After a very long day of travel, we arrived at Zamas on Saturday evening.  We unpacked, went to dinner, and crashed in our mosquito-netted bed, and slept for 11 hours straight.

In the morning, we awoke feeling refreshed, relaxed, and ready to GET OUR GAME ON.

First we ran out onto our balcony to smell the sea breeze as it rolled in off the ocean.

It was beautiful.

I could totally get used to that.

After we oohed and ahhed until we were kind of sick of it, we loaded up my bag with water, the camera, my bathing suit cover up, sunblock and (unfortunately) not any bug spray.  Our goal of the day was to go into town, get some lunch and some money and then head out to a cenote we had heard about.

But on the way out the door…

I SAW MY FIRST IGUANA!

We took probably 15 pictures of this guy.  No joke.  But finally Joey tore me away and we hopped in a taxi and drove off to town.

Objective One was easily fulfilled.  We stopped at the HSBC in town and withdrew a fair amount of pesos.  Then we were hungry, so we started looking for a restaurant.

Except that it was Sunday and in a small town in Mexico, even one that sort of caters to tourists, HOW MANY RESTAURANTS ARE ACTUALLY OPEN ON SUNDAY?!

Like maybe two.  And one of them said they were closed when I tried to order, even though there were people eating there and they were cooking more food.  But whatever.

We walked a little further down the street until we found a pollo asado place.  I ordered us two plates and soon we were munching happily on a chicken.  That the man had hacked into two pieces with a meat cleaver not moments before.

Joey was like, “This is pretty good.”

I was like, “BUT THE MANY JUST HACKED THIS CHICKEN IN TWO WITH A MEAT CLEAVER!”

But I am so much tougher than that.  And I was hungry.  So I ate my chicken.

Shortly thereafter, we hopped in another taxi and were on our way to Crystal Cenote, so named because you can see right to the bottom.

It has crystal clear, refreshingly cool water and is smack dab in the middle of the jungle.  If you’re not in the water, the mosquitos are fighting over which one of them gets to give you West Nile Virus, so we were totally annoyed with ourselves for not bringing the bug spray.

For an hour we floated around the cenote.  It’s kind of crazy to find little freshwater pools in the middle of the jungle so close to the ocean, but there are dozens of them all around Tulum, and elsewhere down there.

At this particular cenote, we were the only Americans.  There were two European couples and a few Mexican families, but it was pretty empty.  I was glad, because I am a total water chicken.  I panicked for the first ten minutes until I realized none of the fish were going to eat me.

I got the willies whenever my feet touched the mossy rocks, but that was really only near the edge.  The cenote was surprisingly deep.

After we spent our hour and had completely worn ourselves out with floating and relaxing, we decided it was as good a time as any to head back to Zamas.

So I thre on my bathing suit cover up and off we walked toward the road.

“We should have thought to bring towels,” Joey said.

“I know,” I replied, my cotton crossbody bag was getting damper by the minute.

Once we got out to the road, we realized we had un problemo. No taxi.  And the cenote was kind of out in the middle of nowhere, so odds were not good we’d see one soon.

“Well, we have plenty of water and sunblock.  Let’s just start walking and surely someone will come soon,” Joey suggested.

I was game.  Not ten steps later, we heard a taxi drive up behind us, honking.  We looked at each other and laughed, then hopped in hoping he wouldn’t mind having wet seats since we were still kind of dripping from our swim in the cenote.  The driver didn’t say anything, so neither did we.

Within twenty minutes, we were back at our cabana laying in the hammocks on the balcony staring at this:

Ahhhhh…..perfect first day.