For years I’ve wanted to get away at the Christmas break. For years I’ve looked and shied away due to pricing, timing and other reasons. This year the timing of the school breaks, our work schedules and yes, even the pricing worked out. So we headed off to the Grand Sirenis Riviera Maya in Akumal Mexico. Akumal is about 90 minutes south of Cancun via hotel transfer. It sure felt a lot longer than that. It was worth it.
This wasn’t our normal type trip. No detailed explorations, no multiple locations to see. However many times when we’ve been up at 5am, had long days or long drives Kris and I have both said “We should go sit by a pool/beach somewhere and just relax for once.” This was that trip.
We relaxed:
and enjoyed the swim up bar:
El Diablo for me and Gin Rickey for Kris. Various mocktails for the boys. We got our money’s worth.
The rooms are nicely spread about the resort.
We ate at the buffet and there were lots of amazing gluten free options as well as choice for all of us. Not to mention some crazy fruit carvings.
In addition to relaxing we went to Chichen Itza:
And wandered the beautiful resort grounds finding lots of cool animals!

Coati

Lots of them!

Spider Monkeys!

Her commute across the property every day.

Hold on baby!

And of course the Iguanas
There is also a great reef system to snorkel on. Lots of fish to see.
A short video of me swimming with the fish:
We also went down the Lazy River a bunch of times.
Celebrated 2018 New Years
Eric took an intro class on SCUBA:
All in all a great trip to relax and even see a few things. Here is our highlight reel video: