This is the only day the boys and I really did anything in Mexico, anything out of the hotel at least. And not that far out of the hotel at all! Our hotel was built on the edge of the XCaret park. This is part of a collection of parks that all start with an X (says like esh though, so "eshcaret") and was the "have a taste of all of ancient and traditional Mexico in one place.
There was a boat to take us to the park, which we waited ages for then waited for another one because it was full, and was a waste of time, it's a very short walkable distance.
My first impression of the park coming in this special entrance was a bit underwhelming. Didn't seem to be much around. We headed straight to huge spinning observation tower, like a very gentle fairground ride where you all sit facing outwards as this things moves up the huge tower and rotates slightly. Could see all around for miles, nice, though I'm no great fan of heights. After this we walked further into the park, and realised we really had come in the back way.
Next we looked for the underground river adventure. The park is big so this was quite a walk really and we had to nip back and forth figuring what we could do with our stuff. We got a locker and left some things there, then went to the entrance of the river. You get a life jacket and the offer of some flippers, then one last chance to put any non-breakable non-valuables in a waterproof bag that they will take to the other end of the river, then into the water. Jim dropped out at this point, and we're glad he did it would have been hard for him. The water was much colder than we expected, but still fine. Then you're swimming along an underground river, too deep to touch the bottom but ropes to the side to hang on to if you get in trouble. I had thing two hanging round my neck from the off. He could float with the life jacket but was not keen to let go so I had to swim with one passenger on board. This was not super comfortable, for him nor me, and Clare had soon had enough too, so those to climbed out of the river at the first point they could, about a fifth of the way along. I think the whole length of the river was about a mile, and though I call it a river, it was not really flowing, so more of a channel dug through the rocks. Thing two and I continued and had a great time, though I wish we'd taken the flippers. We did not, we thought we were smart bringing our sailboard shoes with us, but actual flippers would be better as there's no touching the bottom.
Only minor disappointment of this river adventure was that I had in my head that our bags would be thrown in the river and floated along with us. I think they were actually driven to meet us at the end.
Now, DOLPHINS! We booked a dolphin encounter at Xcaret. I am never quite sure about this sort of thing, like most people, are they just being exploited? Can we believe the spiel about conservation? Anyway thing two was very keen to do this, it's one of his favourite animals and we'd kind of promised. Thing one was keen also, and because thing two was below some age band or other another adult had to go in with him, and that was me!
We watched a long video about the conservation of dolphins, and a feature on some new dolphin-like creature that has just been discovered, that frankly I think was made up. Then, into the water. Of course Clare and Jim were kept a long way from us so they could not get any photos. We were in a group of about twelve people and we all stand in a row on a sort of ledge about waist deep in the water. The dolphin swims back and forth and does tricks based on our hand movements, then we each take turns to pose for a photo pretending the dolphin is kissing us. I expected that to be it for our fifty dollars each, but no! Next we're all in the water and we're meant to swim round in our family group so they can get some more pictures. Here's the tricky thing, thing two can't really swim. We had lifejacket type things on, and he was bold and it all worked really well. I think they had trouble getting good enough photos so we stayed in for ages, actually swimming with the dolphins, they'd go round and round us so I do feel the boys got the proper experience they were expecting.
I tried to walk away from the photo buying bit at the end but was encouraged back, "oh yes you can get a photo for less than $20" so we thought we would. It slipped out that this photo would be a digital copy only good for viewing on your phone, it as going to be $100+ for anything else so I think we'll leave it thanks. Boys, I hope you remember this experience. The dolphin was called Quiche, true fact. Pronounced kee-chay though.
After this excitement we went looking for things to climb on. There were Mayan ruins in the grounds so we checked those out and figured that would do us, there's no need to head to Chichen Itza or anywhere else on this visit. Next to an awesome kids play area with water slides into a cenote and things, they had a lot of fun there. I think this day was particularly tiring for Jim, not sure he got a lot of it, was a lot of waiting around really, but I liked it.
At some point between those things we walked back to our hotel for lunch. It was really close through the special passageway. While we could have got an expensive lunch in the park, our free buffet was waiting for us only ten minutes away. So we ate our fill and then came back to this park again.
We saw some other entertainment round and about in the park, but there's too much to hope to fit it all in in one day. Two of the things I wanted to see but missed were the Mayan ball game (like basketball but you move the ball with your hip and the losing team get sacrificed) and the flying men, a kind of flying maypole thing. However, more to come later...
One of the big features of Xcaret is "the show" at the end of the day. Lots of visitors come from other hotels all around, and locals too I suppose. There is a purpose built arena that fills up, we got their fairly late so were sat quite high up. However, worth the delay to grab ourselves some beers on the way in I think. The show features all sorts of aspects of Mexican history, the early people, the arrival of the Europeans, music, dancing, horses, all sorts. Including a) the Mayan ball game, and exhibition match, and it looks really hard. Then also as we were leaving (we ducked out before the end so as not to be late for our next free meal) the flying men spinning round the huge pole. Glad to have seen this, the whole event was very impressive.
We could have paid to upgrade our seats and had food while we were watching the show, but I think we got it right as our hotel and our own meal was so close by. If I know I've already paid for one meal then I'm not going enjoy another meal that is costing me more money no matter how good it is.
We had our dinner back at the hotel, then to our usual spot in the courtyard bar then working out how many drinks we could carry back to the rooms. Lovely.
Paul Clarke's weblog - I live in Hythe near Folkestone. Wed + father to 2, I am a full stack web developr, + I do js / Node, some ruby, other languages etc. I like pubbing, parkrun, eating, home automation and other diy jiggery-pokery, history, genealogy, TV, squirrels, pirates, lego, and TIME TRAVEL.