Kevin's Life

On Wed. Feb. 21 I had breakfast early, then hang out at the pool at the main Tulum lobby before meeting Trevor, Tammy, and the kids at 9:00 to head to Xel-Ha.

While I was waiting by the pool, I heard, of all things, Bagpipes! It turns out there was another wedding happening that day, so this fellow was practicing his bagpipe playing on the bridges by the pool bar. I didn't get a picture of that, but here's a picture of the pool area.

Xel-Ha is a natural water park about ten minutes from our hotel. It's built around a natural bay. You can see their web site at http://www.xel-ha.com/.

Once inside the park, the first thing we did was the river run. We catch a ride to the starting point, put on life jackets, and then float down the river to the main park restaurant area. The river flows at a nice leisurely pace. You can either float on inner tubes, or just float along in your lifejacket. I opted for the lifejacket. Here's a picture of me with Tammy, the new bride:

The whole thing takes about an hour and a half. Along the way you can stop for activities, like jumping off a 20 foot high cliff into the water, or walking across a rope bridge about a 100 feet long.

Here's a picture of Tammy jumping off the cliff. Click the picture to see the movie.

Here's a picture of the kids crossing the rope bridge. Click on it to see the movie.

After that we had lunch, then hiked a few of the trails. There is a pontoon bridge that went across the bay to the other side. The pontoons rode the waves, so you felt like you were drunk trying to walk across. Here's a picture. Trevor and Tammy are in the foreground. There are people snorkelling in the background.

The kids had some fish food, and had a great time throwing it in the water. They threw the food in, and suddenly there were what seemed like hundreds of fish there. Quite to the astonishment of the young lady who was snorkeling right where they threw the food.

Xel-ha had snuba too (see yesterday's entry). I didn't go again, but I think it may have been better here. The snuba was right near the floating pontoon bridge and there appeared to be more fish around. However, I didn't see any sea turtles here.

From there we went to check the "lighthouse", actually just a metal tower with a light on top. On the way back, we saw some iguanas along the trail. Here's a picture of Braedon with an iguana.

The best part of this tour was the swimming with the Dolphins. We got in the water with them for over half an hour. We got to pet them as they swam amoung us, did a few tricks with them, etc. The coolest is the "foot push" where two dolphins push on the bottom of your feet, almost getting you out of the water.

We liked it so much, we bought all the pictures and got the DVD of us. I'll have to see about putting it on the streaming video server. Here's a picture of me getting a kiss from a Dolphin. Click on it to see a ten minute movie.

The late night show was the Broadway Show, where they did tributes to several broadway musicals.

The towel buddy today was another little person.