Honeymoon Part 2: Lounging Around the Resort

Us at Xel Ha

So, last July when we went on our Honeymoon Marissa made me promise that if she wrote Part 1 of the Honeymoon blog post covering the tour of the Mayan ruins, I would write Part 2 covering everything else, I agreed and here is me fulfilling my promise…a year later

Marissa and I stayed at a wonderful resort called the Barcelo Maya, located on the Riviera Maya about 50 miles south of Cancun, at first we didn’t know if being that far from the city was going to be good idea or not, but it was a fantastic decision. The resort complex was absolutely massive, made of 5 different hotels, each with their own pools, entertainment, and restaurants. One of my favorite features of the resort was that it was built right in the jungle, the walkways from each building gave you the feeling that you are walking in a wild jungle with Birds, Iguanas, and other animals all around you.  Then right on the edge of the Resort was about a mile of private beaches. The entire resort was incredibly beautiful.

Main entry way to the hotel

Covered walkway through the jungle

One of the many pools

Hotel Lobby

Stormy Beach

For dining at the resort they have both sit down restaurants and buffets, but to eat at one of the restaurants you had to make a reservation. In order to make a reservation you had to use a voucher and the number of vouchers you were issued depended on how many nights you were staying, We were staying 7 nights so we were issued 3 vouchers to dine at restaurants. We went to guest services right after arriving to make sure that we got all the reservations we wanted for the whole week. The lady who helped us gave some of the best customer service I’ve ever experienced. She greeted us with our names (there were hundreds of people staying at the resort, I have no idea how she already recognized us), took our vouchers and tore them up saying, “You guys are honeymooners, you won’t be needing these as you can eat at any of our restaurants for each night of your stay.” She proceeded to help us make the reservations. I was astounded at all the perks and extras they gave us for free.

The beach (it was overcast almost everyday we were there)

The Restaurants were great, we were able to eat at a variety of restaurants: Spanish, Italian, Mexican, Steakhouse, and Japanese Hibachi grill. Our favorites were the steakhouse and the Japanese restaurant. The steakhouse had amazing steak and sides, but this is also where we discovered our love of their sparkling lemonade, it was awesome and between the two of us…who knows how many glasses of it we drank throughout our stay. We loved the Japanese restaurant because our chef was hilarious, I have been to several hibachi grills but this guy was the best. I can’t remember everything he did, but for one joke he turned our fried rice into a “Mexican Mickey Mouse” and instead of doing the onion volcano he did an onion train, we were laughing the entire time, and the food was amazing.

                              

Mexican Mickey Mouse

We spend probably most of our time at the pool or on the beach, but we also just loved walking around the Resort and seeing everything that was going on and admiring how beautiful everything was. One time we were walking around and there was a Mariachi band serenading a random group of people with “La Bamba.” There would also be actors dressed up in traditional Mayan outfits dancing around.

For our last full day in Cancun we decided to go to one of the surrounding parks called Xel Ha. Xel Ha is an inlet where the sea meets a river, which led to some really awesome snorkeling. Starting at the top we could see a bunch of fresh-water fish and towards the end they were salt-water fish. We saw all kinds of fish and really enjoyed it, but surprisingly our favorite part of Xel Ha was the nature walk around it. Along the 3 mile walk there were all kinds of wild life birds, turtles, iguanas, and coati’s. If you don’t know what a coati is, that’s ok I didn’t either, apparently they are related to raccoons are really cute, and were everywhere. It was great fun watching all of them play.

Iguana and Coati

Family of Coatis eating lunch

That pretty much sums up part two of this Honeymoon post, hope you enjoyed it!