Vacation: Day 3
On Tuesday we still had our rented bikes, so after some strong Mexican coffee and Coca-Cola Light and breakfast at El Pirata we went back to the bike shop to exchange my slighly defective
We rode our bikes back out to Playacar. This time it was much easier due to WAY less traffic and people. Thank god. Well, before we went into the aviary, we biked all the way around the loop again. Due to the handlebar smashing of the day before, we lost the lock that went on the Boy's bike. So, we looped back looking for it, hoping it would still be in the median where we accidentally left it. Well, it wasn't there. Oh well, what can you do...we decided not to let it worry us too much and went back to the aviary.
It was a little spendy ($15 admission) but we were on vacation! We wanted to see native flora & fauna! And we were on vacation! So we paid it and went in. It's very low-key. No obnoxious....anything. Just one girl sitting at an open air desk in front and a pop machine. That's it. No hoo-ha, no Disney-ish anything. That was rather nice. We enjoyed our time just wandering around on the trails...checking out the various birds. We saw flamingos & cranes (see pic below), ducks (not mallards, Mexican ducks!), turkeys, a toucan, lots of noisy crabby sounding macaws, parrots (that say HOLA - boy did we get a kick out of that), pelicans, something that looked like a heron but probably was a little different. We also saw several lizards. Some chasing each other, some that you walked up on because they were so well hidden by their camouflage.
At one point we were watching some cranes feed near a pond when out of the other side comes a reddish-brown creature - maybe about the size of....I don't know a medium sized dog (wouldn't you say, Sweet Boy?) and had a snout with a tiny little mouth. It was freaky and we later decided it was an anteater...and I was fairly certain it was going to come down the path and get us. It didn't. But it could have. That is the scary part.
The flora was awesome....huge palms, vines, crazy growth that wouldn't come NEAR any part of Minnesota (except for maybe in a really cool green house)...it was definitely enjoyable to walk around in the shade checking out the different trees and birds and be in the *relative* quiet.
After we left the aviary we hit the beach. Reading, eating nachos, hanging out - it was fabulous. I didn't get burnt either...that is KEY.
That night we sat on the beach at dusk. We sat at a table under a palapa. The wind started picking up, as it did every night, and we sat there with our cervezas (Sol for me, Dos Equis for The Boy) and read our books until it was too dark to see. It was just so pleasant to sit there and watched the colors of the water fade, notice the people who were no longer there which made the beach incredibly peaceful and quiet. It was so relaxing and nice we were sad when it was too dark to see any more.
But without further adieu we headed off to dinner. "Idea Pasta" was the restaurant of the evening. We had fabulous homemade pasta noodles & sauce. We ordered two dishes and shared - it was perfect. The restaurant was very nice, decently priced and the cerzevas were cold. Our evening ended in it's usual fashion with a couple of beers on the beach (or did we have drinks that night - I belive that was the night I had a strawberry daiquiri and the Boy had Sex on the Beach). We had to get to bed early as our tour for Chichen Itza left at 7am the next morning.
Unfortunately no one at either night club cared about that and it was unbelievably loud. Our hotel room walls VIBRATED with bass and poor Sweet Boy had to sleep with his ear plugs in (I can sleep through almost anything). He was up for most of the night - reading, walking on the beach and generally being pissed off at the rudeness of such an establishment. It finally quieted down at about 4am. Ugh.
Tomorrow - Chichen Itza! bike and get one that had working handlebars and brakes.
We rode our bikes back out to Playacar. This time it was much easier due to WAY less traffic and people. Thank god. Well, before we went into the aviary, we biked all the way around the loop again. Due to the handlebar smashing of the day before, we lost the lock that went on the Boy's bike. So, we looped back looking for it, hoping it would still be in the median where we accidentally left it. Well, it wasn't there. Oh well, what can you do...we decided not to let it worry us too much and went back to the aviary.
It was a little spendy ($15 admission) but we were on vacation! We wanted to see native flora & fauna! And we were on vacation! So we paid it and went in. It's very low-key. No obnoxious....anything. Just one girl sitting at an open air desk in front and a pop machine. That's it. No hoo-ha, no Disney-ish anything. That was rather nice. We enjoyed our time just wandering around on the trails...checking out the various birds. We saw flamingos & cranes (see pic below), ducks (not mallards, Mexican ducks!), turkeys, a toucan, lots of noisy crabby sounding macaws, parrots (that say HOLA - boy did we get a kick out of that), pelicans, something that looked like a heron but probably was a little different. We also saw several lizards. Some chasing each other, some that you walked up on because they were so well hidden by their camouflage.
At one point we were watching some cranes feed near a pond when out of the other side comes a reddish-brown creature - maybe about the size of....I don't know a medium sized dog (wouldn't you say, Sweet Boy?) and had a snout with a tiny little mouth. It was freaky and we later decided it was an anteater...and I was fairly certain it was going to come down the path and get us. It didn't. But it could have. That is the scary part.
The flora was awesome....huge palms, vines, crazy growth that wouldn't come NEAR any part of Minnesota (except for maybe in a really cool green house)...it was definitely enjoyable to walk around in the shade checking out the different trees and birds and be in the *relative* quiet.
After we left the aviary we hit the beach. Reading, eating nachos, hanging out - it was fabulous. I didn't get burnt either...that is KEY.
That night we sat on the beach at dusk. We sat at a table under a palapa. The wind started picking up, as it did every night, and we sat there with our cervezas (Sol for me, Dos Equis for The Boy) and read our books until it was too dark to see. It was just so pleasant to sit there and watched the colors of the water fade, notice the people who were no longer there which made the beach incredibly peaceful and quiet. It was so relaxing and nice we were sad when it was too dark to see any more.
But without further adieu we headed off to dinner. "Idea Pasta" was the restaurant of the evening. We had fabulous homemade pasta noodles & sauce. We ordered two dishes and shared - it was perfect. The restaurant was very nice, decently priced and the cerzevas were cold. Our evening ended in it's usual fashion with a couple of beers on the beach (or did we have drinks that night - I belive that was the night I had a strawberry daiquiri and the Boy had Sex on the Beach). We had to get to bed early as our tour for Chichen Itza left at 7am the next morning.
Unfortunately no one at either night club cared about that and it was unbelievably loud. Our hotel room walls VIBRATED with bass and poor Sweet Boy had to sleep with his ear plugs in (I can sleep through almost anything). He was up for most of the night - reading, walking on the beach and generally being pissed off at the rudeness of such an establishment. It finally quieted down at about 4am. Ugh.
Tomorrow - Chichen Itza! bike and get one that had working handlebars and brakes.
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