Our much anticipated adults only vacation finally happened! We had a cruise scheduled for last December that was cancelled due to COVID. We rescheduled it for April this year and is was cancelled again for the same reason. We decided to push the cruise to next year for our 20th anniversary. Hopefully in a year cruises will be back and running. In the mean time we decided to go to an all inclusive resort and see if we liked it verses a cruise better. We went to Playa del Carmen and stayed in the Fairmont Mayakoba Resort. It was pretty swanky. In my head I pictured it like a fancy hotel room but we had our own little apartment and traveled around the resort by walking or golf cart to do the different things we wanted. There were lots of lizards. Tiny ones and big iguanas that we saw. We had a family of them that we saw around our bathroom. I told myself that they liked to stay in the bathroom where it was the most humid and wouldn’t crawl in my bed at night. We named them Larry, baby Larry, and Lizzy. When we were home and showing the kids pictures and talking to them about our trip they were the most jealous about our mini bar/fridge that was stocked daily with sodas, candy, chips, and a bunch of other snacks.
Eating breakfast at one of the restaurants before heading to the pool. 
This little guy sat by me at the pool one afternoon. There were a lot of pretty birds, butterflies, and flowers. 
I took this picture from the restaurant. It is the infinity pool we spent a lot of time swimming in. 
View from the gold cart on our way to some place. 
There was lots of little rivers like this through out the resort. We had one that went along the back of our little apartment. 
Every morning they had someone walking around with this hawk. It was his job to keep the other birds away. As soon as he went around a corner there was always some brave/stupid bird that would dive in and try and grab some food. 
In the US we have to stay 6 feet apart. In Mexico it is safer I guess so 5 feet is good enough. Stupid COVID. 
We don’t know what these are but they were common to see around the resort. There was a family of them at one of the holes Ryan was trying to putt into. They were in no hurry to get out of his way. 
Ryan golfed one afternoon with his new clubs. It was beautiful weather. 
The weather was about 50/50 rainy and sunny while we were there. The day we had a tour around some of the places in Mexico, including the Mayan ruins was overcast and cloudy but no rain. It was still hot but no where near what it would have been if the sun was out. It was perfect. Some friends that were there a few months ago recommended we do an LDS tour with a family that has been running their own little business for group or personal tours. There is 8 kids if I remember right and all of them have a middle name from the Book of Mormon. The youngest is named Lemuel. His mom told him it was his job to make a new path for his name from his name sake. 🤣 Our friends tour guide was Helaman. My parents actually did a tour with them years ago on their cruise, their guides name was Alma. Our guide was Mosiah. It was a pretty awesome tour. He picked us up at our hotel and took us to Chichen-Itza, a cenote, and Ek Balam. He had lots of information about the ruins and pointed out ways that indicate the original religion was in God, Jesus, and the Holy Ghost and then over time when they became wicked turned them into multiple other Gods.
Inside the arena. You can’t see in this picture but up on the second level wall there is a small circle with a hole in the middle attached to the side. The players had to bounce a rubber ball through the hole using any part of their bodies, except their hands. The WINNERS were given the honor of being sacrificed. 
We saw two arenas that they used to watch teams compete in with a rubber ball. This was the smaller one. We are standing up where people would watch. 
This is considered a smaller temple but it is still massive. It is 107 steps to the top from the ground. 
This is part of a temple that is being restored. When they were built they were all white and smooth because they were covered with plaster. 
107 steps. They are very steep and narrow. Mosiah taught us to walk diagonally to save our knees. It made a huge difference. 
This tree is called a Tree of Life. The trunk is hollow and the bottom 4-5 feet is full of water. People could drill a small hole in the trunk and clean drinking water would come out. Pretty amazing. 
Another Tree of Life. Once you knew what to look for, every now and then one would just appear in the middle of all the other trees. 
These pillars represented the warriors. Mosiah said possible a memorial to the stripling warriors 
The pillars all lead to this temple. The top has a statue in the middle that represents the leader of the soldiers. Mosiah thought possibly Helaman. 
They built one tier on the temple every 50 years. They have discovered their are NINE more tiers under the ground that are not seen. 
There are three Gods in the top of this building. They say it was the rain, sun, and I don’t remember the third one. Mosiah said it could also be God, Jesus, and the Holy Ghost. 
The corners of the building make shadows on the sides of the stair pillars that start in March and are at their fullest on April 6th. The shadows make it look like the snake is slithering down the temple. 
Mosiah said other tour guides tell people these small circles were probably baths, or aroma therapy/steam areas. If the leaves were cleaned out you would see four stone steps in the side area that lead into the circle that is about 4 feet deep. There are several spots at the bottom that would drain water out too. Possibly for baptisms. 
Mosiah told us what a lot of the ruins on these building meant but of course I can’t remember it all now. 
This was the observatory. Like many other buildings and temples it was built so that on April 6th the sun would shine through the windows perfectly. 
Between the two ruins we went and saw, Mosiah took us to a small little town and we ate lunch at a very authentic Mexican store/restaurant. Ryan thought it was pretty awesome. It reminded him of Bolivia. The food was really good. We had black bean soup and tacos with various kinds of pork and sauces. After lunch he took us to a cenote. They are really common there. It is basically a giant hole or cavern underground that gets filled with water from under ground rivers. They come in all different sizes. He took us to a smaller town with one that is pretty quiet and for most of the time we were the only ones there.
This is where we ate lunch. 
I was a little nervous about going into a hole in the ground. Ryan said it wouldn’t even really feel like that. When I got there and looked down the spiral stair case I started to doubt him. 
…still going… 
…it feels like I am going pretty far down. 
Then we go through this tunnel for a while that you can’t stand up straight in. 
It did open up into a big area with beautiful water. 
You can see the ceiling and were the hole that you can look straight down into the cenote from the street in this picture. 
The water wasn’t as cold as we thought it would be. It was refreshing. 
I struggled with swimming out in the open. It felt like some cave monster would come grab me. 
Ryan didn’t have any issues though. 
He guessed it was about 12 feet deep right here. 
We headed to the beach to spend one of our days. We had heard there was a bit of a seaweed issue. We were fine with that. We thought we would go and sit in a chair and enjoy the view and eat lunch. When we wanted to swim we could come back to the pools. It turns out a ‘bit of a seaweed problem’ means ten foot tall mounds as far as you can see in either direction and crews of people netting and raking it up out of the ocean and not even making a dent. The smell was what we couldn’t handle. We had dinner reservations on the beach one night but after our visit we decided to cancel them and eat at a different restaurant.
Boardwalk out to the beach. 
The sand was beautiful, white powdered sugar feeling. There was dozens of little huts to sit under and sleep, read, visit, and eat. 
This is after a giant tractor came by and removed the top of the mound. So sad that this is ruining their beaches. 
One of the days we went into Playa Del Carmen and walked 5th avenue. Right after we got there a guy came up to us and said he was our waiter from the hotel and he wanted to show us his shop. He totally swindled us. We both thought he was an actual waiter from the hotel. We bought a few things from him and left. About ten seconds later, another shop owner came up to us and said he was our waiter. That is when we realized we had fallen for the number one tourist trick on the whole street. Amazingly we ran into 40 waiters that happened to work at our hotel. We figured out the umbrella we were carrying from the hotel was drawing all the attention. Despite that we got some good souvenirs and had fun walking around and seeing everything. The beach by the shopping area was covered in seaweed too.
We had a wonderful vacation and enjoyed ourselves very much. I got my first stamp on my pass port. We both decided that the resort was awesome and we had a great time but all things considered we like cruising a little more. There is a bigger variety of activities to do and you see more places with out having to do the traveling yourself once you are on the ship. We had fun and made some great memories together that will get us fueled and relaxed until our next trip together.