This came about through Granny's great generosity in celebrating her 70th birthday extravagantly by having us all go out for a mass holiday in the Yucatan Penninsula. It was lovely, and lovely to be there with family for so long and in such relaxed circumstances.
Understandably, there are a lot of photos to go through, so I'll leave comment to a few, starting off with the note that we went to London for a day, using our flight-connection wait wisely to go to the Science & Natural History Museums and for a meal on the Southbank:
The flight was surprisingly easy, with the kids gorged in film-watching for nearly all of the 8 hours flight, interrupted only really by meals. And we arrived in great weather, and to a beautiful resort down the coast about 45 minutes from the Cancun airport:
We were surprised at our first drinks at the bar to find that the in-the-jungle location of the hotel meant that monkeys were rife around the place, much to Orry's initial horror, and everyone's eventual uncomfortable delight (despite the occasional poo being left behind on the floor near our seats!)
We also found a heap of lizards lazing around on the resort. There were tens of them there on the rocks, if you looked for them - see if you can see all three in the sample picture:
Granny was keeping a little book/diary of our holiday, which we all contributed to. Finn and Orry contributed pictures of some of the key things they saw, such as their fine lizards:
These lizards were seen on a walk of ours to see the Mayan ruins actually within the resort, which was really quite amazing:
It was only Cori who was brave enough to touch a lizard tale though!
We got out to see the more well-known Mayan sites too; to Coba. We went with someone to give us a tour, which was interesting, even if the kids preferred to look for bugs:
One of the many interesting things we learnt was how the Maya used obsidian, including to look at the sun, which Finn demonstrates here:
Cori & I had been there before (and really enjoyed it, which is why we pushed everyone to go back), but we were very glad this time to go around on the hired bike-taxis. It would have been unbearable in that heat without them! (Hence the umbrella):
Almost certainly, the highlight was going up to the temple, built on top of a distinctive steep Mayan pyramid structure. We hadn't planned to take Finn up, but when we got there, I thought he would be able to be sensible enough to do it and, after testing out a descent of the first twenty steps, we went up to the top:
As the Mayans would have done, Finn sacrificed a boy at the top and offered the heart to the gods:
It was incredibly steep, especially on the way down, which meant that we went down on our bums, like this:
Finn was great going up and down, being sensible and patient with it all, and not showing any fear at all.
Orry also got to show off his fine head for heights, even if it was, in his case, partly in not getting it! Again, we'd not planned it, but Andrew and Cori decided to take Orry and Georgie up the first twenty steps, at which point Orry was adamant that they go further. Cori negotiated going until they could see above the tree-line, which Orry agreed was "very high" and they did. I was amazed to find them so far up when Finn and I came down, but Orry was so pleased with himself, as he should have been! To outsiders though, heavily pregnant Cori & her toddler must have looked like the perfect case of what health & safety rules are in place for!
At the bottom of the temple was the place where I filmed one of my little films with Finn in Manx (as something to keep my gaelg in practice during our trip). Here he reports that it is hot, very hot!
A lovely day out, and a highlight of the trip.
In fact, it was confirmed as one of the key events in the holiday by the kids, who couldn't decide whether the taxi-bikes or climbing to the temple were the most exciting. Here are Finn & Orry's pictures re-telling the tale of the climb to show it from their view:
Another of Finn's Great Things from the holiday was sailing with his cousins & Uncle Andrew:
Also in the sea, he got to snorkel with his mum a bit, and body-board with granny a bit, whilst Orry made some fine buildings with some of the plastic cups which he had great fun with from the all-inclusive bar:
The main place to be for Finn & Orry though was in the pool. They had a great time, on their own, with the cousins, with inflatable things, with Orry's cups, learning to jump in etc. It was great:
(In case you were wondering, Orry is being a penguin, apparently, in that last picture! Who knows why)
The poolside was also occasion for another of Finn's Manx reflections on what place he liked best (the boat, or the swimming pool):
The kids also especially liked that we could get burger or hot dog lunches at the pool-side:
We, however, much preferred the Mexican food, which reached such joyous extremes that this was what breakfast looked like...!
There was plenty of other things for us to see & enjoy too, including a racing cars, mangrove forests & a kids club:
And, of course, we got up to some fun in the room too, recovering from the heat outside. Including fun sun-cream application, borrowing of our phones for photographs, cutting up paper, & relaxing in bed watching TV after a cooling shower:
(Cutting up paper is one of Orry's most absorbing activities at the moment).
One of the entertainments which really stood out for us were the shows they put on. They had their big shows in the evening, which the older cousins went to (Michael Jackson impersonations, or a Super Heroes show, or 'Mayan Rituals' etc.), but we were never up for that. We only ever saw the side-shows which started earlier, and which we though were great and which mesmerised the boys.
One which Orry was entranced by - saying to Cori, 'She sings beautifully, Mama! Isn't it lovely?' - was this fine singer of Mexican songs:
We were all entranced by the amazing Mexican dancers who trouped into one of the restaurants one evening. We stopped our eating to rush over to take a seat on the floor to watch. We all loved it and, again, Finn and Orry were transfixed, for good reason:
Here is their (rather sleepy) transfixed status:
After that, it was time for our flight home and the end of our lovely holiday:
... Well, actually, it was the end of our holiday with the whole family, but we and granny had to wait for about 12 hours in Gatwick for the flight to the Isle of Man, which was somewhat tortuous after an overnight flight with children. However, we managed it well enough, taking it in turns to sleep or to engage with the boys. We ended up rather enjoying it in some way.
And at the end of that it was indeed the end of a lovely holiday.
And as a final picture, we'll leave you with this one of us dressed up nicely and on the way to granny's birthday dinner, with Orry decided he didn't want to be in the picture and so running out!
Regardless, thank you, granny, for the lovely holiday!
No comments:
Post a Comment