Today we drove to Cancun to pick up the grandparents from the airport. I have been telling the boys that we have to go early when we go to pick people up at the airport so we can see the ocean and the beach. They have been wondering why I would care to show them the beaches of Cancun. Now they do not have to wonder any longer and are already asking when we can go back to the beach at Cancun! Next time we go we will be sure to bring our swimsuits along. Of course they started off just putting their feet in while pulling up their shorts, then the shorts were soaked by a wave at which time they just went down to their underwear.

They had so much fun for the thirty or so minutes we had to spare before going to the airport to get my parents. The beaches were beautiful and the water crystal clear so they wanted to play in the water right away. Definitely need to put swimsuits in the car for ’emergencies’ as you never know when a swim party will break out!

We arrived at the airport to get my parents and discovered that their flight had been delayed. We waited at the end of the ramp for just over an hour for their arrival. It is really a great place to ‘people watch’ and I wish we had chairs to sit at while waiting. Of course, nothing beats the look on guests faces when they finally see you waiting patiently for them. Evan & Noah were very excited to see them and we give them a quick tour of Cancun’s Hotel Row.

We decided that we were too hungry to wait to drive to Vallodolid for dinner so we drove up the beach on Hotel Row in Cancun looking for a spot to eat. After what felt like hours, we decided to ‘retorno’ to a place we had passed earlier called ‘Fred’s.’ This seafood and crab restaurant was amazing. We definitely enjoyed our dinner there and would recommend it to anyone looking for a very nice evening on the lagoon. The dinner was definitely an ‘investment’ and we certainly thank grandma and grandpa for the experience of such a fine dining establishment. We all ordered appetizers to share and grandma even ordered an extra shrimp cocktail when the first one for 240 pesos arrived with only 4 giant prawns on it. The fresh baked buns with specialty butters were a very nice touch and we enjoyed 3 more plates of the buns before our meals arrived. The server team brought us the seafood trays displaying all the seafood available for the evening and the different sizes of the lobster tails. We all chose the filet and lobster for 550 pesos (each) which was a great meal enjoyed by the four of us while the boys had fresh made ‘dedos de pescado’ (fish sticks). The dessert tray displaying the desserts was a little misleading as when the desserts arrived at the table they were MASSIVE, good but extremely large pieces and we could not finish any of them.

Then we were off to home, and completely forgot about gassing up the car for the return trip… Ok, so when we got about 50 km out of Cancun I was politely asked by Lyn if I had forgotten anything, moments before the gas light went on as we passed the ‘next gasoline 102km sign.’ Hmmmm, needless to say this was quite a decision as the next sign we passed said that the next ‘retorn0′ was 17km away giving me about 84 km to return to Cancun. Confident that I could make it the 100km on empty we kept driving (of course I slowed down substantially to conserve fuel), the grandparents were mostly quiet about it… Nobody really wanted to think about running out of gas in Mexico in the complete darkness of night. Pretty sure none of us were happy about it, but grandpa did a good job of keeping his thoughts to himself ’cause we all know he would have gassed up long before he even thought of leaving the city on a road with only one gas station…especially when nobody knew if the gas station would even be open after 9pm.

Thankfully we made it to the toll booth where I asked if there was gas anywhere near by. Evan made some crack about me running on empty in Spanish which had everybody laughing. I was told I could approach the policia up ahead and ask if he had any gasolina. The nice policeman offered to sell me 20L of gasolina which would get me to the next gas station or maybe even all the way to Merida. Of course not wishing to risk the next 50 km on empty I purchased the 20L and we were on our way again. I would not recommend buying gas in this manner to anyone, but it was certainly nice that the option was there for us and that the policemen who helped us were very nice. Now it has been a week later and I still cannot get in the car without grandpa asking how our gas is! I think he was much more nervous running on empty than he let on at the time.

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