Kevin's Life

Tuesday February 20th I had breakfast, then joined Mom and Tammy's aunt Anette at about 9:00 to go to Xcaret.

Xcaret is a combination water park, zoo, botanical gardens, and theme park located in Playa del Carmen.You can find out about it at http://www.xcaret.com/.

One of the main features of this park is an underground river that flows the length of the park. Part of it is in tunnels, other areas are at the bottom of deep cliffs, and other areas go past the performance stage and other attractions. You put on a life jacket then swim the route. Takes about 45 minutes. I did that right away, whle Mom and Anette checked out the sites above. We met up later at the other end of the park. We all got there at about the same time so it worked great.

Here's a picture of me floating in the river:

After that, we went for something to eat at one of their restaurants. Here's a shot of me with one of the pinapple drinks.

While the others were off to the washroom, I got a chance to play with the birds. There were the large gulls, some medium sized black birds, and some smaller birds all out for bread crumbs or whatever they can get. The smaller birds acted very much like sparrows, and the black birds acted a lot like magpies. The black birds had a large variety of calls, including one where they ruffle all their feathers up and hiss which is interesting. Here's a picture of the bird doing this:

Here's a shot of the restaurant area from across the pool. That's my mom in the foreground.

From there, we went to the dolphin enclosures. Anette had a great time swimming with the dolphins while we watched from the sidelines. I would have joined her, but I already had tickets to go to the dolphins on Wednesday in Xel-Ha. Here's a shot of her with the dolphins.

We then moved on to the "Snuba Adventures". Here they put a helmet on us with air, then let us walk along the bottom of the ocean. We go down about 20 feet or so. The safety divers of course had lots of fish food with them, so there was no shortage of fish for us to see. There was even a sea turtle. I won't talk about some of the bikinis I saw. I didn't have an underwater camera yet so no underwater pictures, but here's a shot of the snuba area.

After that we wandered the park, checking out the aquarium, animals (jaguars, tapirs, etc.)

Here's a shot of the sea turtle pond:

Here's a shot of the jaguar:

We then stumbled upon a show where they showed the fashions of native Mexican dress from the Mayans on down. It was entertaining. An interesting aspect is the underground river goes right behind the stage, so you had people in life jackets floating past the stage the whole time. Here's a picture of part of the show. Notice the cave in the background.

We then moved on to botanical gardens, then the horse show. Here we saw cabillieros roping horses, and side-saddle riding senioritas doing formation riding.

We finished the trip by visiting their huge theatre. Must seat several thousand people. The bottom rows are reserved for people who ordered meals and were served during the show. There was a convention of Mexican realtors there that filled up many of the restaurant seats. We were in the cheap seats above them.

Below is a picture from the show of the "old man dance". A meriachi band playing above, and a bunch of old men with canes doing a comical dance below.

The show outlined the history of Mexico. It started with the Mayans, shoing villiage life, and their traditional ball games (the one where they use their hips to put the ball through a hoop, and another game like hockey played with sticks and a flaming ball). It then moved on to the Conquistadores, then on to the different people from the different regions, the formation of the country of Mexico, etc. One of the highlights was the pole fliers. Five people climb to the top of a high pole. One guy sits on top playing a flute while the rest spin around lowering themselves on ropes until they reach the bottom. Very cool.

I didn't have Trevor's video camera with me, so I couldn't take any movies. However, I did a search of the internet and found a video about Xcaret created by a couple named Ric and Mile which was pretty good. Not only was it available online, but their creative commons license allowed me to copy it. So here is Ric and Mile's Movie. Thanks for making this available, whoever you are.

After we got bacik, I changed, had a bite to eat at the Yucatan buffet, then went to the evening show at the Hotel. This was the "Latin show". Lots of popular latin songs, etc.

Next, off to bed to rest for Xel-Ha tomorrow.

The towel buddy for today was a Mayan princess.