Mexico: The locals

As I mentioned yesterday, we only had four days in Mexico, and when you subtract the travel time, it was more like two-and-a-half days.

In addition, the trip was completely paid for by work, with about 35 other employees and their spouses along for the ride. As such, the company hosted special events each night. Our days were ours, but the nights were taken up with socializing with coworkers.

I told you the resort had a spa and a gym (neither of those things interest us),  and other than eating at the restaurant, the only other things to at the resort are go to the pool or the beach. Dave's not much of a pool guy, though he did hang out with me while I swam a little. And there's fabulous pool-side service (one of the pools even had a swim-up bar), so we had lunch there one day.

The resort is 1.5 hours south of Cancun and surrounded by forest.

There's really nothing around for miles except other resorts. While the isolation has its upsides, it limits what you can do during a short visit.

There are excursions, though the only one covered by our company (thus not an additional expense) was a trip to the ruins at Tulum. I would have loved to have gone, but it was an all-day excursion. Had it been on the first day, we might have done it - but it was on the last day. By then, I was pretty crispy, and Dave, who's not a huge fan of the heat in the first place, would not relish a full day walking around in the sun, so we turned it down.

Had it been a half day, we still probably would have done, it, but a full day with no respite from the heat was just beyond both of us. After talking to people who did go, we made the right decision. While they enjoyed it, they said it was brutally hot, and definitely could have been shorter.

So for us, that really only left exploring the beach and the resort itself, which I did with gusto. I scoured every inch of the place, getting to know the locals

These long-tailed Grackles are all over the place and they have the most amazing voices. I've heard at other resorts they can be a bit of a nuisance, stealing food and pestering tourists, but these ones we're quite well-mannered. They seemed more interested in grabbing nesting materials from the manicured gardens, or guarding their palm trees from other birds.

I think this guy is a Yucatan flycatcher. He and his friend hung out on the forest side of the resort. It was hard to get a picture without a long lens.

Every day, a flock of brown pelicans would fly by the resort, though I never managed to catch them all together in flight with the camera.

But my beach walk let me get pretty close to this lone one swimming just off shore.

 

The Yucatan seagulls seem to be much more well-mannered than our North American ones. We NEVER saw them mooching for food inside the resort. They mostly stuck to the beach and even then were quite nervous of the humans milling about. I guess they prefer fresh-caught fish to french fries.

There were quite a few of these Ruddy Turnstones at one end of the beach. They were nibbling on a seaweed pile, but were quite shy. The whole flock took off running as I got close.

We didn't come across any sea turtles

 But it's nice to know they are around.

One thing I was really hoping to see was a big fat, spiky iguana - like the kind you see on nature shows ... and we saw a few... but never when I had a camera handy!

I did meet this guy though

From what I can tell, he's a very young spiny-tailed Iguana... so he's yet to get all spikey and dragon-

esque.

He was also very shy.

One of the waitresses told us about a particular young iguana who hangs around the restaurant so often, the staff named him Roberto. This might be him!

There were also lots of butterflies, mostly yellow sulphurs and a few black hair streaks, but they were too fast for my camera.

And last but not least, I was able to capture this little grasshopper

 All in all, a very satisfying experience for this intrepid explorer!