Our trip to Mexico- Valladolid and Akumal

Elliott's school has a week-long break before fall starts every year. Rather than finding alternative childcare or taking turns staying home, we wanted to utilize the time for a vacation. It was somewhat bad timing work-wise because I had a week-long work conference (A Gordon research conference in Vermont on Epilepsy) the week before, so it was a long time away from work so close to my defense, but Nathan surprised me with tickets to one of the destinations on our bucket list, in the Yucatan, Mexico. Both of us have been to Cozumel with our families pre-marriage, which is an amazing place, but we wanted to see more of the beautiful country. Particularly the Cenotes, or water holes were something we really wanted to see more of.

We spent the first day we arrived in Cancun and rented our car, which Elliott called our "white limosine" despite it being an SUV roughly the same size as our own car. We rode a giant Ferris wheel, La Gran Rueda, overlooking the city, had what may have been the best meal of our trip where Nate declared, "These fajitas are so good that they'll still be delicious if and when they come back up the other way!" The restauraunt's name is Tacun. Afterward we went to a souvenir market, Mercado 28, and had our fun bartering with the vendors. We didn't want to spend too much time in the tourist-ridden areas, so that night we drove to Valladolid, a small city more inland that receives far fewer visitors every year, but has access to many of the most incredible cenotes.

View from La Gran Rueda

 


We stayed at the cutest ranch house, Casa Luna, with horses wandering the property and a pool that we would've shared with the neighboring property if anyone were there, but instead had it all to ourselves. In Valladolid we went to:
    
The town square, Parque Fransisco Canton, had booths set up selling handmade items, they had mayan dances and singing going on, and delicious marquesitas, or crispy rolled up crepes filled with delicious nutella/banana/jam etc.

Marquesita

 

 La Iglesia de San Servacio, right across from the town square was this beautiful old cathedral where we were able to listen to about 5 minutes of a service before Elliott needed to be taken out. 

Casa de los Venados- a house owned by an American couple that has 1 tour inside each day to see all the incredible, native art they have collected.
   
Mercado Municpal- a huge produce market with delicious fresh fruits (we also went shopping and their big grocery store because I love going to different grocery stores where we visit to see what they're like and what they sell. Weirdly, finding normal milk at the grocery store with lactose in it was very difficult, their lactose-free section had a much larger selection, at least in the refrigerated section where I looked.
A light show at the convent- Nate went to see this while I stayed home and slept with Elliott

Cenote Hacienda San Lorenzo Oxman- Possibly my favorite part of the whole trip, we showed up first thing in the morning, the only one's there for the first 20 minutes before one other couple arrived. It had a rope swing and a jumping deck. Elliott loved swimming here.
  
Cenotes Samula and X'keken- We enjoyed our cold coconut water from a fresh coconut (coco frio) on our walk to these two Cenotes, one was underground where Elliott and I enjoyed swimming. I also got to hold a parrot here.
 
Cenote Hacienda Selva Maya- We came here late in the afternoon right before it closed, it was beautiful, but there was a large crowd so basically you waited in line to take your turn for a couple minutes looking at it, before climbing back up the stairs.


One perk of being inland was finding traditional Mayan food instead just tacos everywhere (I want to be clear, I'm NOT hating on tacos, I ate plenty of those on this trip and they were AMAZING, but we wanted to try other stuff too.) We had GINORMOUS tamales, cochinita pibil, Pavo en Relleno Negro and Poc Chuc
, we also had lots of horchata, which was amazing! (In fact, we bought a bottle to take home, it is just syrup you add to milk, it has long since expired but it is still the most sure-fire way to ensure Elliott (and I) drink milk.

Looks weird, tasted delicious

Giant tamales

Traditional Mayan food spread

Next, we went to visit the Coba ruins. They are less hyped up than Chichen Izta, but just as cool (Nate and I had both already seen Chichen Itza). Elliott even climbed up to the top of the giant pyramid. Then we were all exhausted so we got to ride around on a cart pushed by a bike to see the rest of the sites before the area closed down for the evening, this was a highlight of the trip for Elliott.
    
We finished our trip staying several days at Akumal Bay, near Tulum.  We stayed at an airbnb with a private beach and kayak. Heads up for those going there, Tulum and Akumal beaches get lots of seaweed during certain seasons, including when we went, but we still took advantage of the kayak and got out past all the seaweed to enjoy the water. (RIP supposedly waterproof phone).

View from our private beach

The scorpion we captured

The spider we captured

  
While in Akumal/Tulum we:
Saw both a giant spider and a scorpion IN OUR APARTMENT that Nate had to kill
Went to another cenote, Dos Ojos- has two caves, we were able to snorkel here, see some cool fish and explore the cenotes
  
Akumal Monkey Sanctuary- one of the trip highlights was coming here, they have exotic animals that were confiscated by people who had obtained them illegally or were otherwise unfit to live in the wild. We even got to play with one who climbed on us and feed him, which Elliott still talks about.

Tulum Ruins/boat ride- Explored the Tulum ruins by land and by boat

Behind me in the distance are the ruins

Walking around Tulum Ruins

Into the Akumal Pueblo- we went into the town away from all the tourism and hotels/beach and found one of the most amazing taco places on this planet, talk about a hidden gem! We could see and smell the smoke from the grill from a block away and knew we had to hit it up. Basic, but delicious!
We also went to another taco place that was a hole in the wall in Tulum, a place we lovingly refer to as the Christmas plate place, because all of our food was served on extremely cheap plastic plates with different logos on them, one of which was a santa plate, which felt so weird seeing as it was blisteringly hot while we were there. But all the food there was so good, tacos, tostadas, and all sorts of other creations with meat, beans, lettuce, and cheese I'd never heard of, but we tried a little of everything! The salsa was no joke everywhere we went, people would be piling it on, (natives) but it was SOOOO hot. We also went to a couple more upscale restaurants in the touristy part of town run by Americans, and neither were any good.

The source of that wonderful smell and the main component of some of the best tacos I've every eaten

 
Another highlight of Akumal: Nathan got his 3rd and final CFA exam results back. Knowing this would happen we figured the trip would either be a celebratory one, or one to drown our sorrows because the thought of taking it again made us both cringe. After being wide awake early in the morning the day they were meant to arrive, he refreshed the page of his email over and over, all while reading forum after forum about those who fail the exam but just barely (those who fail receive an indication of by how much). Luckily, this horrifying scenario didn't happen and HE PASSED! He is now a chartered financial analyst, (give me a WOOT WOOT!) I'm so proud of him for the YEARS of studying multiple hours every day all while working and being a great partner in parenting our boy.

I was sleeping in (as it is custom for us to switch off who wakes up at the insanely early hour that Elliott insists on waking up) so when I emerged from the room Elliott said: "it's DADDY CFA" (with a considerable amount of prompting despite significant practice time).

Going back to real life was brutal, but luckily we had some cushioning from the blow because we spent the next several days in Kingsport, TN attending a retirement party for Nathan's mom and getting to hit up all of our favorite sites in Kingsport was nice because they have since started their mission in Lima, Peru, so we won't have reason to visit again for a while. While we were there we had a little photo shoot.