Alex Bovee

This was our 2nd trip to the Riviera Maya.  The first was to earn our scuba chops in Cozumel and Playa Del Carmen.  This time the trip was for Meghan and Tyler’s wedding.  Melissa and I have decided we absolutely love this area.  Consider our retirement location finalized.

We flew into Cancun and took the shuttle to our resort, the Barcelo Maya, which is an inclusive resort located south of Playa Del Carmen on the coast.  To be honest, I’ve never been a big fan of all inclusive resorts.  I never understood why people went to them.  You go on vacation to check out the area, to eat authentic food, and to experience culture.  Or, at least that’s why I usually go on vacations.  But, with a kid in tow, I think I finally understand why people go to these places.  It’s just easy.  After you’ve paid for your room, you don’t have to worry about anything else.  No tipping, no finding ATMs or cash, no planning or figuring out dinner, etc.  Everything is just magically done for you, 24 hours a day.   Hot damn.

We flew in Thursday morning, the wedding was on Saturday, and we left Monday morning.  That gave us a solid few days to do some fun activities which included checking out Tulum, getting our beach volleyball on, and running around with Lilly at the kids water park.  Tulum was just as amazing as I remembered it.  The view is epic and the beach is pristine and beautiful.  They had a few more areas roped off this time around, which I’m guessing is because they got tired of tourists walking all over the structures.  Probably a smart move.  

The best part of the weekend, though, was catching up with old friends from Texas.  We haven’t seen most of this crowd in over two years, so it was fun to hang out and get the run down on everything new in people’s lives.  It’s amazing how much things have changed in a short time.

Worst part of the weekend: losing/having stolen my passport.  I’m not exactly sure which one it was, but I’m leaning towards stolen.  It was only out of our sight for about 5 minutes, when we were at breakfast Monday morning.  We were just loading up on some food before getting on the shuttle to catch our flight.  All the passports were in the blue backpack which we left at the table while we grabbed some food from the cafeteria.  Didn’t realize the passport was gone until we got the airport.  Luckily, US Customs had a record of my departure to Mexico, so they knew I was the real McCoy and let me back in.  Cool.  The only bad side: I really hope there’s not people trying to cross the border from Mexico to the US right now with a truck full of drugs - using my passport to do it.