Mexican Anniversary!

Joe planned and booked a surprise anniversary trip for us!  It was a given that it'd be somewhere tropical, since we'd talked for years of our next big trip together being a tropical one, so I was able to do some preparation clothes shopping;  BUT he didn't tell me WHERE we were going until the morning we left, while we were packing!  He'd made up a sealed envelope full of pictures of where we were going:  Playa del Carmen, Mexico!  Just down the coast from Cancun, where we could do all the tropical stuff, plus see many Mayan ruins (our first pictures are there at Tulum).

 MONKEY!

Our hotel suite at The Royal, Playa del Carmen:



 Scuba diving!!!  Well, I did the training videos and water training, but freaked out completely.  I kinda hated it:  only breathing through my mouth, feeling the compression of the water, being weighed down, trying to remember all the buttons & what they did, and rules to 'not die'... it was OVERLOAD and I had a panic attack during the training in the 5 feet of water.  BLAH!  Oh well.  I went along on the boat while Joe did the deep dive at the reef, and, even though I was crazy seasick, I still have no regrets about bailing on the scuba.

My favorite day was definitely the dolphins!  I wish we had more pictures, but we couldn't use our own cameras, and they were charging an insane amount ($150!!!) to get all the pictures they took of us (or $25 per picture- so we opted for the two best pictures, since we weren't that crazy about a lot of them).  We got to ride the dolphins (holding their fins, dolphins on either side of us), do the dolphin foot push (you float on your tummy, lock your knees, and two dolphins push the middle of your feet... you get to superman across the top of the water- my favorite!!!).  Plus lots of dolphin time: dolphin kisses, 'dancing', petting, etc.  It was awesome.

We also got to swim and play with the manatees!  It was spectacular!  This is my manatee kiss (don't worry, it's a girl... her name is Juliet).  :)

Walking around town, some men had panther and leopard cubs!  SO CUTE!  He took our picture with them.  They were so so soft!

The Mayan temple at Coba:  117 steps.  We climbed it!

Joe at the top, laying down (steps behind him, down to the ground):

 At the top!