Weddingbee

Part 1, Part 2

I have officially been MIA for over a week, and here is why: I didn’t feel good. I think I’m doing better now though, so I have no excuse not to get off my lazy bum and write our last honeymoon post! This one’s about our excursions. We went on two.

Excursion #1 was to Tulum, where we swam in a cenote, experienced a Mayan ritual, explored Tulum, went zip-lining and swam in the Caribbean.

Here’s us inside the cenote. Basically, we descended into an underground cave filled with stagnant water and swam in it. It was a little icky, but mostly kinda cool. There were stalagmites and stalactites, which was exciting.

It was a very weird experience:

Note to future or would-be cenote swimmers: try not to get the water in your mouth. It’s stagnant water. You don’t want to think about what’s in there. Interestingly, our guide claims that the Mayans drink out of the cenotes, which is why we weren’t allowed to wear sunscreen or wear bug spray prior to swimming. This idea disturbs me a little bit, so I’ve chosen not to think of it too deeply.

Sadly, I don’t have any pictures of the Mayan ritual, but if you will picture a group of 10 people in a circle, getting smoke blown in their faces, you can picture the ritual. The prayer was to get us home safely–I’m not entirely sure it worked. Obviously I didn’t die, but I didn’t exactly get home safely, per se (haha).

The next stop was zip lining. I thought it was going to be scary, and Mr. Cream Puff kept making fun of me, thinking I was going to be a total chicken about it. But you know what? It wasn’t scary at all! Once I saw how safe it was (they had fancy harnesses and two safety wire things), I wasn’t worried at all anymore. It was pretty fun, actually. I’d totally do it again.

Mr. Cream Puff, ready for lift-off:

Mr. Cream Puff, mid-air:

After the zip-lining, it was time to head to Tulum. Mr. Cream Puff and I are both super into history and dorky stuff like that, so we were really excited to learn all about it. Tulum is a really cool place–it would have been awesome to live there in its heyday.

It was very hot in Tulum, and humid to boot. Luckily, Tulum overlooks the ocean, and there’s an awesome beach to swim in. When we walked to the cliff, this is what we saw:

Heaven, basically! Well, actually, I don’t picture heaven being this crowded, but it was pretty darn close to heaven. Mr. Cream Puff and I didn’t hesitate to jump in and try out the waterproof case for our digital camera:

After our swim in the Carribean, our excursion was over. We jumped in the van and headed back to Playa del Carmen, where I promptly got sick and blamed it on the cenote.

In the end, I realize that it was unfair to blame the poor cenote. The cenote didn’t appear dirty, and it’s not like I drank the water I was swimming in.

After a day of being super sick, we decided to brave another excursion, and signed up to go horseback riding in the ocean. Mr. Cream Puff had never been on a horse and wasn’t too wild about the idea. I, however, have always wanted to ride a horse on the beach (don’t ask me why, I realize this is a strange thing to “always” to want to do), so he agreed to do it with me.

Unfortunately when we got there, we were a little bit nervous. We weren’t allowed to take our own water with us on the horse (”becuase the horses might kick you off if the water bottle hits them on the behind”) and we weren’t allowed to walk between the horses (”because the horses don’t know you and they might kick you”) and we weren’t supposed to let them eat (”because they’ll never listen to you again”). Needless to say, this wasn’t the the-horses-just-follow-the-horse-in-front-of-them type of horseback riding I’d done before.

This is my nervous face:

Once we got on the horses, though, all was well. At least for me. My horse, Coyote, was old, lazy and slow. I loved him. Deeply. Especially when I saw the other horses, which were wild, didn’t pay attention, and sometimes kicked each other. At one point, a horse I’ll call Devil Horse decided that he hated another horse (we’ll call him Not-So-Innocent-Bystander Horse), and kicked him. Then Not-So-Innocent-Bystander Horse chased Devil Horse away and tried to bite him, to which Devil Horse responded by kicking Not-So-Innocent-Bystander Horse again. All of this happened WHILE beginner-level riders were on top of them, totally freaked out. Another woman actually was bucked off of her horse–luckily she was a somewhat experienced rider and jumped into the sand in time.

Here’s me with my good buddy, Coyote:

At one point, we got to go into the ocean with our horses. In theory, this sounded like a great idea. Unfortunately, it was pretty environmentally destructive (horse poop in the ocean is really bad). Also, we’re pretty sure the horses were walking through what used to be a reef.

Here’s Mr. Cream Puff on his horse, King, on our way back from the swimming. That’s me and Coyote behind him.

That pretty much concludes our honeymoon, people! Any questions? Thoughts? Feelings?

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