Incredible dinner!
Since I have a habit of photographically documenting unusual and excellent culinary events, I thought it would be appropriate to mention the dinner Heather and I enjoyed Saturday night at a very nice French restaurant called Meritage in St. Paul. I didn’t photograph the food, but I did save the tasting menu. This was one of the most spectacular and delicious meals I have ever consumed.
The first course, before the Crab salad, was a shot glass filled with red liquid. Heather didn’t hear the description before she downed it, and was a little shocked when she got a big slimy oyster along with the bloody mary! We did not get the wine flight, but we did get a half-bottle of a really great Oregon Pino Noir. It was a 2006, but I don’t remember what specific vineyard it was from.
Bienvenidos a Mexico!
Here’s a link to the whole photo album, if you want to go straight there.
Mexico is a beautiful land of beaches and prosperity, of leisure and relaxation, where the people are friendly and the beer flows like wine… I recently had the good fortune to visit this mythical locale, along with Heather and her family. It was my first trip to Mexico, believe it or not.
We stayed in a wicked awesome resort just south of Cancun. Everything was perfect except for the weather – although I really shouldn’t complain, because despite the clouds and the rain, it was still about 100 degrees warmer than at home in Minnesota that week (literally).
Heather and I ventured outside of the resort for two days during the middle of the week, which turned out to be the highlight of the trip for us. We were picked up at the resort Wednesday morning to embark on the so-called “Aquatic Expedition” by two guys named Mario and Oscar. Mario was a fairly hilarious skinny dude with a goatee and some solid English skills – Oscar was much better with the stick shift van than he was with the fast-becoming minority language of the USA.
At the first town down the highway, Mario asked if we minded if they stopped for a little breakfast. As quite the breakfast enthusiasts ourselves, Heather and I readily obliged. Despite our having already gorged ourselves on the excellent resort breakfast buffet (smoked salmon, cream cheese, onions, capers on a bagel, etc. every morning for me), we chowed down at the local taco stand the dudes had stopped at. We didn’t have any Pesos, so the dudes picked up our (second) breakfast! Righteous!
We continued to some other hotels to finish filling up the van with fellow tourists (we were first to be picked up), then headed to our first aquatic site – the Yul Ka lagoon national park in Akumal.
This was a freshwater-fed brackish lagoon that led out into the ocean. The visual distortion caused by the brackish water was pretty weird while snorkeling. The water was otherwise quite clear though, and we saw a ton of fish and other wildlife. Mario led us out to the reef area after a while, where we were treated to close encounters with a big sea turtle, a pretty sweet little crab, and a large stingray. We were able to swim up quite close to all of the wildlife. On the way back in, something large caught my peripheral vision. I glanced over, saw a huge fish (I recognized it, but couldn’t get the words out), grabbed Mario’s fin in front of me, pointed and kind of yelped “there’s a big fish!” We all turned around to stare at the approximately 60 pound barracuda hanging out right behind us. Everybody saw the fish but Heather. I watched her looking around for the fish, until she looked down and realized that the sucker was within kicking distance! Bubbles spewed out of her mouth as she squawked underwater, and made her escape – I couldn’t stop laughing 
The second destination was an underground river-fed open freshwater pool in the middle of the jungle called a Cenote. The entire Yucatan peninsula is former seabed and coral reef, so the bedrock is porous, and the water seeps through. There is no surface water – no streams, rivers, lakes, etc. All the water travels underground in the biggest underground river system in the world. These Cenotes are entrances to this underground river system. The word means “entrance to the underworld” in Mayan.
Mario must have known that Heather has a phobia of small fish, because the first thing he did when we got to the Cenote was say “hey guys, look what these fish do when they get a taste of fresh white meat!” and threw a little pebble off the short cliff (12 feet ish) into the pool. About a million little fish instantly converged on the pebble, presumably crushing it to dust with their sharp little teeth. Heather’s face went pale, and her resolve faltered. She then proceeded to conquer her fear and jump off the cliff along with everyone else into the 30 foot deep, crystal clear pool! I was shocked and impressed!
Snorkeling here was very different from the brackish lagoon, but equally fascinating. Apparently with scuba gear one can actually enter the underground rivers from this and other Cenotes, and travel as long as the air supply will allow. I have to try that sometime! Mario showed off by swimming down about 25 feet to a little cave, disappearing, them surfacing behind the group and scaring everyone. He also snagged a little turtle from some tree roots and let us hold it. At this point I had already checked off the “extremely successful” check box for the day – little did I know that the best was yet to come.
After the open Cenote, we buzzed through Tulum to pick up some “Taco Bell” as Mario called it, at a little shack in the middle of town. We drove to a location owned by the tour company owner (named Emilio – righteous dude!), and they spread out a homemade chicken taco feast for us, including freshly sliced habanero peppers, guacamole made on the spot, and some outstanding sauces, beans, and rice. I ate. A lot.
Our final destination was the crown jewel of the trip. It was also a Cenote, but this one was in a cave. Many of the Cenotes on the Yucatan (there are thousands) are sinkholes that lead into submerged limestone caves. We walked down a steep, narrow wooden staircase to arrive on a wooden platform surrounded by water. It was dark, but you could see the stalactites and stalagmites on the roof and sticking out of the water. I couldn’t believe we were going to snorkel in this!
Mario had two diving lights – one he took, and by good fortune, he gave the other to me with instructions to follow behind the group, make sure nobody got left behind, and light the way. This was awesome, because it gave me and Heather the best seats in the house! We started in a shallow area off of the wooden platform, but the water quickly became deep as we swam towards the wall of the cave – about 20 feet off the platform I was swimming, with no lifejacket, holding a 10 pound diving light in one hand, over a 35-40 foot deep chasm (probably deeper if you could get down there). Oddly, I wasn’t perturbed by this at all. I was so completely wrapped up in the national geographic-like wonder of snorkeling through a submerged cave with crystal clear water and albino fish swimming around me, that my inner safety officer went on vacation. We swam through deep areas, shallow ones, narrow passages, and under some low ceilings for about 40 minutes, and arrived back at our wooden platform from the other direction. On the way back to the resort in the van, I told Heather if we went back to Minnesota right then, I would call the vacation a success.
The next day Heather and I went to another cave called Rio Secreto (secret river). This was a much bigger, more commercialized tour experience than the Aquatic Expedition from the day before. We donned wetsuits, watershoes (I wore my Vibrams), life jackets, and helmets with headlamps, and trekked/swam an hour and a half through an enormous and super impressive cave. I wish we had done this one first though, because I couldn’t stop thinking how much more impressed I was with snorkeling in the cave the day before. The experience was still well worth it, and I learned a lot about how limestone caves form and develop. I also got a chance (with the help of a dude from Spain) to hang back from the group for a minute and jump into a super deep and dark pool. That was pretty intense, and against the rules, which made it more fun.
I wasn’t going to make this report long-winded. Too late for that I guess – sorry.
We spent the remainder of our time eating at the fabulous resort restaurants, taking advantage of the unlimited room service and the 6 open bars, and dodging the occasional raindrop. I also checked out the spa – the steam room was great (it went to 11!), and there was a zen garden which I sat in for a while. Overall, I had an extremely relaxing and enjoyable trip. The next time I visit the area, I am DEFINITELY scuba diving. I’m not sure if I’ll get certified before I go or while I’m down there, but it has to happen. I’m fascinated by the underwater world – both in the ocean and in the caves!
We ate dinner in Playa Del Carmen the last night, which produced this hilarious shot: