CANCUN: THE LAZY MAN’S DREAM VACATION

As I’m sure all my loyal and beautiful readers (hi, mom) already know, COVID, in 2020 alone, caused us to have to cancel England, Wales, Belgium, Miami, Kauai….and probably more, since at that point, we just gave up trying to travel or looking for flights. We didn’t leave the USA for the first time since we’d been married. 2020 sucked.
So when we realized Mexico met all our requirements for wanting to go there, i.e. they would actually let us go there, we were all in. ALL in!

GET THE AMEX GOLD DELTA CARD RIGHT NOW RIGHT NOW RIGHT NOW

Firstly, use this link and get the American Express Delta Gold Sky Miles card. You’ll get 35k miles and I’ll get some too. Why? Because miles are crazy cheap right now. We got our flights for 24,000 miles each. If you know about miles, you know that’s absolutely nuts. And since baby was free, we just had to pay like $150 total taxes and fees and we were off to Mexico, nonstop from Salt Lake City.

ANOTHER FLIGHT WITH OUR TINY TOT TERROR

As you surely learned from my Portland or Japan blogs, we have a great child and she’s great. Except on airplanes. Actually to Portland, she was pretty good. But those days are gone. We have trouble getting her to sleep at home, in her nice bed, so why we expected her to sleep in her car seat on an exciting airplane surrounded by stimuli? Because we’re dumb, that’s why.

I’m not going to go into too much detail except to say Delta, and all passengers on this flight: I am so, so, so sorry. OK I’m kidding she wasn’t that bad, and on the flight to Cancun, there was a family with a slightly younger baby behind us and that baby screamed and cried way more than ours, so it was nice to have a scapegoat. When our baby would scream and cry, I would look around and act like it was the other kid (kidding).

I have to say though, one of the wenchiest things I’ve ever seen was when this baby was crying (not ours, the one behind us), this old lady a few rows up stood up and just stared/glared for a full 5-6 seconds with just a mean look on her face, just straight up crusty evil eye, then sat back down. Like, dude, lady, you were a baby once (hard to believe since she was ancient), and guess what lady, you probably CRIED too. And I bet your mom got frustrated and flustered when you did in public, but hopefully people were cooler to your mom about you than you were about this baby. And does glaring really help? The parents were doing their best. Just lame.

Anyways we made it through the flight there, which was good. The flight to the destination is always better, in my humble opinion, because you have the anticipation (the purest form of pleasure according to Flaubert or whoever) of the trip. The flight home always sucks because you’re coming back to real life which is lame. But yeah, 4.5 hours direct from the snows of Salt Lake City and we were in 80 degree Cancun and it felt amazing.

THE RESORT: DREAMS SANDS CANCUN

Let me just say this to start: The resort ruled. We had pre-paid like $25 each way for transport to/from the hotel, so we caught a shuttle and we were thrilled to actually arrive and get into our room, which was awesome. It had a balcony overlooking the ocean and we could see downtown Cancun in the distance, which was so cool. And baby loved playing on the balcony and saying “ocean” like 800 times. Good stuff. The people were nice (minus the $30 fee I’ll talk about later), the drinks (non-alcoholic as we don’t drink alcohol) were good, the food was surprisingly good, so yeah it was a great place to stay and I would 100% recommend it.

DISCLOSURE: LOTS OF GROUNDHOGS DAY IN HERE

Just a full disclosure: We were tired. We were cold (in Utah). We were burned out. We wanted to go somewhere, eat like the ravenous pigs we are, and sit around in the sun. So lots of this trip, that’s just what we did. I’m not going to give a recap or play-by-play of us sitting on our duffs drinking Diet Coke or Explorer’s Punch (lime juice, syrup, passionfruit, club soda…incredible). I’m only going to highlight the stuff we did outside of the beach, but speaking of beach…

THE RESORT’S BEACH RULES ALSO

To me, usually, a beach is a beach is a beach. I don’t care that much as long as it has nice sand and warm ocean. But the resort’s beaches were particularly awesome, just super soft sand and gorgeous colored water, even for a colorblind person like me. So yeah, lots of our days were spent sitting and chilling and drinking Red Bull on these nice beaches while baby dug in the sand. Such good times.

EXCESO CALORIAS AND EXCESO AZUCARES DOESN’T MEAN SUGAR FREE

Look, this may be among the dumbest things I’ve ever done, and that’s saying something! Right when we got off the plane and to the resort, I had a hankering for a sugar free Red Bull like I do 2-3 times a day (not sorry). There was a little bodega (like a gas station without gas, in New Zealand we called ‘em dairies) across the street so I went in looking for some sugar free drinks. I doubted they had Red Bull but I love foreign stores and foreign drinks so I was stoked to try anything.

And see, here in America, if something is sugar free, it says it pretty prominently. So when I saw these big black shapes on the cans saying “EXCESO AZUCARES,” I was like wow, it must mean sugar free! Even though exceso is not hard to understand. Facepalm. So I bought like 6 or 7 drinks with excessive sugar and excessive calories, only realizing how dumb I was when I arrived back to the hotel. Live and learn. (They were delicious and worth the excessive calories). Luckily the resort provided unlimited glass-bottle Diet Coke.

CANCUN AQUARIUM

Since I’m writing this several months after we’ve been home, and in those months we’ve moved to Hawaii and found out we’re having another baby among other things, my brain is like a scrambled egg and I hardly remember anything, at least not linearly. So I’m just gonna do stream of consciousness As I Lay Dying and Catcher in the Rye style and bang out what I remember, and my loyal readers (hi, mom) can deal with it.

Mexico was awesome because it was super affordable, so even with all the stuff we did plus the hotel (flights were with Sky Miles), it was cheap. The aquarium was under $20 for us although it seems like maybe we had to pay for the baby, can’t remember. I love creepy underwater life so even though it was ostensibly so our child could see animals and have fun, it was really for me and I loved it. They have a dolphin park where you can sit and watch the dolphins play and perform which is super rad.

They also have an underwater walk which I didn’t do and I kind of regret not doing, because it’s basically like just shove a helmet on your head like those creepy old diving suits and walk around the bottom of a tank. It looked creepy and awesome and I kept debating it but eventually wussed out. Oh well, so it goes.

The area where the aquarium is is super cool, just basically a mall but it’s outdoors and the weather was perfect so it was fun to walk around. The hotel had cab drivers on call 24/7 so it was super easy for us to get around without renting a car.

We also tried to go see some Mayan ruins near the aquarium but they were closed for Covid. Yeah, like…whatever. I won’t say more but I thought that was weird.

LOTS OF GOOD FOOD

Let’s just say a resort is like a cruise, meaning lots and lots of food. Lots. Like, lots. The resort had Italian, Chinese, Japanese, Mexican, and the usual like pizza and stuff. For some reason, the resort could be open during COVID but certain restaurants couldn’t be. So we never got to eat Chinese or Japanese, but the Italian and Mexican were great. The waiters were nice and we got pretty much as much of everything as we wanted. The last night we were there was the first night the Mexican place was open, and I think I got 5 desserts that night. I regret nothing, but my failing heart valves probably do. So it goes.

ISLA MUJERES

We had heard that Isla Mujeres was cool and pretty and good and fun. And when you hear things like that, you’d be stupid not to go, right? I think the ferry from Cancun was something like $30 each, and it was less than an hour each way. All I heard is there were cool ruins, a nice beach, and you could drive golf carts around the whole island. GOLF CARTS! So yeah, I was really stoked and the ferry ride out was nice and chill.

Unfortunately…our daughter wasn’t. But alas, I’m getting ahead of myself. First, we rented a golf cart before we got out there, near the ferry terminal. Supposedly that gets a better deal, and it was definitely nice to be able to go right to a shop and cruise. So I would highly recommend doing that.

But the golf carts, the thing I was so excited to do? Uhhhh…not as cool as I thought when you’re driving a rickety, clankety, stalling-out golf cart alongside semi trucks and road rage filled drivers.

It was actually fun to drive the golf cart, but people still drive normal cars everywhere. And trucks. And semis. And we got tailgated and honked at and passed a lot lot. Which is no big deal, except we had a baby so I was a bit paranoid, and it was scary driving this ghetto cart alongside all this traffic. I don’t know what I had envisioned, but it was still fun.

RUINS OF THE TEMPLE OF THE GODDESS IXCHEL

Again, as I said, my daughter wasn’t super chill. She was amazing for most of the trip, but this golf cart business got her pretty upset. And when we got out to Ruins of the Temple of The Goddess Ixchel…she lost it. So we got to go out to the cliffs but didn’t actually get down to the bottom because baby was freaking out. Even the trip out there is gorgeous though, and it’s totally worth going even if you don’t see the actual ruins.

We also never made it to Playa Norte, the best beach out there. Again, our baby was absolutely hysterical so we just wanted to pull over and get her calmed down. We found a grocery store (it was ice cold which was nice) and got her cooled off physically and emotionally and she fell asleep in mom’s arms as we cruised around. So we didn’t get to do what we had planned on Isla Mujeres but it was still gorgeous and fun. Driving along the coast on a golf cart was rad.

TOMMY BRADY IS GOING TO THE SUPER BOWL!

One of the best memories I have is from the January 24, 2021 NFC championship game in the hot tub. They had a huge screen set up outside, and I crammed into this small hot tub alongside a bunch of yelling strangers.

As my loyal readers all know (hi, mom), I am a huge, die hard, obsessive Patriots fan. So yeah, when Tom Brady left, I was sad but I figured he’d earned it. When he joined the Buccaneers, I knew they would now be my second favorite team, and that was BEFORE Gronkowski joined. So yeah, I was stoked to see Brady go to the NFC title game to play Aaron Rodgers, and I was even MORE stoked to be watching it in a hot tub full of strangers. I didn’t have a Red Bull in the hot tub, because I think if I would have, I may have transcended space and time and become a cloud.

So yeah, it was so fun watching Packers and Buccaneers fans give each other crap (people were nice, surprisingly) from a hot tub on a giant screen. It was even more fun to see Brady win against Rodgers, as he usually does, and go to the Super Bowl which he would eventually win 2 weeks later. GOATTTTTTTTT

TULUM

One thing I really wanted to do in Mexico was go to Tulum, but after our little hysterical mishap (aka angry baby) on Isla Mujeres, we didn’t think baby could handle it. So alas, dead was my dream. Until…

Up to this point, we’d only looked at group tours to Tulum. And those went all day from like 6am to 6pm or something, which we knew would never work. Caitlin said I could go alone and she’d take the lil’ monster, but I didn’t think that would be fair to her, so I said we would have to do Tulum some other vacation.

But then we had this brilliant idea: Private tour! Our cab driver who took us to the aquarium was super cool and we figured we could afford the long drive, so who cares, right? So we called him up and arranged a private drive to the ruins and that was that. Baby slept the whole way there and was an angel the whole time, so it was absolutely perfect.

When we got there, the hustle began, as it always does. Some guy immediately came to our car and told us if we didn’t pay $50 we would have to walk super far and wait in a long line. Was that true? I have no idea, I paid the money because we had a baby and I didn’t want to walk forever in the heat. The $50 gave us a guide, and we did get to skip the line and take a trolley to the entrance, so it was actually pretty good. Worth $50? No idea, but whatever.

And since Google is a thing, I’m not going to tell you all about Tulum, but it’s so rad. It’s a bunch of Mayan ruins and having a guide was actually pretty cool. It’s pretty fascinating to see these ruins from ancient civilizations. I was just as stoked as when I went to Machu Picchu.

And yeah, that’s all kids. I don’t remember much else, which is why next time I’ll try and NOT wait 5 months before doing a recap. Love you all.

So…what did we miss? Hit us on Facebook or Instagram and tell us how we’re the worst travelers ever and missed the best parts of Cancun, or drop us a line at [email protected].

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GEAR

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I kinda repeat this section on every blog post, but seriously, this is all stuff we have and use, nothing filler. Below are some of the items we took:

ESSENTIAL BABY GEAR FOR THE LIGHT-PACKING WORLD TRAVELERS:

Now I’m gonna dad out on this section, and I do not apologize. Some of this stuff would have meant nothing to me pre-child and now it changes my life daily. So buckle up it’s gonna get dad-ish in here.

OH MY GOODNESS THE DOONA STROLLER CARSEAT: Yes, it’s expensive, but if you travel (and even if you don’t) this is a MUST! It’s a car seat that pops into a stroller immediately. I never have to lug my baby around in a car seat. On the plane, you roll it to her seat, pop it into car seat mode, and strap it to the seat (FAA approved size). In Japan we made it a car seat on trains and stuff where things were crowded then a stroller when we got off. Seriously and truly the best baby thing we own. It makes it so you don’t have to take two pieces of gear, which is rad.

Ergobaby Carrier: So nice to just plop baby in and carry her around Japan (or the house). She loves it, we love it, win win win.

Lots and Lots of Diapers: I already mentioned this but we just lined our bags with diapers rather than take them in their bulky packaging.

Stroller Cover: Super basic, but it kept baby out of the elements and let her sleep. Caitlin was also able to use it as a nursing cover.

Baby Cloud Suit Peg Leg Thing: This isn’t actually the one we took, but we got this one piece fleece suit thing (with clouds on it, so we called it her cloud suit). We got one a size big on purpose so we could just put it on over her outfit when it got cold. Plus, it made her look like a pegleg which was fun.

SwaddleMe Swaddles: We’ve loved these since the dad baby was born, and they help her sleep sooooo much better.

BELOW IS STUFF WE TAKE EVERYWHERE

Caitlin’s Stupid Awesome Space Saver Day Pack Thing: I told her she had way too much junk when she bought this, but I digress: You win, Caitlin, and if you only read this blog you’d see me say this. Oh well. This bag was SUPER cheap, amazing to take on day trips, and folds up into practically nothing. Seriously, just do it now.

Amazon Prime: C’mon, it’s 2020. Get free 2-day shipping (which was necessary since we always found something we needed at the last minute) and lots of good music and TV/movies which make road trips more enjoyable. Try it free and you won’t be disappointed. Plus, pretty much everything below will ship to you free in 2 days in the USA.

AUKEY Powerbank External Portable Charger: This thing has saved us many times. It’s nice to have around the house, but it’s nicer to have during a long flight or a 12 hour day at Machu Picchu. It has 2 USB inputs and charges our iPhones really fast. It’s a bit bulky, but we get 2-3 charges from it each time. SO worth having.

Anker External Portable Charger: Yes, we take 2 portable chargers on our trip. This one isn’t as long-lasting, but it’s much smaller and lighter. It’s a bit annoying charging 2 every night, but really worth it to have charged phones the entire day.

My Pants: Ever since my days braving the brutal Wellington rain in a suit, I HATE having wet pants. These Columbia pants were perfect to put on over my jeans if I needed, which I only did a couple times. Never got even a drop under them. Well worth it.

My Bag: As I said above, we travel LIGHT. Especially with cheap airlines like Ryanair, where things are expensive, having a versatile bag is a must. This bag is not incredibly nice, but it has a lifetime warranty and it can cinch down to unbelievably small sizes. It’s made it through 6 continents with no problems yet.

Ponchos: Another must for pretty much whenever. Just get something waterproof that won’t blow off immediately.

Towels: These ones are awesome because they fold up small and dry incredibly quick. We got an off brand, our friend Loinz has an original Packtowl which he raves about. Your call.

Space Saver Bags: These have proved invaluable on our travels. It’s amazing how small clothing can shrink down to in one of these! Highly recommended.

Outlet Plugs: Of course, when traveling overseas you need a plug
adapter. We’ve had these exact ones for at least 5 years. We’ve taken them to 6 continents and they’re still going strong. And, they’re super cheap and have everything you need all in one, so you don’t have to bring a bunch of different parts. Highly recommended.

Aux Cable: You probably already have a million of these. Most cars we’ve rented have a USB that connected directly to the music, so we could charge our phones and blast tunes at the same time. The longer cable is nice so if someone is in the backseat they can still charge and control the music or navigate or browse Instagram or whatever)

Carry On Luggage Bag: This is the first time we’ve taken a carry-on bag, but we needed it for diapers. We usually fly Delta so we got one that was within their measurements.

MacBook Air: OK this is probably pushing it for necessities, but I do have to work on the road and it’s perfect to take with us. Small, lightweight, powerful, and mine has a pink cover for good measure.

MISCELLANEOUS

Caitlin and I are on T-Mobile, which is awesome because we can text and use data for free. This meant navigation was all free (didn’t have to rent a GPS) and we could find attractions on the go, as well as me managing the business from afar without searching for Wi-Fi. So good!

If you don’t have TSA Global Entry, I highly recommend it. Not only do you get through TSA lines quickly and without removing shoes, belts, and liquids, but you also get to come back through customs much faster. It probably saved us at least 1-2 hours this trip.

One of the best travel tips I’ve ever had is to save clothes you’re going to throw away or donate and wear them on trips. Along the way, toss or donate them. Not only does it feel amazing having an empty pack on the way home, but on a strict airline like Ryanair, you’ll avoid heavy baggage fees. I ditched everything I took except what I wore home and it was awesome…except when Caitlin put her clothes into my bag without me knowing.