A little piece of Heaven

Russ and I had the wonderful opportunity to spend some time in Mexico.  We stayed at the El Dorado Royale Spa and Resort.  It is an all-inclusive resort that his company, Alsco, sent us to.  We had some great experiences while we were there.
Russ left on Sunday, Feb 19th, to get some fly-fishing in before I got there.  Although the fishing was not the best, it still beat a good day at work.  The kids and I were able to communicate with him via facetime each night he was gone.  Technology is amazing and I am so grateful that we could see him each night and know that he was okay.
I left on Thursday with some of Russ' co-workers and met up with Russ at the airport in Cancun.  We were transported to the resort where the luxurious 5 days began.  Our resort was located right on the beach and I could be standing in sand just 50 yards from our room.  The temperatures were in the low 80's everyday... I was truly in heaven.
On Friday, we spent the day exploring around the HUGE resort, playing in the ocean, and attending the company awards ceremony and dinner.  It was a good night and Russ was recognized as a top performing Service Manager (and for 5 years in the winner"s circle).  Way to go!

Saturday was our favorite day.  We were able to go to Chitchen Itza and see the Mayan pyramids/ruins.  It was AMAZING!  We had a tour guide who explained all of the details about Chitchen Itza.  We learned so much about the culture and traditions of the Mayan people.

After we left the pyramids, we were taken to a little authentic Mexican restaurant for lunch.  The food was yummy and the experience was fun.  They had some of the workers dressed in the traditional clothes perform some dances while we ate.  After lunch we were taken to a Cenote (sin-oh-tay) in a neighboring city.  That was the coolest experience of all.  A cenote is basically a sink hole in limestone that has fresh water running into from underground.  It is about 60 meters deep.  The surroundings make you feel like you are in a jungle setting.  There were rope swings and cliffs to jump off of.  Even I did the rope swing... me, who is afraid of heights.  One of the couples we went with took some pictures of me braving the rope-drop into the unknown.  As soon as she sends the pictures to me I will add them to the post.

The next day was spent snorkeling and feeding the crazy fish in the ocean.  One of the resort guests from Pennsylvania taught us that if you bring food into the ocean, hundreds of fish would come to the feast.  It was  insane.  At first, he threw some fruit loops cereal into the water and the fish came screaming up all around us.  Then he held a banana just above the water and the fish started jumping out of the water to take bites from the banana.  Russ threw some of the cereal at me and I had fish slamming into my legs and stomach to get at it.  Not going to lie...it kinda freaked me out.  Anyway, while snorkeling we saw hundreds of little hermit crabs, box fish, coral, and so many other amazing sites.

The food was fabulous and we spent a lot of our time sampling at each of the restaurants offered there.  The Mexican and Japanese restaurants were my favorites.  I loved the mango salsa, guacamole, sushi, spinach and fruit smoothies, and fresh tortillas.
Thanks to Russ' company for the great vacation, and Russ' employees that worked so hard to get us there!