03c – Xel-Ha

Galveston | At Sea | Playa del Carmen | Tullum | Xel-Ha | At Sea | Ship Details

Day 3: Xel-Ha

Mexico has iguanas all over the place. This one posed for me at Xel-Ha. He was about 5 feet away from me. This guy is probably about 4 feet long.
Noelle and Daniel, walking next to the lagoon that kept the dolphins. I was able to convince Daniel to leave his cape on the ship – barely.
Noelle checking out a ~4 ft iguana
Micah and Noelle checking out a parrot.
Here’s a cool view of one of the beach spots at Xel-Ha. There’s a huge spring-fed river that pours into the ocean. The water is crystal clear and in the section where the fresh-water meets the salt-water, there are a ton of fishes, some as large as 4-feet long. We saw a sting ray there too. It had about a 3′ wingspan.
This path connected various beach sections of Xel-ha.
This floating bridge is where all the larger fish hang out. Most of them were on the left side of this bridge (where people aren’t allowed to swim). The fresh water is on the right and the ocean on the left of the bridge.
Gorgeous beach! Too bad we couldn’t swim there. This is on the left side of that bridge above.
Some 3-foot fish milling about.
There was a section that had a cave that you could swim into (the opening was just to the left of the center of the photo). There was a current coming out of it, so Daniel had a rough time swimming against it. Noelle eventually put him on a tube, but by then, Daniel didn’t want to go.
I didn’t go in the water. After a few minutes, it dawned on me that the cave may have an outlet elsewhere and they may not come back out the cave opening they went into. So I sprinted up the path and found these (natural) holes where you could look down and see people swimming there. Pretty cool stuff. Thankfully the cave was something of a dead-end and the girls had to come back out the same way they went in.All in all, Xel-Ha was a pretty fun place. Sheryl felt it was a bit too commercialized, and wasn’t quite as natural or pristine as a natural park should be. True, but we had fun.
Meanwhile, back on the ship…Each night, when the ship staff would turn down the room, they’d use a towel to make “towel origami”. Pretty neat.
One of life’s little joys: watching the little man sleep. Long day.

Galveston | At Sea | Playa del Carmen | Tullum | Xel-Ha | At Sea | Ship Details