to help the beach from eroding), my
snorkeling here is done.
We spend the rest of the day around one of the many pools. We
eat at the buffet for dinner, which has a very good selection of food for
everyone’s taste.
We end the night in a lounge and off to bed we go.
Day 2
We won’t repeat
the disappointments from the prior day, so we pack our gear, towels, a quick
bite to eat and next thing you know we are in a collectivo (local bus) heading
to Akumal. We get out of the bus on the side of the highway and walk to the
village, which is not quite a mile.
The walk is pleasant as there is a nice sidewalk right to
the town. As you approach town you pass by the realtor office, the taxi stand
then the little shops selling all types of ware from paintings, silver and
clothes. There’s no hard selling here, everyone’s very laid back. There are a
couple of stores that you can buy groceries at and there is a cool little
restaurant that is very cheap to eat at and has great Mexican food. This is of course just one of the great
restaurants in the area.
We stop at the store, grab a couple of cervesa’s for later
and continue towards the beach, we pass under the arch, which goes over the
road. We are very close now; we
veer of to the right down the path straight for the beach where we know there is
lots of life in the water to see.
We wave at the beach cam as we pass by and find a place to
plunk ourselves down. The beach is very quite for January, the sun is hot and
about 10 minutes of sitting there is all I can take. Cindy and I decide not to
waste anymore time, snorkeling we go. Immediately we see lots of fish and the
deeper we get we spot the local resident turtles, rays, pipefish, angelfish,
parrotfish, tangs and Barry the barracuda or maybe its his brother, they are so
hard to tell apart J
After probably a couple of hours now in the water and starting
to turn into a prune, its time to head to shore, dry off and eat. On the other
side of the scuba diving hut there is a little food stand. We sit ourselves down and enjoy
delicious tacos and cervasas. Nothing can be better that this.
We spend the rest of the day enjoying the water and sun
until early evening. We pack up and back to the Bahia Principe, going back the
same way we got there. We get cleaned up, having booked one of the specialty restaurants;
we enjoy another great meal and enjoy the special treatment from our waiter. Stuffed
from the meal we tip our new friend and decide to pack it in for the day.
Day three through six is the same; we catch the bus just
outside the Bahia and in ten minutes were walking to town as we thoroughly enjoy
Akumal for snorkeling, the relaxing atmosphere and of course eating at our
favorite restaurants.
Day seven of course is painful having to leave the beautiful
weather and Mexican people. The
attendant picks up our bags and on the bus we go following the same pattern as
we arrived stopping at various hotels picking up all the others whos’ vacation
is coming to a end.
The plane ride was uneventful but when we arrived back home
the snow we received was record setting. We timed our vacation perfect.
Thank you Airmiles.
