.: angilou and tucker too :.

random pics from cancun

Day 3 and 4

Our days are starting to take on a pattern: breakfast, then take the kids to mini club and watch the circus part.  Then Tucker and I leave, him to sailing, me to the beach or a class or something.  Lunch (on day 4 without the kids!) and back to the beach/sailing.  I usually pick up the kids around 4, where they are doing some kind of activity, like tie-dye or making cookies.  For the tie dye event, we walk up while they are having something called a “Tarzan snack”.  The setting was beautiful.  They were on a covered patio with a view of the ocean and light breezes.  Little tables and chairs had been set up for them and on the table it was a veritable sugar fest: each boy had a bowl of fruit loops, and in front of them were plates of cookies, brownies and donuts.  Oh yeah, and one bowl of fruit, which of course was un-touched.

The boys also spotted hermit crabs and iguanas, and captured a couple of hermit crabs as temporary pets.  Cal's was named "Hermy" and Putt's was named "Crabby".  They kept them in buckets and occasionally imprisoned them in sand castles.

They've also done trapeze every day, so we've got some good pictures and footage from that.  Unfortunately, internet reception is crap, so will have to wait until we are back to post.

Rest of Day 1 and Day 2

After checking in, the kids goofed off in the room and then we headed to dinner. Interesting items that night: beef carpaccio (yum) and sautéed baby octopus (interesting and much more tender than I expected).

 The next morning it had stopped raining and was overcast. We trooped off to breakfast and then headed to the Mini Club (mini club med for the kids). The first activity was circus and the Cal and Bonden were game to try it out. Cal was kind of snarky “Yes, I’ve done this before” and “No, I don’t want to!” [do a backflip] and I had to give him a little talk about talking back. Bonden climbed up there and flew through the air! We is so little up there, but super cute and bravely hung on, but not much else.

Tucker headed off to sailing and I went and found a cabana on the beach. Of course, about an hour into it, the mini club kids come walking by – their beach area is 20 ft away from my beach chair. The boys spotted me and there was a lot of “Mama, come here!” They bobbed around in the ocean, and then at the end I came over to give them a hug, and then Calvin burst into tears “I miss my mama!” Of course the GO’s (gentle organizers – basically the Club Med workers) were trying to console him, but Cal sobbed so pitifully. It was 11 o’clock and I was pretty sure he was having a low blood sugar meltdown. So, checked him out of mini club, and headed to get him a snack. Ran into papa, and we hung out, ate lunch together and then sent them back to mini club. After mini club we picked them up and they played for a couple of hours on the beach before dinner. It was less crowded by then and we had brought some beach toys, so the boys had a blast. I think dinner that night was Asian night, and we had some interesting curries and Asian styled dishes. Then back to the room, a little more goofing around, then bed for the boys. It’s 930 and Tucker and I are both in bed reading and I feel very old and lame. Elsewhere on the resort, there are bars and nightclubs open until 1am, but by then I am in a deep sleep.

Day 1

The boys woke up super excited on Day 1 and kept asking, "Are we leaving yet?"  and jumping up and down as we got closer to departure time.  At the airport, we took the parkihng shuttle and they were showing pictures of various tourist destinations, oddly Cal knew most of them.  "The leaning tower of Pizza!"  "That's China!"  Stonehenge then appeared and he was silent.  Tucker told him "That's Stonehenge" and while Calvin soaked that in, Putter said "I've been there."

We had packed a little lunch and happily munched on our sandwiches after getting through security.  Then it was time to buy...flavored gum!  Cal told us the day before that we would need to buy "fruit flavored gum, because Grammy said we needed it for our ears on the plane."  Later when the plane was about to take off, Cal woud urgently say "I need my gum - hurry!" as if the plane wouldn't go if he didn't have the fruit flavored gum in his mouth.

The plane ride was pretty uneventful, and Pott napped for 45 minutes.  Cal had a little breakdown as we decended, and then fell asleep, so we landed and he was sound asleep.  Tucker carried him through part of integration, and they started to perk up. The skies were gray and the weather report was rain.

Again, uneventful immigation (yay!) and then we went to the departure hall.  There had to be like 40 or 50 of these government tourism agents, who I guess are there to give you tourist advice and make sure you're not shiestered by some local.  They would greet you, move to you to a little table where they gave you a map of Cancun, told you how much the buses, taxi and exchange rates were - pretty helpful actually.  Then we went out to find our driver.  Walking of the departure gate reminded us a lot of India, as there were about 30 or 40 guys hlding signs like "Best Day Tours" or "Costco vacations".  It totally reminded us of India, but instead of brown, skinny men, they were shorter, somewhat more portly brown men.  We found our Club Med driver and off we went!

Club Med is the almost the first hotel in the "hotel zone", so we were there in about 15-20 minutes.  We arrived and it was still pouring down a steady rain.  There were attendants at the door, wiping up water, then wringing out towels.  Club Med staff met us with umbrellas and ushered us in.