24 November 2025 - For our family vacation this year, Iris (13) requested a place with teal water where she could snorkel. We decided to go the all-inclusive route and picked one halfway between Cancun and Playa del Carmen, Mexico: the Iberostar Paraiso del Mar. This morning (a Monday), we all woke around 4 am and were on the road to CWA by 4:30 am. Hardly any wait going through security so early. Our 7 am flight from CWA to MSP was uneventful. We found our connecting flight gate and waited for our 10 am flight to Cancun. I listed to a podcast about owls while we waited. On our flight to Cancun, Nick and Felix (16) sat on one side of the plane, while Iris and I were on the other. No one sat with us, so we could spread out. Iris and I watched Wicked, and rested the remainder of the 4-hour flight. Once we landed, we quickly made our way through customs (no long waits!), used the bathroom (long wait!), and found our shuttle pick-up. It was gloriously warm and sunny. Our hotel was about a ½ hour from the airport. We checked in to the resort and got settled in our first-floor connecting rooms before we went to the beach. It was around 5:30 pm when we all took a dip in the ocean. The kids really enjoyed the waves while Nick and I enjoyed some tropical cocktails. There was a lovely sky. When they had their fill (and I had enough bashing my feet and shins on underwater rocks), we went back to the rooms to get cleaned up and headed to the sister resort (Paraiso Beach) next door for dinner. We ate at the Mexican restaurant and tried many different offerings. After dinner, we headed back to the room. Iris and I stopped at the gift shop on the way. I ended up getting her flip-flops and goggles for Felix (for $47 total. Ouch). We relaxed in the room watching Monday Night Football in Spanish.
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| ¡Hola! |
25 November - We headed to breakfast around 8:30 am. Our first-floor rooms have basically jungle on the other side of the balcony. (A peacock walked past last night.)
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| Coati by our balcony |
Our unit is the 2nd closest to the beach, so it's a long walk back to the lobby area, but past a lot of interesting flora and fauna. There are coati(mundi), pigs, and iguanas that we've seen so far. The breakfast buffet was nice and large. We headed to the beach and found some chairs that hadn't been claimed. The sky's mostly cloudy and it's windy as I sit here listening to the waves and throbbing pop music nearby. It's 10:20 am now, and Nick just brought me a margarita. :D Iris and I joined other gusts in a game of beach volleyball before we got tired. We joined Nick and Felix at the swim-up bar in the nearest pool area. We had a couple beverages while the kids swam and we people-watched. At 11:45 am, we headed back to the room to shower and change. When everyone was ready, we went to the buffet for lunch. In addition to the usual offerings, they made an enormous seafood paella, which was a sight. Felix stayed in the room after lunch, while the rest of us went back to the beach. It's mostly sunny and slightly less windy now.
I headed back to the room to chill after I started to get a headache. Iris texted me to bring some things back to the beach, so I walked back there. Then I grabbed Felix to go to the shop, because we were low on sunscreen. $47(!) later, we have a new bottle. Nick and Iris were back in the rooms when we returned. We all chilled for a while watching '80s music videos until it was time to get ready for dinner. We had reservations for the Japanese restaurant at 6 pm. Iris was very excited for hibachi. We were treated to a nice performance by our chef ("no more tequila for him/her/me!") and a delicious dinner. I talked a bit with the Canadian woman there with her grandson. Stuffed, we headed back to the room around 7:30 pm. We got prepared for our excursion and relaxed before bed.
26 November - Despite Felix's concerns that we wouldn't be ready in time, we were up, fed, and waiting in the lobby for our excursion by 7:25 am. Carlos from Aventuras Mayas picked us up around 7:35 am. We were the first group and he picked up two more groups in the Iberostar complex. He drove us to the tour group headquarters, where we got off to switch to a different guide. Our new guide, Luis Garcia, was late getting there due to the same heavy traffic entering Playa del Carmen that we also endured. We waited in the hammock chairs and used the bathroom. Once we were set, it was a 20-30 minute drive south to Yal-Kú lagoon. (Nick and Felix were annoyed by the number of speed bumps off the highway.) We got a quick run-down of the area, the lagoon, and what we might see. We got lockers, fins, masks, and life jackets, then made our way down the path to the lagoon. The water was chilly, but there were some fish *right there* by the stairs. (When Felix got in the water, he started screaming, "Dory! Dory! Dory!" which was both unexpected from him and also hilarious.) We started by going to the left from the pier, toward the fresh water. There were lots of fish, especially sergeant majors, blue tangs, and flounder. We swam for about 40 minutes, going from the fresh water through the brackish intermixing area into the saltwater. I got some nice pictures underwater.
Once we finished, we turned in our gear and headed back to the bus. It was another 30-minute ride to our destination with its remaining activities. Our first stop was the cenote and cave. Iris was cold and tired already, and resisted the idea of getting colder in the underground water, but she went in anyway. We had to rinse off in cold shower to get the salt off us, get new goggles and life jackets before we headed down the stairs into the cenote. The air was much cooler down there. Luis pointed out the bats and small catfish near the cave entrance.
We took some pictures, then we were led into an area with countless stalactites. It was beautiful!
(I thought so. Nick was busy dealing with some claustrophobia.) We swam around for a bit before heading back up. We got changed and ate lunch, which was chicken, black beans, rice, tortilla chips, and salad stuff. Once everyone was done, we got our climbing gear (complete with hair net) and waited. We got pictures taken and a safety briefing before we were allowed to climb the rickety, wooden, 4-story tower to do our zip lining route (choice of 3, 5 or 7 rides). I should mention that our tour group included a mom/grandma/aunt (?) with a girl about Iris's age and one a bit younger, and a family with mom, dad, 7-year-old and 5-year-old sons, and grandma. We went first - Iris, Felix (who was nervous as it was his first time zip lining), Nick and then me.
Some people, thankfully, chose to only do 3 rides. Nick, Iris and I did the complete circuit of 7. Felix was content to do 5. Tower 3 was a loooooong wait. That's were people decided to go back to the beginning or continue on, but Tower 7 was getting people one at a time from two towers. That created a bottleneck that took about an hour to get through. There was a couple in front of us; the wife did not like any of it and only moved up the tower when there was a landing open. I didn't blame her; I wasn't a fan of the wind up there, but I tried to focus on everything but my fears. And it worked! The rest of the rides went pretty quickly because there were only a few people on any tower. I turned myself upside down on one ride just because I could. Iris, Nick and I took the opportunity to ride like Superman, face-down.
That was cool; the worst of it was climbing two towers with the heavy extra gear. Felix waited for us so we could all continue on together. The three of us also did the last ride in hammocks, which was nice.
Iris had one more thing she wanted to do - the 3-story bungee jump. She was brave about that. We all headed our shortly after that. It was just a matter of dropping people off after that. (The other dad on our bus was complaining about so much. At least the '70s/'80s/'90s music on the radio was good.) We left ~3:50 pm and got to our resort at 5:25 pm. Back at the hotel, we took the tram to our room to save time. We quickly got ready for dinner. Iris really wanted to go to the French restaurant. We made it a little before opening, and got a table right away. Nick and I splurged on a $60 bottle of Mexican sparkling wine. We each got an appetizer, entree and dessert. I got asparagus Provençal, Niçoise salmon loin, and a big berry macaron. Nick let everyone try some of his Burgundy escargot appetizer. Iris loved her beef tenderloin. Lovely dinner.
We walked back to the room after (though I ran back to the theater for more drinks and met a ginger kitty on the path), and played several hands of sheepshead together before bed.
27 November - We slept in a bit, all worn out from yesterday's adventures. We went to breakfast around 9:30 am. (I was up by 8 and spent a long time writing about yesterday.) A guy in a turkey costume was going around to the Americans' tables because Thanksgiving. We headed to the beach and all swam for a while, then Iris and I joined in on volleyball. We played a couple games before having enough, and went back in the water.
Stormy skies inland...
We spent some time at the pool bar before heading to lunch. It started raining while we ate, but passed after a little bit. Nick and I headed to the lobby to find any other Packers fans. The game was on a lobby bar TV, but no big gathering. Nevertheless, we made ourselves comfortable and chatted with newly arrived Canadians Andre and his three brothers. (Chatting despite the pounding noise as workers repaired the dome roofs over the lobby.) Tom from Marshfield joined us for a bit before he invited us into the club room where his crew was gathered. I drank way more than I thought... After the game, we went back to the beach for a bit. I was not feeling well by this tie, so Nick to the kids to get dinner and I rested.
28 November - I drank lots of water overnight, so I didn't feel too bad in the morning. We went to breakfast around 8:30 am, then Iris and I walked to the complex's shopping center.
The stuff there was basically the same as sold in our lobby, but Iris found some bracelets she liked, and I got a fridge magnet. We joined Nick and Felix at the beach - they were in the water. Iris and I didn't feel like swimming yet, so we played in three games of volleyball instead. That was fun. :D We got our swimsuits on after that (the clouds cleared and it warmed up). The waves were pretty big today. One smashed into me and knocked me underwater. I nearly lost my sunglasses like Felix. We stayed on the beach until noon, when we headed back to the room to shower and change for lunch. We took a siesta after eating. (My arm muscles ache and make it difficult to write [as evidenced by my shaky handwriting in the travel journal].) It was nice to have some down time. We got ourselves ready for dinner and headed to the other lobby to relax and play cards before dinner. That was nice as it wasn't so busy or loud there. We went to the Mediterranean restaurant for dinner. That was pretty tasty overall, though it took a while to get our main courses. No biggie. We spent some of the wait discussing potential scenarios as we were flying home tomorrow into a winter storm. Basically prepping the kids to deal and go with the flow. We went back to the room, and I did some packing. Nick put on more '80s MTV, and we got yet another Madonna song. [We heard Madonna daily on this trip.]
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| Felix's hat matched the decor |
29-30 November - Today could have gone better, but it also could have gone much, much worse. We got up at 7:30 am, got ready and went to breakfast. The kids (all of us, really) made sure to get at least one more "malla praline" pastry before we left. We went back to the room to pack and relax. At 10:30 am, we took the tram to the lobby to check out and wait for our airport shuttle. That was pretty quick, and we were on our way around 11 am. The interior of our shuttle was already festively decorated for Christmas. We made it through security reasonably quickly, though Iris had her metal hair pick confiscated (oops). The airport was already very busy, and our flight wasn't until 3 pm, so we had three hours to kill. Iris wasn't feeling well, so we let the kids sit while Nick and I went to see if we could get on an earlier flight with the winter storm back home. Not only was that a NO, but our flight was also delayed one hour. We decided to get some food and spent an hour and $200 at the Guy Fieri restaurant there (it was fine, but expensive, because why wouldn't it be?). We spent the remaining time chilling, though Iris and I did look at souvenirs and got proper coffee at Starbucks. We were "lucky" to be chosen for pre-flight interviews. I was happy to get on the plane, frankly. Iris didn't bring her earbuds for her phone and was cranky not being able to listen to the show she was watching. I gave her mine to use, even thought I wanted to use them myself. (A bit of drama between us...) I watched Encanto and finished my podcast I stared at the Cancun airport when she was done using my earbuds. As we approached the MSP airport around 7:30 pm CST, I was notified our flight to CWA (scheduled for 7:55 pm) was also delayed, so we'd actually be able to make the connection. Getting in late, it was fast going through customs and security again. We found our next gate and got some food for the kids (but no drinks for us because they stopped serving alcohol at 9 pm, 7 minutes after we got to the bar). We waited and played some sheepshead as our estimated boarding time kept pushing back.
We had to change gates and finally boarded at 10:45 pm. And then we sat on the plan until midnight while getting deiced and waiting our turn to take off. Not a bad flight, despite the wind and snow. The final descent was unsettling, but we safely made it to the gate. Cold and blowing snow greeted us. We had to clear the 3-4" of snow off my car before we could get going. Nearly empty highways, and Nick drove ~55 mph the whole way. We pulled in at 1:50 am to two surprised and happy kitties.
Trip cost: $9,323.52
