Mexico: a reunion--day 1

Prologue: It all started when my very generous little brother got a VERY large bonus at work. Nice guy that he is, he decided what he really wanted to do with part of his bonus was pay for a family trip. Since my family is so spread out, it doesn't happen very often that we all can be together. Matthew decided he wanted us all to be together, and he wanted us to be together someplace exciting and fun.We tossed around various ideas for a while, and finally decided to go to Cozumel, Mexico--a little island off the coast of Mexico, close to Cancun. We liked the idea of renting a beach house and found that it actually didn't cost that much to fly to Mexico--it would cost just as much to fly everyone out to some place in the US. Plus, there'd be reefs and ruins, and lots of exciting things to do.So Matthew enlisted my help as his "travel agent" since he knows I enjoy doing that sort of thing. It was a bit tricky finding a date that everyone could do, but we finally worked it out and booked the trip for the end of May. It would be for a week, and the parents and siblings and their spouses were all invited. Matthew decided that he would not pay for all the kids (there's 11

grandkids in my family so far) but that if the parents wanted to pay for them themselves, that they could do so. Otherwise, it would be just the adults.

I think we booked the tickets back in February or March. The time between then and May went by amazingly fast, and suddenly we were on our way to the Yucatan! Of course, there was the little snaffu about the H1N1 virus that for a time threatened to ruin everything, but in the end, things settled down and we decided to move forward with our plans.

Oh, before I forget, let me state that NONE of the pictures on these blog pages were taken by me. Most of them are my little brother's photos--he's quite the photographer, and we mostly let him take the pictures for us. Some of them come from my mom or sister or other brother. But Kevin and I actually never pulled our camera out once on the whole trip--can you believe that? It was actually really nice to have a designated photographer to rely on to capture all the memories. I wish we had him around all the time to do that!

Chapter 1: Getting There

So, we left on a Friday. We decided to have everyone fly into Cancun, and from there we would travel to see Chichen Itza before we finally ended up at the beach house in Cozumel. Everyone's planes arrived at slightly different times, but there were basically two groups: Matthew, Kevin, and me first and then everyone else arriving like 3-4 hours later. So, the plan was for the first

group to go ahead and take the 2 hour bus ride to Valladolid (where we were staying the first night) and check into the hotel, where we would wait for everyone else. The second group was

going to take a later bus together and arrive in the early evening. In total, there would be 11 adults and 2 children (my older brother Michael and his wife decided to pay for their two little girls to come too.)

Kevin and I flew out of Chicago (about a 3 hour drive away). We didn't really want to have to drive ourselves up there and pay for parking, plus our flight left pretty early and we didn't want to have to leave at 3am from Champaign, so we opted to take the Megabus to Chicago Thursday evening and spend the night at a hotel close to the airport that night. (I booked an AWESOME high-end, modern hotel on Priceline for just $40 plus tax! I love priceline for hotels.) The Megabus was cheap too--just $10 per seat for the ride to Chicago. It was my first time riding the Megabus (those of you who live in the West probably have never heard of them--their routes are in the east and Midwest only), and I was very excited to try them out. In the end, we actually didn't enjoy the Megabus ride, however. The bus was CROWDED and we barely found two seats together--actually, we only got them because of a nice nun sitting next to us who I'm pretty sure asked some other passengers to shift themselves around to leave two open seats together. The other passengers around us were very loud and, well, they smelled (not the nu

n, though--she was nice). So the ride was less than pleasant, although the passengers got quieter as the trip went on. But, on the bright side, the bus did have wireless internet access.

Anyways, back to the Mexico part. Our flight into Mexico was really pretty short--just 3.5 hours (direct flight!). And from Chicago, the price of the tickets was less than $300, so it really was cheaper and shorter than it usually is to fly home to NM! We arrived at the airport, found Matthew, and took a short bus trip to the city center where we bought our bus tickets to

Valladolid. The first thing we noticed was that it was HOT! Not that we didn't expect that, of course. The second thing we noticed was that they charge you to use public bathrooms--just a few pesos, though, which is like 25 cents or something. Before we got our tickets, a man came up to me and started explaining that there was a bus about to leave for Valladolid and that if I came with him, I could buy a ticket right now. I looked at the schedule board, and said I didn't see that time up there. He said, "No, no--there is a bus leaving right now. Hurry! I'll take you to buy a ticket." At this point I finally cottoned on that he was lying and trying some sort of swindle-ry.

Kevin and Matthew made fun of me for taking so long to figure out that I should have just

ignored him. I noted that neither of them was anxious to jump in to help me, however...

The bus ride was uneventful and quite comfortable, actually--the buses (which were "first class" buses) were really a lot nicer than most US buses. We were taking the bus to Valladolid because that is the closest city to the Chichen Itza ruins, which were going to see the next day. (More on that later.) Unlike Cancun and Cozumel, Valladolid is NOT a tourist town--it's just a quiet colonial city with lots of native Mayans and very few English speakers.

We had to walk about a block or two from the bus station to the hotel. It was really interesting to see the "real" Mexico--as opposed to the glammed up tourist areas where we spent mos

t of the trip. The side walks were in pretty bad shape, so it was a bit of an adventure wheeling our luggage to the hotel. Matthew had never been out of the country before, and he was rather shocked by the whole place. He kept saying, "it looks like we're in Afganistan or something! This is like, a third world country!" I told him, well yes, it IS a third world country. But I guess it is actually second world. I never felt unsafe or anything there, but it was certainly an adjustment coming from the US.

The hotel we stayed in looked like a dump on the outside, but as soon as you entered, there was this lovely open air lobby and courtyard. I got to try out my pathetic Spanish skills, and managed to communicate all the necessary things to the lady at the desk. The rooms were pretty basic, but nice enough. We had reserved 5 rooms, all of which were identical except for the one room which would have the 2 kids in it. That room had some bright orange, VERY worn blankets on the beds. The other rooms all had rather standard-looking hotel bedspreads and curtains.

We immediately turned on the AC and tried to cool down. I was planning on venturing out and seeing some of the things in the city before the

rest of the group arrived, but as it turned out, we had to deal with a little problem: my oldest brother John and his wife had missed their first flight! That meant they had missed their connection, and wouldn't get into Cancun until quite late. So, we had to figure out what they were going to do. The last first class bus left from Cancun before they would arrive. Luckily,

the hotel had internet access in the lobby (I'm told it was even quite fast even), so we looked up the bus schedules and figured out the options. We told them they could stay the night in Cancun and take a bus REALLy early in the morning, or they could take a late night, 2nd class bus. They chose the latter, which meant that their bus ride was 3.5 hours long instead of 2, and that they shared the bus with chickens and lots of passengers standing in the aisles. They finally arrived to Valladolid at about 3am.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. At about 7ish the rest of the family arrived. They had a little excitement right when the bus was pulling into the station. My little niece Anna had a MAJOR, MAJOR diaper blowout all over her mom's lap and the seat and...well, you get the idea. They cleaned it up the best they could, but ended up paying the bus driver some money to cover the, uh, damages. So they were rather frazzled upon arrival, but they made it! Everyone got settled in their rooms, and then we walked to a restaurant on the plaza for dinner. It was a really nice place with great ambiance-- a fountain in the middle of the room, etc.-- and great food. AND great prices (the benefits of NOT being a tourist area!)

After dinner, we all went to bed early, since we would be leaving early the next morning on the first colectivo shuttle to Chichen Itza. I was the lucky one who got to meet John and Sonya when they arrived at 3am and give them their key,

but I was glad to know that they did make it.

So, it was a long day, and this was a long post! The rest of them will be shorter, I guarantee.

Home again, home again

Well, we're finally back home again--for good this time--after spending a week in Mexico, a week back home, and then two weeks in Ireland! We had some amazing trips, but it's good to be home. We had a sad homecoming gift, though--when we arrived home, we found our car all bashed in on the side! I guess there was a hit and run accident while we were gone. We filed the police report, but we want to find out how much it will cost to fix before we claim it on our insurance. (We have a fairly high deductible, so it may or may not be better to just pay for it ourselves.) It's a little depressing to think that people would do that much damage to your car and then just take off. I'm glad I don't have to live with that on *my* conscience! P.S. I'll be working on blog posts for our trips in the upcoming days--but no promises on how long it's going to take to finish!