Day 62, Week 9

Friday, October 22

MY 21st BIRTHDAY!!!
So here's the story of my 21st birthday... :)
Friday morning I woke up at 5 so I could catch my taxi at 6 that was "supposed" to come to my house. My mama was up waiting with me and was also getting a little worried when it was 6:15 and the taxi that was supposed to come still wasn't there. She called one of her friends' taxi and he picked me up. She told him "super fast to the airport because she is late!" So...we went fast! haha I got to the airport with plenty of time to spare. I grabbed myself a hot chocolate, found my gate, and tried to keep my eyelids open until I got on the plane. My flight took off around 8 and I slept most of the way to Cancun. I arrived in Cancun around 10:45 and was so overwhelmed by the amount of guys yelling "TAXI?" at me. I was waiting for my friend Abraham to come get me for about 10 minutes because he didn't know which terminal I was at, nor did I. I have known Abraham for about 5 years because of distance relatives that stay with his family, but this was the first time to see him in person. He looked exactly how he does in pictures so that made it easy to find him once he walked in the doors.

I wasn't sure if we were going to be speaking Spanish or English and for some reason I get nervous to speak Spanish sometimes, so it was a mixture of the two all weekend. :) We drove to Puerto Morelos where we were going to be staying and he brought me to the restaurant that his dad owns right on the beach. We sat and had some guacamole and a beer for my birthday! :) I fell in love with the beach there at first sight. He explained to me that most of the town of Pto. Morelos is his family and everyone knows him there because of his father. After our little "snack" we drove to the ranch were we stayed. To me, it was like a resort in the jungle with a couple cabins. It was so cool! When we got into our cabin, I was looking around and right above the door I saw this HUUGE TARANTULA! It scared me so much! Abraham touched it a little bit to move it and immediately it reared up its legs at him. It was pretty cool but gross to me, so he killed it outside ha. There were also geckos inside the cabin and you could hear their roosters and the monkies in the jungle too. It was definitely a cool experience.

We drove back into town and I met his partners Cesar and Armando that he works with when they do fishing and snorkeling tours. I also met a hilarious guy they call Jesse James that also works with the tourist-type attractions. Us 2, along with his friend and 3 of his friends' friends went snorkeling at the reef. It was SO AMAZING! I had never been snorkeling before so I was a little nervous of how to actually do all the breathing and everything, but the guys and Abraham too were really helpful. We drove about 10 minutes away from the restaurant (where we left from) in the boat and then snorkeled almost halfway back. Abraham is very into the ocean, fishing, and spear-fishing so he would go off and find the stingrays buried in the ocean floor and bring them up for us to feel. You can only touch the bottom of them, but it was a very soft jelly feeling--so cool! Every now and then I would come up to talk to him and get a mouthful of salt water and eventually it started making me sick! A couple times he took my hand and showed me around the reefs and a bunch of different schools of fish. It was so awesome to see the all the life in the water. I got to hold a sea cucumber and some other conch shells that he brought up for me too. At one point when he was showing me around I look the other direction and all of a sudden this huge (to me) fish was coming closer to me!! He told me it was a barracuda and that it was a small one. Oh my goodness it made me jump! We got back in the boat and went back to the restaurant to eat. I got some shrimp with butter and garlic and they were soo amazing!

I was pretty tired after snorkeling so we went back to the cabins and relaxed for a little while, got ready to go out, and we picked up his best friend and the other friends we went snorkeling with. We all went to a club called Dubai in Cancun that was so cool. At first before the club was open we hung out in another part of the club that wasn't too big and had a drink and then when it opened, we went into the huge main part of the club. I had a FANTASTIC time there for my birthday and it was a great experience. :) We went back to the cabins and I crashed!