We had another free day to explore with our rental van after spending a few more days in our all inclusive resort. It was great to once again be able to leave our resort for a day out to explore the local Mexican life.

A few weeks prior to taking our trip we had been researching various places where we could help some children in Mexico that had a particular need. In our research we found out about an orphanage on the outskirts of Cancun in the suburb of Bonfil. I went online again to see if I could get any information possible on this orphanage but did not have any luck at all so we decided that we would just head to this little community and ask around until we found it. Once in Bonfil we drove around this rural suburb of humble...

We did have a little bit of spare time and so on the way home we took our time as we drove through each little village. As we passed Tulum we kept our eyes out for the Dos Ojos caves that we had read about so that we could go swimming in these amazing caves. The entrance to these caves were just North of the Hidden Worlds caves that are part of the same underground river network.

When we arrived at the entrance of the Dos Ojos caves we were pulled over to check out their "information center". This was simply a chance for them to upsell us on a snorkel tour as opposed to just taking a self guided snorkel in the caves. It was a joke. For 100 pesos ($10) per person we could snorkel in the caves or for 300 pesos ($30) we could have...

The plan for our first day away from our oasis of foreign overeater's resort was Coba. We rented a car from Cheap Tickets Canada.com with Thrifty Car Rental. It was a good thing too because our $59 US per day car rental was over $100 per day if booked at the resort! Needless to say upon discovering this I bought some Internet time at the hotel and reserved a van with Cheap Tickets Canada.com for two more days later on during our stay. The Thrifty Car Rental representative at the hotel was happy to arrange for the vehicle to be ready for us at our hotel and so it was even more convenient than I had expected.

We got up early in the morning but with 5 children, we did not leave the hotel at 8 am as expected. It was more like 9:30...

Getting up at 4:15 am was perhaps the most difficult part of our vacation although the kids were anxious enough to be headed for Mexico that they didn't seem to mind and were on the best of behavior considering how tired they must have been. We were packed and ready to go and so following a very early breakfast, we loaded our luggage into the car and were off to the airport for our 6 am departure. Having checked in online for our Alaska Airlines flight did save us a lot of time at the airport and enabled us to show up only 50 minutes before our flight was to depart. Checking in online enabled us to preenter our passport information and print out our boarding passes.


Within 3 minutes of clearing security we were ready to...