With the sun still strong, we dried quickly
and boarded the bus once again to
a small town called Valladolid. It was
extremely picturesque and we stopped
for homemade coconut ice cream in the
square and people-watched, a popular
past-time of any holiday. The town is
still relatively tourist-free and it was nice
to experience this, although with the
presence of a new Domino’s and some
larger hotels it felt like it would become
a little more spoilt in the months to
come. After watching as many people
as we could before starting to look like
undercover MI6 agents we went back to
the hotel and eagerly went to book onto
some more excursions.
Our next trip out two days later was
to Xplor, an adventure park with four
different activities which came with an
all-inclusive pass for more food and
drink! The activities were zip-lines,
amphibious buggy driving, underground
rafting and a stalactite river swim. Each
activity had two courses and it did take
the entire day to complete them all.
After getting over the initial comfortissues with the zip line harness, (nobody
can make a harness look good!), this
activity proved to be my favourite. It is
such an adrenaline rush as you soar
45 metres above the entire park and
sometimes into the water over a 4km
course. The buggies were also really fun
and Matthew even agreed to “risk his
life” and let me drive round the second
course. It was fairly uneventful, although
there were a few near-misses of trees,
caves and wildlife as well as an incident
where we were crashed into from the
buggy behind. We decided against a
whiplash claim despite the plethora
of excellent personal injury solicitors
that we had to call on… The other two
activities were both very enjoyable but
quite intense in terms of the le vel of
fitness needed. I probably would have
kept my gym attendance up whilst on
holiday if I had known what to expect!
Our final excursion on our penultimate
day of the holiday was probably the
best of all three and fulfilled a dream I
think every young girl develops at some
point. The excursion, booked through
our holiday group, was aptly named
“Virgin Ahoy!” other holiday operators
are available). It involved a transfer
to Cancun port and then the boarding
of an intimate catamaran big enough
for only 16 people and we then sailed
over to “Isla Mujeres”, Woman’s Island.
We had two stops on the itinerary and
the first was to Dolphin Discovery.
Although swimming with dolphins had
always been a dream of mine, I was
very wary of endorsing - in any way forcing animals into captivity or their
maltreatment.. These dolphins luckily
are housed in the sea, their natural
environment, within a fenced 10,000m2
arena, I immediately felt happier with
interacting with the dolphins and they
seemed pretty happy to interact with us
too. Our dolphins were called Picasso,
the alpha male, and Madonna. They
were incredible creatures and very funny.
We did all the usual tricks with them and
we were even treated to a few kisses!
It was not a cheap trip and I know a
lot of dolphin swims that are cheaper
elsewhere but I felt happy with our
choice and would recommend the Island
to anyone. We also had the opportunity
to interact with a somewhat love-sick
manatee whose neighbour happened to
be the object of his affection and for this
reason he was fairly distracted! Our final
swim was with sharks, needless to say I
made that a quick “dip”, but at least I can
say I did it!
After our marine
life experience had
finished, we boarded
Every Mexican person
we spoke to was so kind,
gracious and welcoming
that it was hard not to fall
as in love with their country
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