Santa/visitors from Norway and Mr V vs Stingray

Since sunday the 19th lot's has happen. That sunday the parents and brother of Gry arrived safely on this island. It was a really happy reunion!! Lovely to see them again.

Well back in the appartment Christmas appeard, our prayers had been heard, all our dances had payed off.

Check this out, Norwegian goodies!!:

And the chrisis I wrote about earlier could be called off!

Finally I could eat the last piece of that, now old, chocolate. Finally I had a storrage again. Finally my nerves was resting again. Finally I had some goooood chokolate at hand again. And it is all stored safely in our safe. I changed the code now so just I have access to it.. It was just how it had to be...

Ok, back to that sunday. After a cold cerveza and som catching up we took a walk to show "the pale people" around. At first sight they were just as impressed by the isla as we were.

The cool bar at Playa Norte

We have had some days at the beach and we have done some of the "mandatory" siteseing.

At the beach:

(for those of you that have wonderd, what is up with some of the pictures? There is a blur on the middle on ther left side.. On this picture it's really visible. This is a small particle that have gotten stuck on the inside of my new compact camera lence, just great.)

Every day we eat goooood "norwegian" breakfasts at our house, and do lunches and dinners out.

Eating lunch at the docks..

Dinner at Olivias-great food!

Here we are visiting the once great and beautiful Mundaca Hacienda

But now it was nothing left of this place. Before it was suppose to be a fantastic place to visit with lots of different animales like monkeys and alligators, but now the forrest had  taken almoast everything back.. It was of course no animales left there, accept for one dog that showed us around the hole visit, and the this picture above shows what could been seen.. And they still charge money to go in here, that's funny!

This is how we got around:

Liv and Yngvar in their colfcart

This it the rest of us of course, with Gry's brother Mathis on the left side.

After a short week with different activities Christmas came. We had booked a table the 24th at a Mexican resturant that served Turkey. This day Mr V had a strange act again.. Recently he had been good when we were out and eating and so, and were sitting nicely in he's stroller. But not today of course. Got all crazy if he couldn't get out and walk for himself. He didn't wanna sit still at all. We went to another place, an hour before we were supposed to meet up at that booked place, for a drink. Mr V just ran around all the time, so I could get my exercice I guess.. We had to go really low to make him sit still,-with french fries. That worked for a short while. Then we walked over to our dinner resturant. The fellow there that I had been talking to regarding this dinner came over to me immediately and said: "I'm sorry but I have a problem". hehe.... So, ok what is this then. Then he said: "we don't have any Turkey". haha.. funny fellow..  But he wasn't trying to be funny I quickly found out. It was the truth. I and all the rest of us had actually looked forward to this dinner. He could of course offer all sorts of other types of food, but that we had had and gotten tired of long time ago. So we decided to go back to the apartment and talk about what to do and eat. It was maybe the best thing to do anyway when Mr V still had to get it his way or screamed like crazy..
After 5 minutes in the apartment that fellow, named Raoul, from that Mexican restaurant came and shouted to me at the porch, Now he had Turkey anyway. haha... Was this possible...did this actually happen?! Oh yes we are in Mexico, anything can happen. So we had a small discussion of what to do, and decided to bring the food home. That was ok by Raoul so we did. We got a bottle of red vine for the trouble. The dinner itself was ok, but that we got it that was the most important thing I guess..


Later that night Mathis and I took a small tour in the "city" for some beer and drinks. We ended up in Poc Na, were we met some friends from a earlier night, Carlos and Martin. Mathis was smart and ended the night a bit before me..

1. Cristmas day, we enjoyed a good typical christmast breakfast, with lots of Norwegian goodies. After that we took a few hours at the beach. So nice.. Gry, Mathis and me visited some bars later at night this day.

2. Christmas day we arranged a boat tour to a small island called Contoy. The sea was calm and quiet just outside Isla Mujeres. Looked like the perfect day to go for a boatride. When we were about to set off I had to make sure that they had a lifevest to Mr V that was right for him. They were just saying ,Yes we have dont worry. But of course they didn`t, so it took them a short while untill they got one that fitted him. They just wanted us to go with these ones they had, but no not me. After that was well put on we took off. I was quite happy inciting of a right one, because when we got out in open sea it got a bit rugh for that small boat. 

This picture is take just after we had a stop to snorkel at a reef..(where we couldn't see anything):

On our way to Isla Contoy we spotted a huge sea turtle in the surface taking in air. We also stopped a a reef on our way out there, but there was to much fuss in the water to see anything really. Well there at Contoy, we could se right away that this was a fantastic island. The colors in the sea around it, and the great beach. Lots of birds all over, and iguanas and lots of eremit crabs.

Here is a small one up close:

Here is "hundreds" at the ground:

And at the beach we saw this:

Here is Mr V with Grandma

It was quite amazing, this Stingray seemed to be tamed. It was just swimming among the people at the beach. Nothing was holding it back, it could take off when ever but didn`t. It was holding out at the beach for a loong time!

 

 

 

This is the Fregatt bird in mating season. It's the male that have this red balloon at it's throut.

 The same birds "hanging out". Looks like they have been shoot..

180 degree picture of the beach area:

We had a great day at isla Contoy with bird watching, swimming, relaxing at the beach and we god a fantastic lunch served from a huge barbecue. It was of course fresh fish witch was fantastic (they served chicken too, but that I didn't have). This hole day with food and drinks included was about 350(60$) nkr pr person. Not too bad..

Caribian diving and upcoming Christmas

I went out diving on last Sunday. Just asked the diving guys just outside our front door if they were going out this day, and they were just about to go with two costumers. I could tag along if I wanted to, so I did.

We had two dives at two different places. The first one was at an Art Exhibition 10 meters below the surface. That dive was really cool. It is an amazing site. There are lots of statues of people in different poses and looks. They all are in same size as people alive. It was just like being frozen in time or something. Kind of reminded me of Pompeii (not that drastic of course) and the people that were frozen in time there in the lava and the "missing Atlantis". I don't have an underwater camera myself so I'll just shear a link to a site that has some nice photos from there:


http://www.delfindiving.com/gallery.html ( there are also a few pics of a site with shipwrecks, I wasn't there)

We saw lot's of colorful corals too, and some fish like Barracuda, Stonefish, Trunkfish, and a huge Stingray buried in the sand witch took off when we approached. We saw lots of other "normal" fish too.

Like I said we had two dives and we were about 45 minutes each time. For this they charged 780 peso and thet is 333 Nkr. So it isn't very expensive.

This is us back from the diving, great day and amazing dives!

Like I mentioned above, Gry's parents and her brother are coming here late Saturday or early Sunday. That they are coming here means that it's almost Christmas. It will be really nice to have them here, especially during Christmas. Mr. V has been talking a lot about he's grandparents while we have been here, so I guess he miss them too.

There has been a bit of Christmas decorating around in the city. They even put up a big Christmas tree in the town square.

This is it:

Every day now there is some sort of parade in the streets here. These last days it has been the pupils that have parades before their vacation begins. The older "kids" have parade with mopeds and golf carts some decorated and some of them wearing Christmas hats and so.. A fun thing to watch.. But quite loud sometimes because the use their horns..

Here they are waiting to set off..

Santa is of course with them..

Lately I've been a bit restless. Both Gry and I aren't used to going "home" all day, and the same with Mr. V. It's quite different then being at home (in Norway) with everyday activities. This Island is just too small for me in the long run. When there were no Spanish classes to attend here, a month would have been enough for me I guess, but I'll live. We are soon heading on..

I just bought myself a car to work on, so I have something to do these last weeks..

When I'm not working on my car I do this:

Or this:

Our next destination were suppose to be Costa Rica, but we are still wanting to go back to Antigua in Guatemala.So we are checking out those options of going there first for a few days after new years eve. We''ll see how that turns out.. To be continued..

The 5 day's tour, -Playa del Carmen, Xcaret and TULUM

Monday came and we weren't sure where to go yet (our apartment was rented out to someone these days so we had to go somewere). We had been talking about going back to Antigua, Guatemala. Just to be there a few days, maybe go back to the spanish school and say hello to the teachers there and I would of course wannna go back one day to Safe Passage a see how things are there and say hello.
We were looking online for flight tickets and we got an agency here on the isla to look for tickets too, but they were all going via Panama and they were very expencive. It just got to expensive and were taking too long to go that short way. So we headed down to Playa del Carmen and Tulum.

The front cover of our travel "bible" has it picture from the spectacular scenery from Tulum

The birthday girl ready to go (in front of the ferrys we take to and off our Isla).

We took a bus down to Playa del Carmen first. The busses in Mexico are actually really great. They have good standards. Air-condition that works, comfy seats and they always show a movie on board. To travel with bus is pretty cheap in Mexico too; it costs about 20 Nkr pr hour.

Mr V fell asleep after 30 min on the bus, half way there. When we got there we didn't know where to go, so we just walked a bit around. We had just discussed that we wanted a room with a nice ocean view this day. After all it was Gry's birthday this day, so we had to spend some bucks on a nice location. It wasn't so hard to find ether, the hardest part was to overlook all those people that want to "help you" with everything. We found a "good enough hotel" with a great ocean view and checked in, and then took a walk in the center of the town.

The hotel room

 The view

It was a big tourist machine wtth stuff you can find all over in Mexico I guess, but still it was a nice break from the small Isla.

In the streets of Playa del Carmen.. Their costumes were really cool though..

After we had a pretty good dinner, we went back to our hotel and relaxed.

Mr V tested the pool(and Gry had to join in)

Viktor fell asleep pretty early this day and I went out to get a few things, a bottle of good red vine was one of them of course.
It's funny how we imagine how things will be but doesn't always turn out that way. After half the bottle of vine, around eight thirty we "passed out". That's how the real life is(with kids!).

Tuesday we went to a big amusement park called Xcaret. It is a huge water and animal park close to Playa del Carmen. It was pretty impressive! The location and all that they had developed it into. They had lots of performances too, from the old Mayan time to the new Mexican traditions.

Flamencos and parrots

A old Mayan statue

They were cultivating lots of exotic plants and flowers

-and mushrooms

We had to go thru some tunnels, Mr V was a bit skeptic at first..

We took a floating tour thru some narrow water canals in "the jungle".

From above... you could swim in some of those canals too.

Lot's of Iguanas along the way

This is an old Mayan ritual performance.. Of some reason i didn't get a picture of film of the really cool thing that they did. They all were hanging by their legs in roaps from the top and spinning  outwards and down untill they touched the ground. Amazing thing to watch!

there were some animales there too, like this Jaguar..

This guy was just sitting and watching all those funny looking monkeys passing by..

Down by the water..

This is a 360 degree picture of the same area like the two pictures above.

And they had Dolphins there..

Doing their tricks.. Pretty fascinating animals!

Ice-cream "lunch" is mandatory at these places.. Most important to daddy... hehe

There were these "small holes" (don't know the English word for these, we the Norwegians call them kulper) you could swim and snorkel in.. there were lot's of them along the shore.

There were lots of fantastic aquariums too with corals and fish, but I couldn't capture the great colors in them with my camera.. The dolphins and the fish seemed to be Viktor's favorites.

Stingrays

Big turtles

All in all it was a pretty impressive park (if you look away from animals in captivity that may have been better off in their natural environment..).  The location of it was fantastic, with jungle and water front. It even had authentic Mayan constructions within. They also had many shows of the different time period’s in Mexico's history. We didn't get to see them all.

 

Wednesday we took our backpack and stroller and hit the road again. We took the bus to Tulum. When we arrived there we took a taxi about 10 min to a place mentioned in our bible but that one didn't have any free rooms for us, so we just walked a bit down the street to another place called Mar Caribe. Here we got a pretty basic cabaña near the beach. No shower, no bathroom, no water.. it had two bed's, a small coffee table with two chairs and electricity only during the night. No heating ether of course, even though we really needed it that night! It was really cold!!

 This is the inside of that cabaña. 

Outside, just after sunrice -we are taking a walk to Tulum

The resturant at our "hotel"..

"Hotel" showers

Although it was very basic the charged "pretty much" for it. I guess the charged for the location of the place. One night there was 600 peso.. about 270 Nkr..

(written by thomas)

On Thursday we walked to the famous Mayan ruins in Tulum, It was just a 10 min walk from our "luxuary" hotel! (40 min, because Mr V wanted to walk all the way himself.....) he now hate his stroller! And he is running all over the place;) He is really funny and quite determent. He get's so angry when he doesn't get it his way! It's hard not to laught when he gets "hysterical"....

When we arrived at the ruins we had to pay 50 peso per person (23 kr) And we started walking towards the ruins. It was a beautyful rainforest before we arrived. Inside it was impressive, but it is nothing compared to Tikal in Guatemala, where Thomas and I visited in 2008. But i love the sorroundings in Tulum. The sea was all around, and some of the ruins was located high up with an amazing wiev of the ocean. Tulum had one of the most beautiful beaches i have ever seen. Calm and turquise water.. And not many people arround as well.

Here you can see the ruins from our beach in Tulum;

Enterance "poster" at the Tulum ruins:

This is a stone the Mayans carved in paintings and symbols, but they are not very visible anymore

This is reproductions of some of those fading pictures they once made

Thomas is also with us on this trip. I'm not very good at taking pictures of him! Here he is standing very close to a cliff. Scary!!

The amazing wiew from the mayan ruins!

We also spend some time at the beach, and we all loved that, especialy Mr V. The water was warm, the beach was not crowded, and the was a lot of sand to play with! the world's biggest sandbox for Viktor. When Viktor had his little nap, his parents ran to the bar to buy an icecold beer (corona) and we just enjoyed he beautiful surroundings.

360 degree image from beach of Tulum

Viktor som prøver å ta seg en liten siesta!

We took a bus back to Playa del Carmen thursday evning to spend the night there,

 then we ate at a really nice resturant down at the beach.

Turns dark really quickly

Friday we headed back "home" to our Isla Mujeres. We came home to a compleatly empty house. The other two apartments were empty now(and will be for a while), and we have the keeys to them all actually.. New landlords.
(the last part written by Gry)