Travels: November 1999, Honeymoon in Cancun, Mexico

     Maybe I am old fashioned. I believe that the honeymoon should begin the moment the bride and groom depart the wedding reception. I spoke with several other people that got married in the last few years; and they had 'breakfast after' with out of town guests, or left for their honeymoon trips several days (or weeks) after the wedding. I think that is an abomination, All the stress of planning the wedding, and/or the nervousness that often accompanies the ceremony, can finally be resolved, and the happy couple can concentrate on a blissful wedding night followed by quality time for just the two of them. Anyway, that's the way we did it, so I might be biased.

     After our reception, we had the limo take up to a hotel about halfway to the airport (Amerisuites in Itasca) Just a place to crash/ get ready etc. We had an early flight the next day so for a number of reasons we didn't get much sleep. We had leaned on mama bear Zopf to help us book a package in Cancun, and Jim for standby tickets. If I recall correctly, the flight crew gave us a bottle of Champagne to celebrate. The flight was otherwise uneventful, a car met us at the airport when we landed in Cancun. We stayed at the Fiesta Americana near the "far" end of the main drag (across from Captain's Quarters restaurant) This was 1999, there's been more than a little of development since then. Now the area is marketed as the Mayan Riviera, a term that was not widely used when we were there. 

     Once we settled in, we checked out the facilities of the hotel, booked a couple of activities and dinner reservations with the concierge,we went out and got a little drunk. Between the upside down margaritas at Señor Frog's, and the tequila samples at every shopping venue, we were both more than a little buzzed by the time we got back to the hotel that day.
     We had several activities planned; a tour of an estuary/jungle via small speedboat followed by  snorkeling in the bay, and day trips to Chichén Itzá, and Xcaret. We would've done more if we didn't both come down with "Montezuma's revenge" or food poisoning. I am pretty sure the buffet lunch that was included withe the Chichén Itzá tour is the culprit, I heard that a couple other people who went on that tour also got sick (and they didn't have the street taco's that we did- which were delicious by the way). So we lost two days of our honeymoon the the battle vs bacteria, but that forced us to do some things at the resort (we didn't want to be too far from a bathroom!) I still have the ceramic vase I painted, and we still have the time share we bought. Overall we had a good time - we ended up going back in 2001.