Well Cancun was just a blast. We stayed at a very nice all-inclusive resort and had so much fun with a great group of people comprised of Lia’s family and some good friends of Lana & Brian. The wedding itself was beautiful and all the events surrounding the wedding were filled with lots of laughs and great energy. And there was just a little bit of alcohol consumption involved. I uploaded the photos to Flickr in two sets, the wedding photos and all the other Cancun photos.

My favorite part of the trip, other than the actual wedding and reception, was our adventure trip on Saturday out to the jungle. We headed out early in the morning on a harrowing van ride down highways and dirt roads outside of Puerto Morelos. We arrived at the site and piled out of the van, most of us still fuzzy from the wedding reception the night before. The morning started with a brisk bike ride down some trails to a small village that is only about 35 inhabitants away from being a ghost town. The few shacks, one room school house, and carpenter’s building are all that’s left from what was once a thriving village where Chicle trees were tapped to extract the gum used in Chiclets (not a coincidence) for Wrigley’s Chewing Gum Corporation. The bike ride circled back to the little camp where we started and then we walked through the jungle learning about poisonous trees, indigenous plant species, and word origins.

Then came the exciting zip line portion of the tour. Strapped into our harnesses, we climbed to the top of a tall wooden tower, clipped our thin nylon straps onto to a steel cable, and zipped about 100 yards across the jungle canopy. I was terrified at first because I’m afraid of heights, but once it was my turn to jump, I just did it. Nowhere near as scary as it looked while I was waiting in line. I don’t think Lia was ever scared at all. She never hesitated and as she was sliding away she turned and calmly stated, “it’s not even scary.” Here’s a photo of the zip line we went on, but I don’t know the guy in the photo. Unfortunately we didn’t have our camera.

After the zip line we went snorkeling in a sink hole. The sink hole is a small cavern formed by an underground river. If I remember correctly, our tour guide said that these underground rivers are the fresh water supply for almost all of Mexico. The water in the sink hole was cool and refreshing and it was fascinating, if not a little freaky, to look down more than 100 feet into the deep pool below us as we floated. Again, here’s a photo of the sinkhole, but I don’t know the people in it.

After snorkeling in the sink hole, we biked back to the camp and jumped in the van to head to Puerto Morelos to go snorkeling over one of the reefs off the coast. Even though I choked on saltwater a few times from the waves going over my snorkel, I had a lot of fun and we saw some really cool fish. I don’t think the photos can really capture how beautiful it is when you’re out there. Just as we were going to get back in the boat and head over to another site on the reef, a storm blew in and pelted us with rain. Since we were all tired anyway, we decided to call it a day and head back for a late afternoon lunch.

There was tons of other fun stuff we did on our trip, but that was my favorite day. Unfortunately I got sick and couldn’t make the trip out to Chichén Itzá to see the Mayan ruins, but I’ll be glad to go back and do that some other time.

Congratulations to Brian & Lana Bartlett!