HAPPY BIRTHDAY MIRANDA!
For Miranda’s birthday, we woke up early. She slept in 20 minutes while I made tea and breakfast, but we were out the door to catch our cab at 815 to go to Xcaret!
Xcaret is a “zoo” slash “theme park” slash “ecotourist” location that we decided to go to again on this visit. Miranda and I went here on our last trip (link 1 old photos, link 2 old writing), and now that we have Ava with us it seemed even more likely to be a fun time!
Which it really was. Although this was the first time (ever? maybe?) that we’d purposefully decided to skip Ava’s nap and I’m not sure we would choose to do that again, because it was much more difficult to manage than a day when we put her down and she decides to miss her nap.
Here’s a bunch of photos. I’ve captioned a couple of them to continue the day story.
They have this fantastic system where you scan your wristband and it collects photos of you to buy at the end. This is from one of their locations. 
We didn’t buy their photos, because we only took 26 and it was $60USD. 
Ava trying to look at a kitty kit. 
The gap between the panther and puma areas. 
A panther having a day. 
Ava enjoying the monkeys. 
“Egg” 
The “Kids Zone” has a slide leaving the washroom. 
Ava made 4 trips back and forth of this net system. 
I followed her, and it was awkwardly tight for me. 
But she wasn’t happy with the “cenote” pool, and this was where the fun was, so I did my duty. 
I had mole likely for the first time. I liked it! 
A little boat ride we took. 
Then we made a decision and tried to go swim the underground river. 
Which was questionable, because she’d already said no to the “kids cenote”. 
She was not unhappy with it. 
We caught a cab back to town and got him to drop us off at our current favourite restaurant La Patrona de Playa, which is good because it’s cheap and decent, rather than because it’s the best eats.
After putting Ava to bed, I walked up the street to a nearby bakery and bought some chocolate cake and donuts to finish Miranda’s birthday proper off well. But I’ve promised to buy Krispy Kreme before the end of the trip.