We’ve been back from our vacation for a couple of weeks now. I haven’t have much time to update this site because of all the catch up I had to do. Catching up on work, catching up with friends I had been neglecting, catching up with church matters. It seems like trying to catch up when you get back from a vacation takes twice as long as the vacation.

Well Mrs Flying Dutchman and I really enjoyed our vacation. Playa Del Carmen is beautiful. I have to confess that I had some preconceptions about Mexico. The only other cities in Mexico I had ever visted was Tijuana and Juarez. Playa Del Carmen, or Xaman Ha (pronounced shaman hah) as it was called by the Mayan Indians, is nothing like those two cities. The people were very friendly and polite, the town was clean and well-kept, and the setting absolutely breath-taking.

The first day was a long travel day. We departed Sacramento at 6:30am, laid over in Houston for 3 hours and then flew on to Cancun and didn’t land there until around 6:30pm or so. Customs in Mexico is a fairly simple process. We filled out the tourist visa paperwork on the plane just prior to landing. The paperwork was provided by the airline. There is an odd lottery used in Cancun for customs inspections, just prior to exiting the customs area one member of the family presses a button on a traffic light, if the light is red then you have to let customs inspect your luggage. If the light turns green, you grab your bags and go.

We had purchased a transfer to our hotel in Playa Del Carmen and the transportation company representative was waiting outside. They identified us almost before we could identify them. They whisked us into a car by ourselves and our driver took us on our 40 minute drive to Playa Del Carmen. There are some interesting features of the highway we were on. They have topes in the middle of the highway just outside the towns. These things are speed bumps on steroids. Traffic slows to a crawl to get across these things.

We finally got to our hotel and were greeted with moist, scented, and very cold towels along with glasses of champagne. It was about 8:30pm by this time. The bell captain took us down the path to our building and room. The room was great. Cool marble floors, marble vanity in the bathroom, marble shower, it was all wonderful. There was even a small refrigerator in the room full of water, soda, and beer. All I could think was, wonderful, more alcohol. Those who know me will see the humor in that.

We just had time to clean up before we headed over to the restaurant where the front desk had made us reservations for dinner. This particular restaurant was chosen because it had a loose dress code and I didn’t have dress shoes. I was informed that I would have to get some dress shoes before I would be allowed in the other restaurants on the resort. Oh well, something to put on the list of things to do. Even the casual restaurant was very formal. Dinner was served in courses and the waiter wore a tux.

After dinner we took a quick walk on the beach and then headed back to our room to collapse into unconsciousness.