Kevin's Life

Monday I wake up to the sound of birds outside my balcony. All the guest houses are only three stories tall and every one faces the beach. I'm on the ground floor, so I can't see the beach from my room, but it is only a short walk (about 100 yards).

I head down to the Yucatan dining room. Along the way I see the resort's version of gophers. Iguanas. They are everywhere, and just like gophers they have burrows in the ground to hide in Get too close and they go scurrying to the nearest hole to hide. There were also geckos, but you have to keep an eye out for them because they are smaller and move a lot quicker. (click to picture to see a movie of an extra wedding guest)

I met up with the rest of the family at breakfast. Then, around 10:30 Mom and I went to our orientation session. Here the Sunquest tour guide tells us where they can be found if we have any problems, a bit about the resort, things to do, etc. Took about half an hour.

I then signed up for some tours. One to Xcarat with Mom on Tuesday, and then two more with Trevor, Tammy, and the kids: Xal-Ha on Wednesday, and the Coba Adventure tour on Thursday. More on those later. There was a bit of confusion. Trevor and Tammy had originally signed up for the Xal-Ha trip on Tuesday. I took their receipt to make sure I got the same tour as them. The Sunquest travel agent then told me that they didn't book tours on Tuesday. they had made a mistake. But, after a while, we got that straightened out. After consultiing with Trevor and Tammy, we changed their reservation to Wednesday instead.

After lunch, I went back to my room to change for the wedding. Here's a picture of my room.

The wedding was at 3:30. It was held in a gazebo beside the ocean. It was a bit windy, but not too bad. There was a justice of the peace, two mexican witnesses, the wedding organizer / translator, a mariachi band, the guests, and of course Trevor and Tammy.

I was drafted as the cameraman. Here's a picture of the happy couple. Click on the picture to see the wedding video.

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A funny part was when the Justice of the Peace asked if anyone had any reason why this wedding should not take place, and both the witnesses yelled out "No!" They had mexican witnesses because the entire wedding party had to be in the country at least five days before they could be witnesses or get married. Trevor and Tammy went a week early, but nobody else did, so they had to hire people from Mexico to be the witnesses.

After the wedding I borrowed Trevor's computer and converted the video so we could put it online. At first I tried to make an MPEG, but the file was 100Mb and would have taken hours to upload on their internet connections. So I recompressed it as a smaller resolution wmv file instead which was only about 10Mb, much faster to upload and download.

Later that evening, the wedding party had an excellent wedding supper at one of the restaurants in the resort. Great food. Here's a picture of them cutting the cake at the restaurant. Notice the napkins shaped like swans in the drink glasses.

Afer that we went to the show for that night, the "Lip Synch Competition". The actors danced and lip synched to a bunch of acts (Michael Jackson, Queen, Prince, Madonna, etc.) It was a lot of fun. Especially when the "Prince" act brought Tammy's Aunt on stage and sang "Purple Rain" to her. Complete with an umbrella and a guy behind them that kept pouring water on the umbrella every time he said "Purple Rain:.

At the end when the votes came in on the best act, of course our group yelled and screamed the loudest so that "Prince" won.

I was amazed at how many Canadians are there. During the warmup, they asked how many people from the US, Argentina, England, Italy, etc. All of these had a bit of applause. But when they asked for Canada, the whole place erupted in applause. We Canuks easily outnumber the other guests many times over.

That was about it for day 1. I went back to my room, to rest up for Xcaret on Tuesday.

When I got back to the room, I found a little elephant sitting on my bed. This was the first of my "Towel Buddies". Every day, the maid leaves me new towels folded in the shape of animals, people, etc. I'll report on these every day. Here's a picture.

As a bonus, here's the towel buddy that was on Trevor and Tammy's bed the day of the wedding: