Today is Tuesday June 12th, 2012. We've been home from Mexico for 3 days and it was, lets say, an adventure. It all started on Saturday June 2nd. we got up at 4:00 am so we could make it to our 7:30 flight to Denver to catch our connecting flight to Cancun. We all three got up and piled into the old Nissan Xterra and headed for Margaret's brother Ethans house in Kaysville. We got there about 5:30 with no problems. Then we went to get Margarets mother in West Bountiful. We made it there without any hitches. Little did I know or realize things were going too smoothly. Next, we get to the airport by 6:30 and checking for our flight to Denver and also check in for the international leg of our flight to Mexico. Got through security with only one minor glitch, Margaret had a lucky pair of tweezers that was confiscated from her going through TSA. Maybe they were afraid that she would tweeze the pilots unibrow during the flight, i dunno.
We get to DIA in Denver a little early and get a breakfast burrito at Quizznos. Then we had 90 more minutes to kill before they started boarding the plane.LaNan and Margaret took Sophia up the escalator and down the escalator half a dozen times at least at DIA. We go to the gate and find out that we were supposed to get to the gate 30 minutes ago because they needed to check our documents (lame, since we checked in at SLC with our passports). We find out as we are trying to board the plane early that we don't have a stamp on our boarding pass that says "Documents OK". so we go to the desk that checks the passport and documents and get our little stamp, then we are the last people on the plane. we put our carry on luggage in the overhead bins and under the seat in front of us. The plane takes off with the four of us (Ethan was just driving us to and from the airport in SLC). We have a fairly uneventful flight to Cancun. Then we land in Cancun and the flight attendant come on the intercom and says that we have to wait on the tarmac a few more minutes cuz our flight arrived early and someone else is parked at our gate. No worries, we can handle this.
We finally get off the plane and have to go through customs. This should be a breeze right? Wel 50 minutes later we are finally to the customs agent. We get through customs with only margarets baggs being searched and her purse, then we go out to the baggage claim and surprise, surprise, our luggage has beat us through customs. Then we walk fast to get past all the people trying to sell us a timeshare and with a little difficulty find our driver to driv e us the extra 1 1/2 hours to our resort in the rivera maya. Outside temp 87 degrees F, Humidity about 80%. The van is air conditioned, and our driver speaks fairly good english. He offers to take us to a 7-11 to get a water for the drive, very thoughtful. I go in and for 3 one liter bottles of evian and one bottle (500ml) of Coke, $11 USD.figured that was a little steep but then again it was a 7-11. LaNan (Margarets mom) speaks fluent Spanish and carries on a conversation with the driver most of the way to our resort at the Grand Palladium Kanteneh. We get thre and get checked in and the bell bot drives us to our jr. suite. This is just another room with Mexican Queen size beds, aka, US Full size beds. Glad we upgraded. We are starving by this point and so we just decide to hit the buffet for dinner and get a good nights sleep for the next days adventures. Word to the wise: DO NOT EAT ANY MEXICAN PORK PRODUCT. I paid for it all the next day. The morning started off a bit rainy, but it cleared by 1:00 pm so we went to the pool and to the beach. The resort is too big to have the bar maids walking around taking drink orders so we had to walk up to one of the bars to order drinks. TIPS EXPECTED even though it is an all inclusive resort. At about 4 banana-mamas we decided to go back to the room and get cleaned up and dressed for dinner. the thing that sucks for guys is you have to wear long pants to any of the full service resturants. In the heat and humidity, that was asking a bit much, but we complied. Just as we were getting ready for dinner, the skies opened up and it POURED as hard as Margaret had ever seen it in her life.I took a really cool picture and the flash relfected off the rain drops that made a really artistic picture. We then went to a meditrainian resturant for dinner and the food was much better than the service. The waiters only know enought english to talk about the menu. Sophia was ordered some roasted chicken and fries. The Chicken was more like jerky - inetable. Thank goodness she likes fries and couscous. The lamb was exceptional as was the salmon. Then back to the room. Unfortunately, Margaret got a visit from mother nature and needed some cotton plugs. The resort knows that they have you by the short and curlies because you are out in the middle of the fricken jungle. $11 USD for a box of 8 tampons. Ridiculous!!!! But we had no other recourse that to pay the ungodly amount of money and deal with it. Not going to let that ruin our whole trip. Monday was a nice overcast day that we spent mostly at the beach. Monday night we went to the Brazilian Steak House for dinner. Good meat, yes it was beef, but thinly sliced. then back to the room. Tuesday we went on our only excursion, to Tulum and Xel Ha (pronounsed Shell Ha). The ruins were neat to see and I wish they would have had a pamphlet that we could see what each of the buildings was supposedly used for and information about it, but that would have put the guides who charge $50-$70 USD out of business. Yeah, I was cheap and didn't hire a local to make up stories about buildings to romantisize the already neeat buildings. We spent about 1.5 hours there and then took the little train pulled by a 1956 FarmAll Tractor back to where we were supposed to meet our driver. He was no where to be seen. So Margaret calls the office and he shows right up. We then go to Xel Ha. It is like a commercialized National Park with snorkling, zip lines, and people wanting to take your picture for their push to show you were there and in the water. Margaret and I went snorkeling first and saw sting rays, parrot fish, damsels, chubs, barbs, cichlids, etc. Xel ha is supposedly the best place on earth to witness a river flowing into the ocean . The layer of water between the ocean and the fresh water is a little murky as the salt water stays on the bottom and the fresh water on top. Margaret and her mom went snorkeling next and I stayed out and watched Sophia. It was HOT like almost 100 degrees F. Sophia had on a sun protecting swim suit that was more like a shorty wet suit. This afternoon is when things started to go down hill. We get back to the room with out any incident. We ate at the Japanese resturaunt that night. Food was ok. The next day was Wednesday. Sophia was a little cranky this morning. She also felt a little warm. It is cooler at the beach so we went down to the beach Sophia seemed to get worse as the day went on. Fortunately, Margaret had rememebered to pack the childrens Tylenol. We took everything off except her diaper, its ok, it was a topless beach. When she still felt hot an hour after the tylenol, we took her back to the room and I put her in a cool bath. That along with the tylenol brought her fever down, for a short while. We also turned the room temperature down. She got worse as the evening wore on. It was a restless night for everyone. the next morning Thursday, we called the house dr to come and see her. $200 later he said she had strep and some kind of a skin rash (we knew this much) and he called the pharmacy 20 minutes away and ordered amoxicillinand some steroid for her rash. In Mexico you dont need a dr to order amoxicillin not the steroid. We toyed with the idea of flying home a day early,but decided to just wait the one more day to fly home. On Friday, her rash looked like little and big white heads all over her arms and legs and the bottom of her feet.and a few on her face by her mouth. By this time we all were ready to get back to the good ol' USA. I will write about our flight home in tomorrows blog. The short of it all we got home late on Friday night and on Saturday we were the second patients at the insta care facility and the dr there told us it was hand,foot, and mouth virus that is very common and has an incubation period of about 3 days. she probably got it at the pool and that it affects younger children usually under 10. The US dr also told us that she did NOT have strep and that the amoxicillin would do no good, same with the steroid. The virus is fairly common although none of us had heard of it before and it spreads like a cold virus. Through direct contact with an infected person or surface or POOL. There were several other kids we saw at the resort that had the same sort of rash. We think the pool was infected. Today is Tuesday again and she is doing much better but it sure had us scared in a foreign country and foreign language for her health. The mexican dr spoke broken english and had studied medicine in mexico city. Apparently most dr's in mexico throw amoxicillin at everything. Tired of writning today - more tomorrow or the next day. End part I.
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