Sitting By The Ocean: Cancun-Travel Journal- DAY 1

Alright, so I realized I still haven't told you people about my trip to Cancun.
I don't want to be boring and say it was spectacular and great and awesome and sublime and superb and... etc. etc. etc.

I wrote a travel journal while I was in Cancun. Why? Was it homework? Requested by the teacher? No. I CHOSE to do this. All right, call me a nerd now, but you won't be saying that later on when you wash my limo for a living (no offense to people who DO in fact wash limos for a living).

So I was there for a total of 7 nights and 8 days. Quite a while to enjoy the sunshine and soak in some vitamin D that we lack here in Vancouver.

(-ahem- Vitamin D: a steroid vitamin which promotes the intestinal absorption and metabolism of calcium and phosphorus. TRANSLATION: It's essential for optimum health and growth, and developing bones and teeth. How do you get your vitamin D? By being under normal conditions of sunlight exposure, and eating eggs, fish, and dairy products.)

So as I was saying, we stayed in Cancun for about a week, which is plenty of time to see everything. As you know, I'm from Vancouver, B.C., Canada, which isn't the warmest climate there is. We rarely get past 30 degrees (Celsius) in the summertime, let alone 40 degrees. So us Vancouverites go out in the sun whenever it's out. Even if it's only 14 degrees out, for us it's 'Who cares? The sun's out, and we rarely get this kind of weather! I'm going out today. Even if it's not that warm.' We are sun seekers. The sidewalks/seawall (a seawall is a sidewalk right by the sea) swarm with people because of the weather. So living in a cloudy and rainy city and then going to Mexico really called for some major adjustments. I needed to wear sunscreen EVERY DAY. And the sunscreen had to be on every part of my skin that was exposed. I couldn't get used to not having to throw on a sweater, jeans, and sneakers to go out. I kept thinking I would freeze to death going out in my short-shorts and my tanktop. It really didn't take long to get used to the weather though. Pfft, it never takes long to adjust to something really nice...

So the weather was around 30 degrees, which I consider extremely hot. But nice. It was great swimming weather, so we did that a lot. If we weren't swimming, we were eating. If we weren't eating, we were lounging in the beach chairs by the beach. If we weren't lounging, we were out and about, touring Mexico city and all it's major landmarks and amusment parks. We always had something to do in Mexico. So this is how my day began.

DAY ONE

I woke up at four in the morning, tired but excited to go. First thing I did was go to my room and try to wake up the big snoring heap that was my brother. He sleeps like a bear in hibernation, and when you wake him up, he gets as angry as a bear that was woken up during hibernation. It's a risky process trying to wake up my brother, but I went anyway. I opened the windows to let in the chilly early morning air, flicked the light switch on and off, banged on my piano, tore the covers off the bed, only to find that... he was still sleeping. Amazing. So I slap him. That was the biggest mistake I've ever made in my entire life. He wakes up roaring and pushes me off the bed, my rear end thumping hard onto the floor. He tells me, and I quote, "DON'T YOU DARE EVER DO THAT AGAIN, OR I'LL MAKE YOU PAY!!!!" Of course, my 'Im-the-youngest-kid-in-the-house-so-I-can-get-you-in-trouble-easily' instincts snap in and I make my eyes start to well up with tears and make the most convincing helpless whimper I can. Even though I'm almost twelve, this method still works. Because my brother is 25. My brother's eyes grow wide and he knows what'll happen.

My mom will run into the room when I start bawling to see which one of us murdered the other. She'll see me on the floor crying and run over to my brother and hit him sharply on the back, saying "WHAT DID YOU DO THIS TIME?!" I'll smirk and stop crying right away, now that I've gotten revenge. Then of course, she'll turn on me and say, "WHY ARE YOU SMILING LIKE THAT?!" which will cause me to put on my frowny face and then she'll condemn us both to our rooms.

But of course, my brother wasn't going to let that happen. We were going on a vacation and would be in Cancun in a few hours. So he takes a deep breath and tells me that he's sorry for being so harsh but reminds me firmly to never slap him again. I sniff up my tears and stick out my tongue at him like I would do when I was little. He sighed and finally got out of bed. I got up off the floor and started to double check that I'd packed everything. And then we took the skytrain to the airport, did all that checking stuff and all the other stuff, and boarded the plane. Look who I found there! A girl from my school in my grade was sitting in front of me in the same plane! So I spent a lot of the plane ride playing angry birds on her iPhone with her. (By a lot of the time, I mean an hour or so. And the plane ride was around 7 hours.) What did I do the rest of the time? I slept. I read. I ate airplane food (ew I don't like airplane food). And I slept some more. And before I knew it, we were landing in Mexico. As soon as we got out of the plane, the humid, hot air hit me and my clothes stuck to my body as if someone had just splashed water on me. I immediately went to the airport's washroom and changed into my summer clothes. MUCH BETTER...

After we'd gathered our luggage from the conveyer belt thingy, we went to the information desk, for no particular reason at all. The people at the information desk tried to sell us a package deal that sent us to all the famous places in Mexico. Talking to them took around 40 minutes, and guess what? The bus that was supposed to take us to our hotel left without us. LEFT WITHOUT US. We didn't know what to do because apparantly it's dangerous to just wave down a taxi and get in, because the taxi drivers could be human traffickers. We eventually had to take a cab though. The people at the info. desk called down a cab, and they claimed to know the driver. We were still reluctant, but was extremely relieved when we got to our hotel safe and sound. The hotel was really beautiful.

That's our hotel lobby. Pretty cool, huh? The ceilings were extremely high and it had no doors. I guess that can be dangerous, but it was still really awesome.

AND THIS IS OUR POOL!! There are three parts to the pool!!

Anyways, we went to our room and finally settled down. The hotel's elevators-TERRIBLE. They were probably the slowest in the world and they were constantly broken. The wait was so excruciatingly long that we took the stairs a couple of times. And we were on the 9th floor. Each floor had two flights of stairs. UGH.

So this is all we did for the first day.

But of course, I forgot that we ate dinner at the hotel! Our hotel was all inclusive, which means that you pre-pay for the food. You just walk into a restaraunt, eat, and walk out without paying a single penny. It was so awkward doing that... it almost felt like stealing!

The restaraunts were only open for dinner, which sucked, because the buffet food wasn't so good... who am I kidding, I really didn't like it. Everything was so... so.... Not fresh.

Ew.