That morning: I woke up at 6:30am to help Trey off to school-I didn’t even cry! I got dressed and packed the last remaining things for the trip and Aurelio and I headed out the door for the bank, AT&T, breakfast and then headed over to my mom and Tim’s house so he could take us to the airport. We picked up Candace and Michael (aka: C&M) on the way (They were waiting outside on the curb, luggage and all). WE WERE READY!!!
In the airport: After going through all of the checkpoints, we headed to the Earl Campbell Lounge to wait… Aurelio and C&M had a beer, and I had some coffee. As we look to our right…Mack Brown and his wife were sitting next to us! We thought about asking him if he wanted to go to Mexico with us, but then we remembered he was headed to the football draft. We also thought about asking him for a pic, but decided against that as well. I’m sure he get s that all the time, and just cringes when someone asks him. Instead, we snuck a blurry pic with our iPhones and headed to the gate to wait for our plane. If you look closely...It looks as though his wife is snorting Dr.Pepper through her nose....Ha ha ha... She's not though.
At the gate, there was a woman doing the strangest stretches. Attention: We were about to get on a flight from Austin to Houston. That’s a 40 min flight! There is no need to do what this woman was doing!!! She started with some basic lunges. First the left, then the right, then down to the middle. Simple, right? Well this is when she started getting into it. She then squatted down, put her hands on her knees, popped her butt out J.Lo style, and began to bounce! I am not kidding!!! I thought she was rehearsing for a rap video. This is where the yoga in her kicked in. She did a pose I had never seen before. (This pose will be seen all over Mexico throughout my trip, so stay tuned). I took mental note, and also snapped some pictures with my trusty phone. (there is no zoom on my camera phone, so just think...I was really THIS close to her.) Laughing, we boarded the plane and headed to Houston.
Here is the FAMOUS yoga pose that I will duplicate through out the next 8 days.
On the plane: Aurelio says I “smother” him on planes, so here was his opportunity to sit with Michael and let Candace and I sit together. We looked at trash magazines and spoke about the trip. Before you knew it, we landed…. Hope our fellow yoga-stretcher didn't get a blood clot on our 40 min flight. LOL
Houston Airport: We had a 2 hour lay-over in Houston, so we decided to get some lunch. We went to the Fox Sports Bar….it SUCKED!!! Aurelio and I ordered some wings which weren’t too bad, and C&M ordered nachos. We didn’t think there was any way to screw up nachos in Texas, well my friends, in the Houston airport at the Fox Sports Bar….there IS a way. Those nachos came out with chips on bottom, an entire jar of Pace Picante Sauce poured over them, sprinkled with cheese and black olives. Huh? Even if it sounded good, trust us, it wasn’t!
On the plane: Headed to MEXICO!!! Woo hoo!!! Candace and I sat together again and we watched The Time Travelers Wife, and the boys sat 3 rows back and listened to their iPods. Not sure if they did anything else because their headphones were in their ears the entire time, but every time I looked back there, they would stick their tongue out at me, or make a funny face, so I guess they were having a good time.
Mexico Airport: The way that Mexico does their ”full searches” is very random. You and your luggage are in a line and you walk up to this button and press it. If the button turns green, then you go on through. If the button turns red, then you have to step to the side and get all of your things searched. Aurelio and I were trying to decide who was going to press the button. He insisted that he wanted to be the one to press it. RED!!!! Damnit! We step to the side and have all of our things looked through. Panties, swimsuits, clothes, everything is looked through. Of course we went through with nothing found, but it always sucks to have your luggage gone through. We get out of the airport and grab a beer for the ride to Cancun. From Cancun, we stopped at a little store by the ferry, withdrew pesos from the ATM and bought a 6 pack of beer for the ferry ride to Isla Mujeres! The ferry was about 80feet long and had an upper deck and also a closed area below where you could sit “wind free”. The ferry was much faster that I thought it would be. We were hitting waves from all over… tossing us about. The wind felt good and the air smelled wonderful! Can’t beat that beach smell.
On the windy ferry.
While on the boat ride, Aurelio says, “I wanna move here”.
C&M laughed and said, “You haven’t even seen the island yet silly.”
Aurelio, “I don’t even care. The things that I can see in the dark are good enough for me.”
Night 1:
With a bit of a buzz, we all got off the ferry and gave our luggage to an older man with a huge basket attached to a bicycle, and started walking to our condo/hotel for the week. The walk through the small town was amazing. There were little souvenir shops lining the beach front, fruit and pottery stands all around, and people walking everywhere. This town had a charm about it that we could all feel the second we got off the boat.
C&M have been to Isla 5 or 6 times, so they were our tour guides. They have been ranting and raving about a pizza place on Hidalgo called Rolandis Pizzeria. The specialty, as the name implies, is the stone baked pizza and also the garlic bread. That was the first stop of the night. We ordered a pizza each along with many beers. Oh My Goodness…it was AMAZING! From the garlic bread you dip into the oil and balsamic vinegar, to the most wonderful thin crusted pizza…Mmmmm…..
Sitting at Rolandis looking down Hidalgo Street.
We then headed to Fayne’s (pronounced “Fine-es”) which is a bar/restaurant with live music. Next door is a place called She Bar, it's very popular as well. You are in the middle of Hidalgo, so you can also see what is going on down the entire street. The band that was playing recognized C&M and invited them up on stage to sing a song.
A bucket of beer is 5 beers for 6 American dollars.
Candace decided to stay behind, but Michael got up there and sang Folsom Prison with one of the band members named Javi. Michael has an amazing voice…and with the band putting a different twang to the music…It sounded even more amazing! Great job Michael. As we were sitting out at Fayne’s, a guy named Sergio saw C&M, remembered them, and came and sat with us. Sergio works at a restaurant called Bamboo. He is about the same age as we all are, and was extremely nice and spoke very good English. The “nice thing to do” to welcome you or to just say “thanks” is to give you a shot of tequila. Aurelio ended up taking two shots that night, and I pretended to not hear their offer, so I didn’t take any….whew….
We finally called it a night around the 3:00am hour. Headed back to our hotel, Ixchel (prodounced “eee-shell”) which is on Hidalgo Street. Crawled into bed with sand on our feet, the dehumidifier on…and fell asleep.
Wonderful first impression of the Island! We are already in love with this place!
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