Tuesday June 21, 2005: Cancun Day Three

Tuesday was easily one of the most memorable days of the trip. It was the day spent at Xcaret, which is what they call an "ecological park". It is located about forty five minutes away from Cancun, and is just to the north of Tulum. My dad didn’t want to take a tour bus there, for two reasons, 1) He hates being around people 2) We wouldn’t get there until noon. We therefore rented the same van and driver that picked us up at the airport.

The morning did not go well at all. As we were eating breakfast in the Blue Bayou when we heard a strange noise. We realized it was rain hitting the glass windows. It was hard to tell because the windows are covered in an ivy-like vine that absolutely covered the windows, so we could barely tell the time of day. I couldn’t believe it was raining on the day we decided to go to Xcaret. It wasn’t just raining, it was pouring. Then Natalie and I left our snorkel gear in our rooms. I think it was a snorkel gear, I can’t remember. My dad was very annoyed with us and was just being a jerk. Natalie and I hesitated going to our rooms because we didn’t have umbrellas and we have gotten drenched the second we walked outside. We asked the bellhop if we could borrow an umbrella or two. Then we had to wait for a second bellboy to come, because he had the keys to the broom closet. My dad was visibly annoyed, as it was almost eight and thats what time our driver was coming. Finally we got two umbrellas and made our way back to the rooms to get our stuff. I just couldn’t believe that it was raining. Once in the van my dad totally went off on me. I can’t stand being around my father sometimes. He makes such a big deal out of everything and then I’m never allowed to show any emotion or give me opinion or else its “disrespectful.” It pisses me off so much. He ruins every vacation or trip we go on because of his bickering. Natalie can testify, she’s been on enough trips with my family to know. He was also mad because on Monday I kinda sorta snapped when he asked if I brought sweat pants. He was being short with me anyway, so I said “Why would I bring sweatpants?" His entire rant was just embarrassing. I was so angry that I slept the entire way to Xcaret. I just didn’t want to spend any more time with my dad. To make matters worse, my dad made it clear that we would be spending the entire day with them because he was paranoid that we were in Mexico and it wasn’t safe. Even though we were in a closed parked surrounded by 75% Americans.

To my relief, when I woke up, it was no longer raining. It was then I realized that we were smack dab in the middle of the jungle. The road that led to Xcaret was so random: they had at least five or six fake cows sprinkled on the side of the road. They were fairly realistic looking and a bit bizarre. After parking and getting our backpacks we went to get our tickets. We already bought our tickets online, so all we had to get was our wristbands. All the while I was still memorized by my lush green surroundings. Such a far cry from the sun scorched wasteland that I live in.

Random fact: Xcaret is officially the furthest south that I have ever been. Ever.

The first thing we did was rent lockers of course. But not before we changed into our bathing suits. The lockers were a rip off, try two bucks plus a five dollar security deposit for lockers that were no larger than maybe a couple of cereal boxes. We had to buy four lockers, a locker a person. They were that small. Luckily we didn’t have to rent towels...haha yeah you could rent towels. To make things worse, my dad was just being...well himself and making things more complicated and freaking out that things weren’t going perfectly.

The first thing we decided to do after our little locker adventure, was the underground river. I am so glad that we had brought our own snorkel gear. I couldn’t imagine having to use one of their mouth pieces. Plus it made everything go faster. After getting our life jackets it was only a short walk down some steps before we reached the entrance. Everyone said to do the river before it got crowded, but it already seemed fairly crowded to me. We put on our life vests and snorkels, but we didn’t bring our flippers. Natalie and I had been wearing our flip-flops, so we wore those on our hands while we swam. The water was shockingly cold, compared to the other water in the Carribean. The pictures I’ve posted will give you a better idea of what exactly this underground river was like. It was a natural river that flowed into the ocean. At some places it was not more than maybe three feet wide, and in other places it was like being in a cavern. The entire thing wasn’t underground. There were a few times where we would be swimming, and we would enter a cave and it was fairly dark. The creepiest part about it was that you couldn’t see the river’s floor, or where you were going for that matter. Its very strange to swim in the dark. Eerie if you ask me. If there hadn’t been people around I would have been terrified. I have to say it wasn’t anything what I thought it would be from looking at the pictures in travel guides and etc. I don’t think I entirely liked it. At times when the walls would thin, people would become bunched together and would run into you. Sometimes the water was only maybe six feet deep, and if you weren’t careful you could easily scrape your bear feet on the rocky floor. I happened to do just that at least once. Plus my foot had that yucky blister on it.

We swam on for what seemed like forever. We separated from my parents when we first got in the water. I was getting a bit tired, and maybe just a little bit sick of swimming, so I suggested that we get off at the next “exit” because I really doubted my parents would be able to make it that far. I was wrong. They were actually not far behind us. They wanted to make it to the very end. Natalie and I were sorta tired, but hey, how often to do you get to swim in an underground river? So we finished. The last part had this rope you could hold on to, so that you could better propel yourself along. Plus it was in a cave and they had fake lights scattered about. We didn’t see very much fish in the water until we got to almost the very end. There wasn’t much to look at really, which was sort of disappointing. When we came out of the tunnel it was raining, but not too hard. The sun had hidden behind a few clouds, but it was still warm out. It was interesting. The fish grossed me out. I didn’t like the idea of being in such close proximately to the slimy creatures. The river dumped us out at a little station with steps, and we could see where the river ran into the ocean. I would guess the river was approximately 3/4 long. I checked online, and it said it was about 1 kilometer. So about...

After exiting the river, my dad insisted that we find one of the inlets to snorkel in. But after seeing some people swimming in the ocean near some rocks, not too far in the distance, I had to hesitate. The rain quickly let up. It was strange, to walk around soaking wet(from the river, not the rain). It was like being at a water park really. Xcaret was like Seaworld meets Raging Waters, meets the beach lol. On our way to an inlet, my dad decides to find where the dolphins were at so we would know where to go later. Long story short, we came across this beautiful lagoon(as seen in picture) and I told my dad that we wanted to swim in there. I had already had enough snorkeling for one day. The lagoon was gorgeous, and warm. Natalie and I grabbed two innertubes while my parents found some lounge chairs on the beach. For a while Natalie and I just floated around randomly and watched people snorkel. We could also see the dolphins from our position. They were kept in this large round circle sort of net. I have a picture of it. It doesn’t look like something you see at Seaworld. They kept the dolphins in the ocean, but surrounded by netting. After about twenty minutes or so, my dad waved us in. He said that he and my mom were going to journey back to the lockers to get towels and some other things, so Natalie and I needed to watch our little basecamp. My dad gave us money to order ourselves lunch while the went away. I guess after my dad had seen a little more of the park, he deemed it safe. Safe enough for us to separate and wander around on our own after they got back.

After getting out of the lagoon I felt especially sticky. They conveniently serve you lunch at your chairs. There were several waiters wandering around, and all we had to do was flag one down. The menus were on the table/umbrella shades next to us. Natalie decided on a burger, and I for some reason thought the seafood salad sounded good. This random lady came up to us and said something about an iguana. We turned around and there was this three foot iguana lurking behind our chairs. Lucky for us he moved on quickly. The food didn’t take long to get to us. My salad was, shall we say, interesting? The shrimp was delish, but the salad dressings they had brough me were horrid. One was thousand island and the other was something similar to ranch. They didn’t have Italian..grr. There was also some other strange seafood on my salad, that to this day I’m still not sure what it was. It might have been squid, but I don’t know. It didn’t help that there was flies about everywhere. I reached the point where it was just grossing me out too much. Natalie was nice enough to let me eat some of her fries. Meanwhile, my parents were still off at the lockers. I’d say that Xcaret is probably bigger than Disneyland. Easily bigger in fact, so it didn’t surprise me that it took them almost an hour to get back.

After my parents got back, Natalie and I set off to explore the park. I had washed off the ocean water in one of the showers, maybe ten minutes prior to leaving. I was sticky again before I knew it. The humidity was enough to make me sticky. I wish now that I had taken my camera with me so I could have taken pictures of how beautiful everything was. I wanted to see the batcave, mostly because it sounded cool. “Hey we went to the batcave!” The batcave turned out to be less cool than I thought. Outside the cave there were warnings to be quiet and thus not disturb the bats. After we descended a few stairs that seemed to lead straight to the earths core, we found ourselves in a pitch dark tunnel. There didn’t appear to be anyone else around. It was creepy. Natalie and I took a few more steps and then retreated to the exit. A second later, a group of people came up the steps and told us it wasn’t really that bad. We gave it another shot and slowly found our way to the end of the tunnel. The tunnel widened and we found ourselves in a small, circular cave. On either side of us, the ceiling went deeper into the earth and we could just barley see the outlines of the bats. There were a few dim lights here and there, but it still felt eerie. We spent maybe thirty seconds admiring the bats before we made a run for the exit.

Next we explored the “butterfly sanctuary.” It reminded me of the one at the San Diego Wild Animal park. I can still vividly remember going there for "Roar and Snore" and not seeing any butterflies. Well their butterfly sanctuary was actually filled with butterflies. I wouldn’t say it was swarming with them though. I read somewhere once that Nicole Kidman is deathly afraid of butterflies. I could never understand it. That was until we encountered a few butterflies that decided to dive-bomb us. I screamed, oh yes I did. There wasn’t a ton of butterflies, as I said, but the sanctuary was gorgeous. I was lush with foliage and even had a waterfall. Just gorgeous.

We stumbled across the Mayan/Mexican graveyard. It was interesting. One part of it was sorta underground and there were hundred of candles lit inside. All of the graves were on a hill that had a few different levels. All of the gravestones were completely unique. One was made out of a bathtub, another had tires. It was fascinating and creepy.

Next I believe we went to “Jaguar Island” and saw a black panther and a leopard. They also had a crocodile nearby. It just sat there so Natalie refused to believe that it was real. We also saw one giant snake, probably a boa. Then we began to walk deeper and deeper into the park. We saw where they kept the bees. They were just sorta our there out in the open, luckily they were the kind that didn’t sting. We went on further, past some animal pens. We saw horses among other animals. Soon we came to a huge stadium. Apparently at night they play that ancient Mayan ball game and put on shows and what not. By the time we passed the stadium it looked like it was going to rain soon. We wanted to go up in the skytower and have a look around. It almost didn’t happen. The guy said he’d take a few of us up, but it would be a quick trip because they were expecting lightning at any second. Comforting when your in a big metal box in the sky. The view from the top was gorgeous. We could see there was a cruise liner nearby and we could see just how deep the jungle was.

We got off the skytower not a moment too soon. Not a second after we got off it started raining. Not just raining, but pouring. A torrential downpour would be an accurate description. Not that it mattered because we were already in our bathing suits. It was one of the most surreal and strange experiences of my entire life. As it started to pour, people began leaving the park in droves. We needed to get back to the beach area as soon as possible because we were set to swim with the dolphins at 3:30 but we needed to be at the beach at 2:50. At first, it didn’t worry us too much, but then we realized two things. 1) We were as far away from the beach as we could possibly get and 2) we had no idea how to get back. Our trip back was long. It took us at least a half an hour. But it was the funnest thing ever. We were just trekking through the jungle in the middle of a downpour, and it wasn’t even cold. It felt warm. It was indescribably beautiful. Plus there was hardly anyone around, which increased the allusion that we were in the middle of the jungle somewhere. We stumbled upon the aquariums and wandered through them for a while. We were dripping wet and surrounded by a ton of people that sought sanctuary during the rain. The aquariums and surrounding area were so large that it took ten minutes of our time to get out. There were a few times that I was sure we were the only ones for a couple hundred meters, and then we’d stumble across another group of people soaking wet and on their way somewhere. By the time we made it back to the beach it was only sprinkling, but we were still sopping wet. It looked like we had just stepped out of a pool. But we made it in time.

We collected our things and headed to the round dock-like structure. We had to wait a while before it was our turn. We watched the other groups that were ahead of us. There were two sides to the dock with dolphins on each side. At 3:30 we were finally led down to the area. The trainers split everyone up into two groups: those who spoke English and then those who spoke Spanish. Most people were American actually. We were sent off to the right side. I was happy because that side had more dolphins lol. Then they split us up into another two groups with about six people each. They gave us all life jackets that were just a little too small. Natalie pointed out that they were all labeled “children.” Even the adults got them. We had five people in our group: Natalie, me, another girl about our age, and a father and his seven year old kid. Our trainer seemed to be the head guy there. After putting on life jackets we went down some stairs onto this platform submerged in water just enough so that the water was up to her chest. It freaked me out because fishes liked to hang out right there and I didn't want them touching me. They took pictures of each of us with the dolphins and then the trainer gave us a whole explanation on the dolphins. Told us about the anatomy, gave us fun facts that sort of thing. He had one right there with him and we got to pet him. When all but the other girl our age answered one of his questions wrong we had to float out in the open water so the dolphin could splash us lol. What I had been looking forward to was the dolphins pushing us through the water. I think that I was the second person to go. He told us to lock our knees and get in a “superman” position. In my case I had to spread my legs because I got two dolphins :-D One pushed me on each foot with their nose across the enclosure. It was insanely fun. I got pushed out of the water quite a bit. It was a very interesting feeling to have the dolphins noses on the bottom of your feet and to be pushed through the water. Upon reaching the other side of the dock area, I realized that my bottoms had pretty much fallen off, so I had to fix that quickly. It didn’t just happen to me though, a few other girls complained about the same thing. Very uncomfortable.

After we each had our turns, we had our pictures taken out in the middle of the water of the dolphins jumping over our heads. Then we joined the other six people and spread out a bit. The dolphins came and swam among us. There was roughly eight of them. Thats almost one per person as there were eleven of us. We got to spend aprox. twenty minutes just petting the dolphins as they swam slowly by us. A few even turned over so we could pet their stomachs. It was so neat. But I wouldn't say lifechanging, though I know there are those who would say otherwise. There was an alpha female and she was huge! The water was fairly warm, you would feel pocket of warm and cold water but it was still very comfortable. I was very satisfied with our experience. Some of the other people said they had some stuff similar to this in the States but it wasn’t nearly as intimate as our experience. It was well worth the money we paid. Plus my dad filmed it. It was defiantly one of the highlights of the trip. I was sad to leave the dolphins.

After we got out of the water, we had only a half an hour to get to the parking lot before our driver came. We didn’t think we’d need to stay later than five. I felt bad because my parents didn’t really get to do that much, but they claimed they had fun. I wish we could have seen more. There was still soo much that we didn’t see. Changing in their lockers was an experience in itself. They were pretty gross. We made it to the parking lot in time. Not that it mattered, I mean we were paying him. Natalie and I wanted to stay awake during our drive home because my parents were telling us about some of the towns we had passed through. Their descriptions immediately reminded me of our Tijuana visit. Mexico is such a weird place. We would run across areas where there were half finished buildings that were abandoned. My parents pointed out the rotting houses and other structures down some of the side alleys. Makes you appreciate what you have. Despite our desire to stay away during our journey back to the hotel, Natalie and I fell asleep. The van was quite spacious so my parents had the front seat, I had the middle seat entirely to myself, and Natalie had the back seat to herself. I think I just laid down. I doubt that I ever wore a seat belt while we were in Cancun. Kinda like our Tijuana visit eh?

Upon returning to the hotel we rested some more in the room. Pleasantville was on so we watched that until it was over. We got dinner at the continental place and then tried to play tennis. The lady suggested that we wait until tomorrow to play because the sun would be going down soon and they didn’t have lights for after dark. We waited till it was dark before we went to the pool again. Another beautiful night following a fun day.


None of these pictures are mine, I stole them all off of the internet. I just wanted to give a visual of where we were at since I am such a crappy writer lol. The dolphin picture is obviously mine though.

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A picture of the park.





This is an open part of the underground river.





More of the river.





Here is the beach that we ate at and what not.




The lagoon we swam in.




Small but pretty picture of the laggon/beach...whatever.




A small section of the graveyard/cemetery. See where the underground/tomb looking doorway is at?






This is what I mean when I say jungle.





Heres the funny thing. This picture was taken in broad, blinding daylight. Go figure. Yes, I look geeky, I’m comfortable with that.