Puerto Morelos

I spent last week in Puerto Morelos with Michael, the boys and my parents. It was absolutely wonderful. Mom and dad had rented a great house called Casa Manalou off of VRBO. Michael had elite status with Avis so we got a nice minivan and we used our United miles to fly to Cancun.
The house had two stories and a great roof top patio, a swimming pool overlooking the ocean and a hammock. The weather was hot and humid and we had a big thunderstorm almost every afternoon. The time of year was wrong for a clean beach. There was lots of seaweed, but we are used to that and we still enjoyed white sand and relatively clear, blue water.
We went out to eat a lot and ate many different ceviches and drank many different margaritas. My mom taught me how to properly order a margarita- just tequila, cointreau and lime juice, no sweet, on the rocks with salt.
We drove into Playa Del Carmen one day and grocery shopped at the Walmart and had lunch out. Another day we found a bar on the beach called Unico () and camped there for the day, letting the boys snorkel in the shallow water, reading, and munching on deep fried tortilla chips. I ate my weight in tortilla chips on this trip. It's my perfect meal. Salty deep fried chips, guacamole, hot salsa and tart margarita. Mmmmmmmmmmmmm.
We did a day trip to Xel-ha, which was really great. They served you all your meals and drinks and had many fabulous trails through jungles where you could stop and snorkel, zip-line, admire coatimundis and iguanas, jump off cliffs and swim in caves. They had an amazing playground and a really wonderful snorkel spot with as many fish in one place as I've ever seen.
Another day we just laid around the house, venturing briefly into town for shopping and a wonderful dinner of grilled octopus, which would have been perfect if the sand fleas had not appeared and began attacking us.
The boys managed to get Pancho, the caregiver, to open coconuts for us one day and they loved drinking the coconut water and chomping into the meat.
We all got to practice our spanish and Michael got to practice driving around in a foreign country. There was no hot water and little air-conditioning and the hardest beds I've ever slept on, but we all still had a great time. I love that my family travels so well together. It makes me really happy. I will treasure these chips that we take with my kids and my parents forever in my heart.