Tag Archives: food

Mexico

Cancun on Saturday

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We woke up…well, you know the drill. Made breakfast, packed our stuff up, said bye to our host and got moving to Cancun. We’d decided to take a bus downtown Cancun and cab to our hotel a move that saved us $50 versus busing to the airport then cab to the hotel, a shorter distance.

Thankfully, unlike our last day Hawaii last year, this hotel was lovely. Check in was easy, we found our suite quickly and met a really nice lady in check in line up. A quick lunch at the hotel restaurant and we’re off to the pool! And the swim up bar.

I think we swam, read, drank, swam, goofed off for a good 3 hours before we went back to our overly air conditioned room. A shower, an attempt at a nap and we left again by shuttle to a circus show!

Actually, first, dinner at Hacienda Sisal restaurant. We ordered guacamole (predictable), empanadas and tosadas. The food was good, but the guac was brilliant. We finally found the guacamole of our dreams!

The show was Deseo, apparently a new show roughly last year. The production quality was low-to-moderate, but the skill of the performers was all very high. There was one act in particular where the guy starts on a balance board with a ball under it, and by the end he’s standing on… 6 rolling tubes stacked on top of each other. The tubes were all perpendicular to each other, such that he could have fallen off in any direction at all, but he stayed up there for a good 10 seconds before coming down. They had a live singer who was excellent, and a group of acrobalancers who did an amazing set. Great show, well worth the time and effort and money!

I’m going to roll into the next day, since I have an actual keyboard now (home!). Up at 7am again, a quick breakfast at the TradeWinds (hotel restaurant) and we gave our last pesos to the cabby to take us to the airport. The Cancun airport is laid out well, and has all the services you might want near the departure gates.

The plane ride was hectic. Very very bumpy and scary. But we made it. Vancouver is cold, but not as cold as I expected. Brisk. We had Memphis Blues for dinner, and now we’re trying to make it to 9pm. We can do it!

I’ve got a few more photos from Chichen Itza/Ek Balam and a couple underwater photos and photos from the hotel. Hopefully I don’t give up on them! 🙂

Mexico

Random phone photos

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I have a few things on my phone for you. 🙂

5th Ave at night.

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Our cafe Tulum, protecting us from the rain.

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Cycling Tulum.

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My special promotional Corona.

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M’lady insisted we eat at McDonald’s one night.

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Looking for gifts for our cat sitters. 😀 (these are every where)

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Water spout off shore on our drive around Cozumel.

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Adrian and Rooster Scooters.

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We forgot to get photos of us driving, so here’s Miranda afterward. 🙂

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Best place to eat. Make sure your Spanish isn’t bad. Home of the bitchy waitress who refused to slow down her speech for a couple tourists who were trying their best. But at 120 pesos for two tasty meals and 2 drinks (around $10), we’ll accept some amount of abuse.

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Mexico

Happy birthday Miranda!

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We set our alarms for 8am since we could sleep in today. Woke up naturally around 7 anyway.

Got up and walked down to the unnaturally quiet 5th Ave for breakfast. We’ve been making breakfast most every day because it’s easy, relaxing and we don’t have to start our day by finding a place to eat (occasionally stressful), but today we wanted to out. We went to a bar/restaurant place called Pea Vela, mainly because it was one of the only places open. I had a tasty chicken/chorizo burrito and Miranda had…vinegar, egg and cheese soup with green peppers. It was a little potent, but better once you strained the liquid down and put it toast!

Our plan for the day was to go to Xcaret. There are 3 super “eco parks” in the area that dominate most of the business and advertising. They are so prominent that they have road signs on the highway that look like regular highway signs taking you to a town or city, and more frequently displayed too. Every tour agent in the town aggressively wants to sell you a trip here. We had to pick one and go, because it’s just so in your face.

Afterwards, I would categorize Xcaret as a zoo. A zoo with dolphins, sharks and manatees you can swim with. A zoo that’s blasted out part of the land underground to create a river you can snorkel in (not that there’s anything to see…not much life in a man made river). A zoo that has 5 buffet restaurants in it and a night show that makes the price of entry worth it. If you were really into it, you would need least two days too see the entire place. Holy crap.

We’re both glad that this place wasn’t the highlight of our trip though – it’s just to much, and being here makes your North American guilt flare up pretty bad. You know, if you have such a thing.

Hooooowever. We paid extra to swim with the dolphins. They have a number of optional extra activities and choose to do this one. Then we choose to upgrade to the dolphin “Primax” package for a special, for you only price of $30 USD. We upgraded mainly because the group size went from 12 to 4 (but there is a few other perks as well), definitely a worthwhile upgrade. They give you a 15 minute intro and then in Primax you have 45 minutes of playing with a few dolphins along with a dolphin trainer. I don’t know our guys name, but he was amazing and full of energy. I believed that he loved his job, particularly since he put all that energy in, and we were no where near our wallets to tip. 🙂 (which is commonly expected every where you go here).

We had already decided beforehand to pay any price for the photos of this event. You aren’t allowed to bring your own camera in, but they have a few guys taking pictures and video. We hadn’t expected to be asked to (almost) buy our experience again for those photos. Ouch. Obviously we don’t have their statistics, but it reminded us of the toll highway – half your prices and maybe you’ll get more than double the number of customers. Anyway, we bought the photos, averaging out to $3.50 per photo, and I’m not saying how many photos there are. They’re brilliant, they’re amazing and when you see them you will enjoy them, damn you! 🙂

This place has a few well thought out organizational systems in place. They have people with cameras all over and when they take your photo they also scan your wristband. At the end of the day, you can scan your band at nearby kiosks to see and buy all your photos for the day. They have buses after the night show to take you home, and because of the bands they know how many buses they’ll need to bring everyone home. Not their first rodeo, this place is very well orchestrated.

Today was our last full day in Playa. Tomorrow we gather our things and bus up to Cancun for a day of relaxing.

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Mexico

Back at it Thursday!

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Up early today, this time with an alarm so we didn’t miss our ferry. 645 local time. Ferry at 8. Don’t miss it, or our snorkel tour wouldn’t wait for us.

I like snorkeling on my own. It’s easy, relaxing and you can do it whenever you like in a place like this. You don’t need a tour to go snorkeling, just some inexpensive equipment and an idea of where to go. However, I like taking a tour as well. They serve drinks and food, often drive you places it would be difficult to get to yourself and provide a fun place to relax in between swims. We booked with Cozumel Watersports. The boat crew was fantastic – they had a very explanatory speech before the swim, good communication and helped out well with people who needed it. This area has a mandatory life jacket policy, which is irritating and understandable. I like swimming down to see things closer. They don’t want yahoos wrecking the coral. These guys have the same policy, but the jackets weren’t the foam type I’m used to, but were more like the inflatable jackets airlines use…And you didn’t have to blow them up! Got some fun photos from this trip, had a rather strong marguerita and some fresh guacamole on the ride back.

Their dock is at a beach bar, La Palapita DenMedio Beach Bar, so we stopped to enjoy some food and plan our afternoon. This place was really chill, and while again the food wasn’t blow me away amazing, I really liked it here. A nice place to put your feet up after a solid swim.

We had a mind to rent scooters and drive around the island. We mentioned this to our tour guy Fernando and he made a call. While we were eating, scooters were driven to the restaurant for us to rent…That’s pretty badass.

The entire trip around the island took about 3 hours at about 40 km/hr. Which is as fast as Miranda’s 50cc would go. My 250cc would go much faster, but there was no way I was going 100km/hr on a rattling Mexican scooter. We had a rain shower in the middle of our ride, which was hilarious! The island is 90% circled by a terrific bicycle path…Which is also used by scooters, a lot. This is wicked safe and separated from regular car traffic for the most part. 5% is coming into San Miguel on a 4 lane road with lots of space. That last 5% though is a little scary – driving through a Mexican town streets on a scooter. As Miranda put it – a 2 lane road with 4 lanes of traffic on it. If we did this again, I’d do it over the entire day as there are so many cool beaches and natural landmarks to see along this road that we drove by, including a lighthouse and another set of ruins.

We managed to navigate our way through town to find our guy Adrian of Rooster Scooters. He was super nice and the three of us drove 2 scooters back to the ferry.

I wrote a few blog updates as best I could (still on the phone, remember…) and we got home and all but passed out from a super long day in the sun.

Friday is Miranda’s birthday!

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Mexico

A rough day in paradise

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We woke up with a plan – scope out a car rental company then head to Akumal beach for some snorkeling. It didn’t work like that.

Several weeks ago we bought Mexico SIM cards. We like data, instant translation and maps, as well as email and other phone related things, so we buy data when we travel. I found a place online, awesome. When we get here though, they don’t work. In his defense, the guy I bought them from is on email and phone every day trying to help get this sorted, but it’s hard since he’s there and I’m here. So this morning we find our cell provider directly and try to get it fixed.

Our Spanish is busted. His English is entirely limited to technical items. Together, we try to figure it out. We left a while later, assured that it would work.

(It’s not working still…)

We found lunch at a place called La Fogon (roughly). Miranda had a quesadilla con pollo, and I had a torta con chorizo y queso. Ground chorizo and melted cheese on a bun…yum!

We decided to go to Akumal anyway, despite it being 2 pm. As recommended by my aunt, we got into an unmarked white van, gave the driver some money and hoped for best.

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These colectivos are all over the place, replacing any form of public transit. $3.50 each to go down the highway a half hour, not bad. But you may have to remind them where you’re getting off…

Once at akumal, we had a long walk ahead of us. Miranda has been tracking her steps and I think we got 4000 of them here getting lost on our way to the beach. A friendly Summerland, BC resident pointed us towards the badly marked beach.

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We didn’t go swimming. Too late in the day, we needed a locker and couldn’t find one and I forgot my swim trunks. Stupid…We’re calling it a scouting mission, because now we’ll have an amazing day there when we go “for realz”.

Back to town to a place called Los Aguachiles. Food was pretty good, but still not fantastic. I’m on a search for the best ceviche, and she for guacamole…

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Tomorrow morning I’m up early to go diving. 120 feet into The Pit, followed by two nitrox dives at Dos Ojos (two eyes). Unfortunately, because of the Great Cable Fuckup of 2014, you’ll have to wait for those photos, but I expect they’ll be spectacular!

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Mexico

Playa wanderings

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We both were surprised to be awake at 8 am local time…

After realizing that this problem wasn’t going away, we got up and walked to a nearby fruit stand.

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Breakfast was as amazing as it looks. Mexican mangos (squishy and juicy!), watermelon, and something called an aguacate which is related to the mango, but is a little tart. Made some eggs and breakfast is served!

Next, we walked. Apparently around 7 kilometers total over the day. There is a lot to see on 5th Ave! Including…

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Ok…so this sucks a little. These are live animals and are super cute. But after doing this we spoke with my dive folks and they asked that we not do this. Apparently, not legal and exceptionally questionable. Very sorry. 🙁

We stopped at a place called La Vagabunda for a snack that ended up being lunch. Two daiquiris, guacamole and quesadilla and we’re good!

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The water is lovely.

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Cozumel is right there.

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Miranda, such a kidder!

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I’m in love with this girl!

Also, with this public art peace. Wish Vancouver had crazy huge statues that remind me a little of those statues from Final Fantasy 3US…(nerd…)

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After, we TripAdvisored a nearby restaurant. Walked over, and the place in question no longer existed, but was replaced with a different and very similar looking place.

No English is super fun!

Tomorrow we’re thinking of Tulum!

Moron me forgot a really important cable at home, so this entire post, and all subsequent posts, was written using my phone keyboard. Good thing I’m a fast typist…

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Hawaii

No idea what day it is.

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I figured out why my keyboard wasn’t working last night, so we’re back in action! This keyboard is so awesome, I can’t type a blog post on the on-screen one anymore.

The first photo from yesterday needs some explanation. (perhaps they all do). I was trying to take a photo of some fish floating around, when suddenly a dark shape appeared overtop of me. I pulled the camera away from my face to see that it was Sean…photobombing my scuba photo. >.> Hilarious!

Today the diving was much better. More fish, more photos, more fun, less cold, less rain (none). I’m a little disappointed that I was unable to get a photo of a whale underwater…but that was a pipedream of a photo opportunity anyway, so it’ll be ok. I have a ton of awesome photos to post from today! Later…

Diving again at 6am. Then we gathered our things and drove to the top rated restaurant (Trip Advisor) on Kihei – a food truck called the Kinaole Grill. We grabbed some garlic shrimp scampi, coconut shrimp and panko mahi mahi (all with rice and pasta salad) and drove to a beach called Makena Landing. Lots of waves. We ate lunch and then went snorkeling with Sean while the ladies sunned and read and stuff on the beach. I’d say this was the first time that snorkeling showed me how it could be lots of fun – found a great little wall that we swam beside with tons of life and caves to dive and explore and lots of little fish (I love the little fishies).

We were there for a few hours and then drove back into town for more shave ice (actually…I didn’t blog about yesterday – we went shopping in Lahaina, and got shave ice). Shave ice is delicious. But you almost certainly have to have ice cream in the bottom. It’s like…ice cream and ice with a ton of syrup on it.

Came back, looked through some photos and now out for dinner and then more gaming and drinking. No diving tomorrow, so it could be a later night. A lot of options for tomorrow’s fun – we’ll see what happens!

(photos to follow tomorrow)

Hawaii

Day 3, surfing and shopping.

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We started the day early again, and with pancakes. Our friends Sean and Kerry arrived last night and we had surf lessons early in the morning so I made pancakes for the group of us before our lesson. Surfing was good, totally want to go back. Our instructor was not great, a guy from Big Kahuna in Kihei. He was pretty gruff, and a little quiet. He cracked a couple jokes while on land, and gave good instruction there, but when we got into the water, his best instruction was “paddle!!” Which was ok, since I think a big part of the sport is knowing when to take a wave and when not to. But there was another instructor nearby who was giving regular instruction, so I had something to compare him against, and unfavorably. No photos today, unfortunately. After surfing we went to a great little restaurant called Three’s Bar and Grill. Tasty burger and tastier friends with a tasty lava flow. That’s a pina colada with strawberries in it. 😀 I’ve decided not to foodblog this time, because after eating here a bit, the food is primarily US food, with a few exceptions. The nice part – this saves me from having to deal with photos of food. 😛 After lunch we went to Costco – apparently S&K have a thing for international Costcos and after a morning of surf workout, this was ok by me. I bought a rolling duffel bag…because getting my scuba duffel to the airport last Friday was back breaking work. I almost bought a new bag on Friday, but couldn’t find the time for it. Glad I didn’t – great Costco deal on a new bag. Now it’s about 5:30, and we’re planning to bake a pizza and eat a bbq chicken, play some board games and drink some rum. Followed by diving early in the morning, so hopefully I’ll have some more awesome underwater photos for tomorrow!

Belize

Day 5 – Food!

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I forgot to photograph breakfast until it was much to late, so you have several photos of empty plates here :P. Sausages, a communal bowl of scrambled eggs, a bowl of refried beans, a basket of fried jacks and a bottle of Marie Sharpes. Breakfast!

I did not find these fried jacks as pleasing as the ones at 5 Sisters. I began to worry if I had tasted extraordinary fried jacks, and that no other preparation would leave me satisfied. (They were still pastries drizzled in honey…I had 4 :P)

Lunch was at that creepy place with the old people. They had some decent lime juice (she had frozen pucks of juice…add sugar and water and stir for a while). I think this is a breaded chicken burger and fries. Every mouthful I thought I was going to start choking on the poison she had put in there, or pass out and wake up tied to a bed. But the food was tasty and I walked out, so I guess I don’t have to much to complain about :P.

The eldery gentleman spent a significant amount of time talking about his cashew pie, so when the question of dessert arose, we had no choice but to sample it. It tasted like a mincemeat tart, but with cashews in it. I like mincemeat, and I love cashews, and this was a good pie.

Dinner was prepared on the side of a road BBQ in San Pedra. Pupusas! They hand-make the dough and then they have bits of meat, beans or cheese inside them. Dip them in the “tomato soup” in the middle of the table, or just go straight for the Marie Sharpes. A good meal!

We’re getting into “diving territory” from here, and I haven’t yet taken the time to go through my diving videos to make a summary video. Perhaps now that I’ve thought about it, I’ll see if I can’t start that process tomorrow…I have about 7 hours of video and a lot of it will be crap >.>