Puerto Aventuras day 1

It was a long winter - the snow started in early December and didn't melt until mid-April. I had been working much harder than someone who is officially part time should be working. A holiday in the sun was needed. I booked a condo in Puerto Aventuras on the Maya Riviera in Mexico, and Mike got an amazing airmiles deal on flights. I did a stack of research into things to do, and put together our to do list for this holiday:

• Snorkel
• Scuba dive
• Swim in a cenote
• Visit Mayan ruins

We flew at 6am from Portland to Cancun via Baltimore. Mike managed to get us all business class seats for the longer flight, and I managed to restrain myself to only one cocktail (at 9.30am which felt like about 1pm).

As we'd expected, we had an entertaining time organising car hire and negotiating insurance. As always I was grateful Mike speaks Spanish. We stopped at a gas station for drinks, then drove down route 307 to Puerto Aventuras. Everything was in kilometers, and there were various police checkpoints. We kept passing signs for the various all-inclusive resorts that I'd considered, before deciding that we were better off in a condo right by the sea and pool.

Puerto Aventuras is a gated community, and once we were in we immediately got completely lost. We found a great-looking restaurant called Latitude 20 beside a dolphin enclosure, and it seemed easiest to stop for lunch... or was it dinner? Our body clocks weren't sure. Then we found our condo - the ground floor one on the right in this picture. The photo is taken from the steps down to the beach...

Turned out it hadn't been cleaned because the management company thought we were arriving the following day. We spent a while trying to work out how to call the management company from a US cellphone on a Mexican network (failed), then from a US cellphone using Vonage (succeeded), and eventually arranged for the cleaners to arrive.

The kids swam in the pool first, then I took them snorkelling in the ocean, while the maids hurriedly cleaned and Mike went to the Chedraui supermarket over the road. The beach directly outside the condo had a long shallow stony entrance, so we hiked about 2 minutes north along the beach to the Omni Hotel, and snorkelled from there, where the entrance was soft sand. We saw all sorts of gorgeous fish.

Eventually we all unpacked, stuck the groceries in the fridge and crawled to bed. Exhausted but excited.