Happy New Year–Back to Xpu-Ha

Well I haven’t updated my blog since I’ve been just hanging out in my hammock and taking life easy.

We flew back direct from Cleveland to Cancun early New Year’s Day. Flight was ahead of schedule, we just made connections to an early bus from the airport to Playa del Carmen and after a Collectivo ride we were back in camp by 2 PM.

A few more campers had arrived and a few left but there is still room for a few more.

Since we were early Claude was nice enough to give us a quick ride back to the new Super Chedaraui back in Puerto Adventuras.

On Monday Claude and Mags drove to Cancun to pick up their son Stephen and his fiancée Maryann. They are going to spend two weeks here between work schedules on the cruise ship circuit. They work in a store on the ships selling jewelry and watches. Here they are checking out my hammock.

I borrowed all these pictures from Mags camera. I haven’t even taken a picture since I came back.

Claude got Steve to give him a haircut, saving a trip into Playa.

Meet our campground hosts, Vera and Dietrich. Dietrich makes sure everything is working in camp and everybody pays their campground fees. If you stay a month it is only 5000 pesos including all hookups, this only comes to $375/month USD at the current exchange rate.

We all got together this Friday night to go out to Pizza Leos again in Chemuyil. We had 15 people there this Friday. Here is a picture of me telling Glen from Alberta all I know. This took about a minute. But he did seem to believe me.

It seems like there is always a celebration or a party or something going on in town.

 

This Friday was the Feast of the Three Kings. All the bakeries make big bread like cakes that have a small toy Jesus somewhere inside. It’s called Rosca de Reyes. If you find him in your slice, tradition says you must throw a party on Feb. 2, Candlemas Day, and serve tamales to your guests. Or I think that’s how it goes. The cakes are not too tasty, we tried a small piece in the grocery store.

But of course it is also the reason for another celebration. The ladies in town dress up in their beautiful Huipiles, they have their dancing shoes on and they march behind a car playing music and dance around a man holding a king, while holding on to their ribbons.

Even some little ones dressed the part.

It’s a fun little town, when ever we walk around town we usually find a party going on. Here we found a birthday party with a piñata. All the kids were having a great time trying to break it to get at the candy.

These are the friends from Belgium that we met at our campground. Fred & Emmy are the ones who had a bad experience on their way to Mahahual last February .