The rest of the days were spent recovering, relaxing, and not doing too much so I'll just throw 'em all together in one post.
Day 8 - Monday
The day after the wedding and we slept in later than we did the entire time we were down there - 8:20am!!!
Some left over wedding food was heated up for breakfast, friends stopped by to say their goodbyes and we spent the rest of the day either in the pool or the ocean. You knew it was a rough night for some when the first beer wasn't cracked until 11am. Every other day the latest one was opened was 9am
We stopped by and visited our friends down at Xaman Ha.
In the evening, people stopped by for a few cocktails. Adam's aunt, dad, and brother worked on taking the picture wall apart.
Dustin came to taunt me with his memory card so that I could get copies of all of his pictures
And then we just cooked up more wedding leftovers for dinner.
Day 9 - Tuesday
A lot more people were leaving today and we had to check out of Casa Chaac. We moved a few houses down to Casa Vista del Mar where Adam's family was staying. My parents moved down to Xaman Ha.
We swam in the small pool at Vista del Mar for a while, and then we all went down to Xaman Ha's much better pool
Xaman Ha pool:
We all decided to get together for dinner and went back to La Cueva del Chango to try their fresh juice margaritas.
On recommendation, we started with the tangerine and grapefruit - both delicious but we think we preferred the grapefruit a little more.
Sorry for the overall crappy quality of these pictures, I didn't turn the flash on because I didn't want to ruin the mood of the beautiful jungle like setting.
The salsas
We started with an appetizer of this sesame seared tuna on a tostada
I got the tuna with a hibiscus reduction
And here's the sesame seared. It was really good but everyone agreed it needed some kind of sauce
We went back to the villa and looked at wedding pictures that I'd pulled off of various people's cameras and then went to bed.
Day 10 - Wednesday
Adam and I got up to go visit our friend the juice cart guy. On the way there, we walked through the ruins to check out the lizards and I realized I didn't have any pictures of them yet.
We handed him our pitcher and asked him to fill it full of grapefruit juice.
120 pesos for the fill.
He's located on 10th, just south of Benito Juarez
He had the pitcher about 2/3 full when he ran out of grapefruits so we babysat his cart while he ran to get more. He gave me a glass of orange juice as a thank you.
Then we went to the bakery and waited for them to make a fresh batch of soft pretzels which we took home to everyone.
On the way back to Vista del Mar we kissed my parents goodbye as they were flying back to Florida.
Like the last few days, we spent the rest of the afternoon swimming, trying to finish all of the leftover booze we couldn't pack up, and reading gossip magazines.
After we showered, Adam and I went up to the upper most roof deck of vista del mar with a few glasses of Gran Centanario Anejo (GCA as it came to be known this weekend) and watched the stars come out.
Then we all got cleaned up for our last dinner together - at Carboncitos
After making and enjoying the Agua de Jamaica and creating many cocktails with it for the last few days, I was excited to see they had a Jamaica cocktail on the menu. I think it was called the Firefly. So I ordered it. I saw that you could make it a double for 20 extra pesos so I did that.
Unfortunately, this drink just tasted like sugar. It was so sweet, I couldn't stand it. Russ took care of it though and traded me a beer. Oh well for being adventurous!
Same thing for Maggie unfortunately, she ordered some kind of mango thing I think
She was not a fan either as it was also way too sweet. Mental note: no mixed drinks at Carboncitos next time, we'll stick to beer!
The salsas are always a hit
As were the coconut shrimp in a tamarind sauce
Adam got the Arrachera tacos - also very good!
This shrimp with cactus didn't get rave reviews (complaints of too salty) and Russell unnecessarily took one of the bill.
We walked back to Vista del Mar, had a few more drinks, then hit the sack as we had a cab coming at 10:15am.
Day 11 - Thursday
We had walked up to the cab stand yesterday and arranged a guy to come pick us up at 10:15am. He was there 10 minutes early and charged us 500 pesos. We were planning on taking the bus but the 10:30 would have gotten us there a little too late and the 9:15 was too early.
Bye Playa. At least it was rainy when we left.
And now for some things that didn't fit in elsewhere.
The cats
We had 3 strays hanging out on the patio the entire time we were at Casa Chaac. We called them gringo, taco, and Holyfield (so named because of his clipped ear - turned out they all had clipped ears though)
They were all very affectionate, except for taco, and were even invited to the wedding.
Gringo & Taco hanging out on the porch
Gringo would stand right outside the door but never came in even when we had it wide open
Gringo saying Hi at the wedding (at one point, there were 4 cats at the wedding)
The evening after the wedding Adam and I gave Gringo and Holyfield some leftovers.
We have 2 cats at home so we all thought it was pretty awesome to have some surrogates on vacation (except for Maggie and Erin who hate cats).
Casa Stavola 1
Dustin took these two shots from his villa - Casa Stavola, I thought they were pretty cool.
Sunrise:
A beer with our coozies with the Cozumel ferry in the background.
Random
Thomas has 2 ties and is in my brother's room (it was a loft)
These pictures of my parents make me laugh
These ones of my mom make me laugh even more.
Max's hoodie was awesome. I miss him.
The collection of stuff in this picture is really funny. A few ties, a handful of coozies, a dozen glasses, 4 beers, dirty napkins, 2 cute ladies, etc.
Sigh... I want to go back!