Akumal has become pretty much of a necessity for celebrating our anniversary over the past few years, so when airfare sales began to show up, it was time to start seriously planning another trip! This year the flight schedules looked really attractive, too, with 8:30 AM departures and 7:30 PM return flights. Our Champion Air charter flight actually left 15 to 20 minutes late, but made up the time enroute. After a quick trip through immigration and a long wait for our luggage, we met Manuel from Avicar outside the terminal. We were on the road after about 10 more minutes in a lemon-yellow Atos. We made a brief stop at La Floresta in Playa del Carmen for a late lunch, having heard good things about their tacos. Our impression was that, while okay, Lucy makes better fish tacos in Akumal. We also noted that the new shopping mall, Centro Maya, is now at least partially open on the south end of Playa.
We checked into our bungalow at Club Akumal Caribe and then delivered a depth sounder to Lucy at CEA. Stopped at Super Chomak for some beer and Cokes and spent some time chatting with Wes242 from the Locogringo board there. By the way, there was some pretty neat towel art in our bungalow each day.
Happy Hour found us at Lol Ha, with a nice visit with Bill-in-Tulsa and his family, as well as Lydia and Paul Sanchez-Navarro from CEA. Bill and Lynn's family was great, all four generations of them: Bill's dad, his son and wife, and two very smart and interesting grandsons, one of whom was celebrating his birthday.
After Happy Hour we said adios to Bill and all and headed to Leo's for pizza, then back to the bungalow to end a long day.
On Thursday we had breakfast at Lol Ha then set up under a palapa for the day. Snorkeling the bay we saw a small ray and a turtle as well as other aquatic life. We took a lunch break away from the bay at PaaMul, a place we'd been wanting to check out for some time. PaaMul is a sizable RV park with a dive shop, pool, and restaurant a few miles north of Akumal. They feature large palapas over the RV pads, helping to keep the RV's cooler. The restaurant is brand new and very nice in appearance. We found the food to be a bit bland, though.
After more beach time back in Akumal, we had happy hour at Lol Ha, as usual, then a great dinner at Turtle Bay.
Friday was pretty similar to Thursday, including the same palapa on the bay, but lots more turtles in the bay. This day we took off for Xpu Ha for lunch, dining at Al Cielo. This was our first view of Xpu Ha. As we've heard often, it's a really beautiful place.
The menu at the restaurant was decidedly up-scale, offering quite a few selections very different from the usual beach restaurant fare. We both had Spanish Ham, Manchego cheese, small tomatoes, and a sauce on a small hard bread. It was a delicious combination.
All too soon, our last day was upon us. We had breakfast at Turtle Bay then once again set up under a palapa on the beach and snorkeled for a bit. Lunched at Lucy's and confirmed our earlier opinion that she has the best fish tacos on the coast. We then packed up and checked out of the bungalow, then hung out at the beach waiting for another Locogringo to show up: "Greek Beach Girl", Teri from Alberta, Canada. She appeared as expected, at about 12:45 and we chatted a bit in front of the webcam. Then Teri and her friend headed off for lunch at Lucy's and Kathy and I headed north. We stopped at Chedraui and the new Mega store in Playa, then stopped at Puerto Morelos. Things are getting close to normal there once again. Pelicanos is still serving at their temporary location just south of their old site, but the rebuilding there is almost complete. It's going to be very nice once they're finished. Back at the airport, Avicar was waiting for us as planned and, as usual, check-in of the car took about 2 minutes. The plane was a half hour late arriving at Cancun, so we had a short delay, but got back to MSP only about 15 minutes later than scheduled. A short but pleasant trip wrapping up our Akumal adventures for 2006. Not exactly sure of the dates, but will probably be back in early February, 2007.
