Garnica Family Reunion- Playa Del Carmen Mexico, Day 4

 Wednesday was a free day. A few of us made reservations at the gym at our resort in the morning, then we hung out at the resort, several of us took a shuttle into town for a couple of hours, 5th Avenue, and got our hair braided and bought some souvenirs, then we came back and swam, kayaked, ate, swam some more, ate some more and did a lot of visiting and catching up. And of course at 830pm we went to the entertainment for the night. Our favorite nights were probably the people who did tricks with fire, and the 'Dance Party' night where they had professional hip hop dancers and jump ropers come in and put on a really cool show.

Some of us made reservations at the Italian restuarant. We had an adult table and a teen table. 

After dinner we walked to the ice cream parlor and got ice cream. The teens did this every night, and we came along sometimes. It's so nice to have it all included in the price. 

Garnica Reunion, Playa Del Carmen, Mexico, Day 3- Xplor

 

Tuesday, Day 3, most of us spent out on an excursion. Luis, Pepa and Angelo stayed behind at the resort. Scott, Me, all our kids and Shaun, Reese and Bella (basically all the teens), spent the day at Xplor. It's the Xcaret Adventure Park. It has ziplines, jungle cars, rafts, river swimming etc. Becca, Blake, Rain, Fred, Robin and their two youngest girls went to Xcaret. Xcaret has a Mexico Spectacular that evening where you see traditional mexican singing and dancing, horses doing tricks, etc. Plus they have a butterfly pavilion and an aquarium and a river to float down like Xplor. 

We loved Xplor and would do it again. We left at 8am and got back on the bus to return to the resort by 5pm. By 3pm, Nora (age 9) was tired and ready to head back to the resort. But she loved it until then. And the rest of us (ages 11-40) all enjoyed it the whole time, and probably could've stayed there longer. 

On the Jungle Cars. There were two routes and two lines. I did them both. One of them goes through a little waterfall and splashes through big puddles. That was our favorite route. The other doesn't have water. 

Waiting in line for the ziplines. We heard that in the morning, whichever one you choose to go on first will be pretty fast getting through the line. But whichever one comes second you 'll have to wait awhile. So the line to the Jungle car was only maybe 5 minutes long, whereas the line to the ziplines was an hour or more. 

After ziplines we went to the buffet for lunch (it was included in the price). I finally got some refried beans with pinto beans! Black beans are served more often in this part of Mexico which is different from what I grew up eating. But my dad was from Michoacan which isn't anywhere near Cancun. 

Rafting with hand paddles. This was a little trickier than it looked and some of the kids got stuck or caught up on the side of the cave. But it wasn't a big deal. Scott and I stayed in the back and helped the couple of rafts that got stuck. 

The hammock splash was another fun zipline. This one was just one zipline. Whereas the other 2 ziplines were more like a system or chain or ziplines. So the one we waited in line for, for over an hour, was a set of 4 ziplines. We didn't do the other one, which had 7 ziplines. If we had more time I would've. 

Back at the resort and ready for dinner. 

Luis, Pepa and I made reservations at the Mexican restaurant, La Hacienda that night and had dinner there. Then we met everyone else down in the buffet where we had dessert :). We ate lots and lots of food on this trip. And I gained a few pounds. It's all good. I'm working at getting those pounds off now that I'm back home again :). 

Garnica Family Reunion 2021, Playa Del Carmen, Mexico- Day 1 & 2 travel and dolphins

 All of my siblings live in different states: Utah, Idaho, Oregon, Washington and New York. Normally for family reunions we meet up at someone's house. It's what we've always done. But this year we decided to do something different and meet up at a new location(partially because we have a few kids graduating high school over the next few years and we wanted to take them somewhere else, but all our vacation time is always spent at reunions). We chose Playa Del Carmen, Mexico. Our dad is from Mexico, and Becca and Blake had been to this area before and loved the all-inclusive resort and the excursions nearby. Fred's family started traveling several hours before the rest of us as they had to drive 5 hours to an airport in California to catch their Southwest flight (SW doesn't fly out of Medford and they had points to use). 

Here's Luis flying from NY.

We were up at 3am and on the road by 320am so that we could be to the airport by 4 (with car parked in the economy lot which is $10/day, and then we took the shuttle to the airport), and on our flight by 6am. 

The Romney's didn't have to leave IDaho until 8am so they got the most sleep. 

Pepa and Angelo came from Seattle and had a nonstop flight which I'm sure was nice...I was a little jealous.

We had a 3 hour layover in Arizona. But it was made better because Fred's family also had a 2 1/2 hour layover in Arizona at the same time so we met up and hung out until we all got on our next flight together. 

Jane and I took bonine to help with motion sickness. I only took half a pill since I didn't want to be so sleepy. It's supposed to be a non drowsy pill, but it still makes me drowsy. 

We got to the Cancun airport around 4pm and to our hotel around 6pm and then we didnt' get all checked in until almost 8pm! We had a bit of a hiccup at the check-in counter. They said we only made reservations for 6 of our 7 family members and that Fred only made reservations for 4 of their 7 and they wanted us to pay the difference! We had to talk it through for a long time with employees and managers and show them screen shots of us  making the reservation with the correct number of people (we'd read before hand on reviews that this has been a problem in the past with some of the resorts so Fred took pictures of his reservation pages, thank goodness!). But finally they agreed to let us stay for the amount of price we'd agreed to with all of us. This was tricky though because even the reservation confirmation they sent us, said I only made a reservation for 6 people and not 7. Next time I'll be sure to read the confirmation page as soon as it's printed and then call the hotel if something is wrong before hand because this was very stressful. This was really the only negative experience we had the entire trip. After check-in, everything was wonderful. Well I guess I also didn't love the 92% humidity, but it was fine when we were in the water or inside. Mostly it was not fun on our Thursday excursion to the Mayan ruins; but that was so interesting that it was worth it! More on that later. 

Monday me, Robin and the kids went into town so the kids could have a dolphin encounter excursion. We had a shuttle pick us up at 850am, just after we finished breakfast at the buffet (loved, loved the all-inclusive food and all the buffets and drink bars where we could get smoothies etc) and take us to the excursion and then we played with dolphins, ate at the restaurant there (included in price of dolphin encounter), and then took the shuttle back to the hotel. We were back by 1pm. 

These nice pictures of the dolphins with the kids were super expensive. $40 for one or $55 for all for one child. I took pictures with my camera, but you had to watch on the opposite end of this very large pool. Needless to say, you can't make out whose who in the pictures or what's going on, or that there's a dolphin. I wasn't going to pay that kinda money for pictures, but Elisabeth and Charles had their own spending cash and talked the people down to letting them have all of their own pictures for $40 each. So we have digital pictures with a professional photographer for just Elisabeth and Charles. 

I took this one before they got in the pool and walked across to the other side where they had their dolphin encounter. 

Here are some of the pictures I took, zoomed in adn later blown up even more. This is Annabelle doing a trick with a dolphin. 

And the dolphins splashing the kids. 

Angelo with the dolphin (they each got a turn to a couple of tricks with the dolphin. If you look closely you can see the professional photographer laying down on the right side). 

At the end of the encounter, as the kids were walking back to Robin and I, they stopped Shaun and Ananbelle and asked if they'd like to help them train a younger dolphin for a few minutes. They both were thrilled to be chosen and they both got to swim with these dolphins. Here is Annabelle being pulled in by one of the dolphins. You can also pay more to 'swim' with the dolphins rather than doing the 'encounter' and Annabelle said if we come again, she wants to help pay the extra so she can swim with them. 

Lunch after our dolphin encounter before we head back to the resort. 

We stayed at Grand Sunset Princess, which is also a part of Grand Riviera Princess. They are connected. We had something like 16 pools, a beach with kayaks, paddle boards and hobie cats (in the all-inclusive price), 6 buffet restaurants and 5 other restaurants, plus several drink bars, two of which were right at the pools, and a taco bar also right near the pool. Everything was included in the price we'd paid. So we often got virgin strawberry daiquiri's, pina coladas, shirley temples, etc while at the pool or hanging out in other areas, and we always met together for meal times at one of the buffets. We also tried a couple of the restaurants but you had to make reservations for those and it was harder to get all 20 of us together and we liked the buffet style with the kids, so we mostly stuck to that. 

We'd put our towels out on chairs in the morning to save a spot for the family and then come back later to hang out and swim. 

These coatis were everywhere (also lots of iguanas and a few  monkeys on the resort). They'd climb in garbages, and go through purses and bags if you left them unattended. 

Every night at 830pm they had some sort of 40 minute entertainment at the resort. The first night we watched Moana on stage...they were lip syncing, but it was still good. 

My family and Fred's family had 2 rooms. My room connected to our other room with a side door, so we ended up having all the teens sleep in the connecting room since they all wanted to be together. Nora slept with Cora and Ellen and Fred and Robin. Scott, Jane and I shared our connecting room. It worked out well.