Cancun - Day 4

We had big plans for today. We had to rent a car, which was a bit of a challenge.  Everybody in the resort spoke beautiful English, except for the amigo that was manning the rental car facility. My Spanish is poor, his English was non-existent, but we made a deal (with a little help from google translate).

Because I didn't know what I was agreeing to, I took a bunch of photos of the car with him in the background.

We drove about 90 minutes south of our resort (and Cancun) to Xcaret!

I'd never actually heard of Xcaret! until we started planning our trip to Cancun, but this place was pretty awesome.  They call themselves an ecological theme park.

We wore our suits and brought our towels.  There were lots of lovely birds near the entrance.

There were these cases with eggs about to hatch.  I think the girls would have been happy spending all day there watching the little birds trying to get out of their eggs.

With the parrots.

The first thing that we did was float one of the rivers that goes through caves down to the beach.  They had a few different ones that cross the park.

We lounged in some hammocks on the beach for a few minutes.  While there somebody stole Ada's and Lyla's flip flops.  LAME!

We were thinking that we would swim with the dolphins here, but we had spent so much to get into the park, and there was still so many activities that we wanted to do, that we decided to pass and save that for another time and place.

We stopped for a buffet lunch.  The food was ok, but there were lots of options.

Ada.

Kate.

Lyla.

Lyla II. We hung out at our table while a monstrous thunderstorm passed over the park. We were able to stay dry while we waited out the storm.

The paths through the park were amazing. There were animal exhibits throughout, and often the paths criss-crossed the rivers.

Kate and Ada. The paths are all marked by different colored tiles or stones.  You can see the green path to the left.

Follow the path.

A mountain lion.

Black panther.

We followed the white path to the an amazing aviary. The trails criss-crossed themselves over bridges and waterfalls as they wound down to the bottom.

Waterfall.

On the bridge.

Nesting.

Keeping those eggs warm.

You can see the three levels of the paths and the waterfalls and bridges.

Lyla, Alison and Ada.

Kate (I love Lyla's face in this).

Kate II (see Lyla and Ada?).

Flowers.

From the aviary we next went to the butterfly pavilion.

This was a fun urinal.

There was an ancient Mayan Village and historic burial ground.

Kate hatching.

Lyla the hatchling.

Kate the turtle.

By this point Ada was grumpy and wanted to go home.  There were still a few things that we wanted to see, so she had to mope along behind us.

Sea turtles.

I liked this 3D model of the park.  You can follow the underground rivers through the park as they go in and out of the underground caverns.

They had photo stations set up similar to a Disney Photopass. Sometimes there were manned by real humans, other times you would scan your wristband and a fixed camera would take a picture automatically.  It was a pretty cool setup.

Holding the birds.

Ada.

Kate.  She was pretty nervous about this.

This was about as close as Lyla would allow herself.

This was one of the automatic camera setups.

We were joined by a kind little Mexican friend.

Ada and Kate.

I don't remember what this was a picture of, but I'm sure it was nice.

The backside of water.

Family photo.

Family photo round II.

Family photo round III.

Kate.

Lyla.

Ada.

In the graveyard.

At the Mayan ruins.

2nd to last, I promise.

Last photo. On our way out, except that we stopped to watch the eggs hatch for another 30 minutes or more.  It was seriously mesmerizing.

Tomorrow, we visit Tulum!