Rosewood Mayakoba. May 2, 2021. Day 1. The Day Tzvi Got Corona (beer).
This first day is very long. Sorry about that. The rest of these will not be this long.
You know the end of the movie Argo (spoilers ahead, but who hasn’t seen Argo?) when they’re trying to get out of Iran and they’re on the plane and its pulling away from the gate but no one can take a breath until after they enter Swiss airspace, and then they really know they’re free? That’s kind of how we felt this morning.
I cant believe we’re actually here. Between Covid and the kids, I’m actually amazed that we made it to Mexico. I’m actually amazed we made it anywhere.
We started the day by waking up Hallie at 7am to say goodbye. She was so good, she barely cried. We decided Madeleine would be too traumatized if we woke her up to say goodbye, so we didn’t. Oh, and by the way, the two of them are sick with colds and God knows what else. Hallie has been having allergies for two weeks that have been making her cough and making her eyes irritated. So good luck to my parents who will be watching them for the next four nights.
We Ubered to the airport (our first Uber in over a year), checked in pretty quick, got through security quickly with pre-check and then had almost an hour to kill. We got bagels (there’s an H&H Bagel at Terminal 5 now!) and coffee and magazines, and then got on the plane.
Given this is our anniversary trip, we went all out and splurged for the extra legroom in the bulkhead seats (aisle and middle). When we checked last night, the window seat was still empty, which would’ve meant a whole row to ourselves. Well, just before we got on the plane a woman and a child got on and started to move into our row. Tzvi told them they were in our seats, and the woman said she knew, but she was in the window seat. “But you’re two people,” we said to ourselves and not actually out loud.
A lap infant is a small child under the age of two that can fit on a lap. This kid was a large toddler. There’s no way he was younger than two. Luckily, he slept for 2 hours or so, but whenever he was up he was out of his seat and in my space. Not a pleasant way to start our trip.
On top of that, after everyone was on the plane the flight attendant closed the door and then noticed there was some lever that didn’t go down. It seemed like a simple enough thing to just push down, but I heard the flight attendant say the word “paperwork,” so it seemed they needed to bring maintenance people on to push it down and then have the pilot fill out 30 pages of paperwork. It was about a fifteen-minute delay.
Anyway, the flight was uneventful but a little turbulent, and people were pretty good about masks. At some point toward the end of the flight Tzvi started to get upset that we were so late. We were supposed to land at noon, and it was already 12:15 when the pilot came on and said we would be landing in about a half hour. Tzvi said he couldn’t believe the door thing had delayed us 45 minutes, which was when he looked up the time in Cancun and realized that it’s actually an hour behind New York, meaning it was only 11:15 and we ended up still landing 15 minutes early.
Since we were in the first row, we were second off the plane (the pushy people across from us went first). That was great since we made it to immigration before there was a line, which would’ve been great, except Tzvi didn’t fill out the entire immigration form they handed out during the flight, so we had to go back and fill it out. Luckily they didn’t send us to the back of the line. From there we got our bags and left the airport. I should note that the bathroom in the airport was beautiful. Like nicer than JFK.
On our way out of the airport we were accosted by people yelling “taxi” and trying to get us to buy a timeshare. If that’s all of real Mexico I get to experience, I’m good. Among all of the craziness we found a man with a Rosewood sign. Rogelio took our luggage and led us to our driver who was waiting in a Chevy Suburban. Fernando offered us Cerveza, and we couldn’t say no since it was a Corona. It was actually very refreshing. He also gave us bottled water and a little pill shaped thing that you poured water on and it popped up into a towel. Definitely would have tried to eat it if he hadn’t said anything.
I think we drove on a single road for about forty minutes, past a bunch of hotels and waterparks. Our hotel is in Riviera Maya, which is south of Cancun. Finally, we arrived at Mayakoba where we had to pass a security checkpoint and everyone in the car got a temperature check, except they were taking your temperature from like 3 feet away. Mayakoba is basically a massive gated area with four hotels (our hotel, the Rosewood, as well as the Andaz, the Fairmont and the Banyan Tree). We drove through the jungle and finally got to the Rosewood, where we had to go through another security gate. Don’t think we’ll get kidnapped any time soon.
The hotel is really unlike any other I’ve been to. The lobby area is outside and that’s where you check in. What was the first part of check in? Scheduling our COVID tests to go home of course! Tuesday at 9:45am. Our room wasn’t ready yet so we had lunch at Zapote Bar. We sat on a couch, which always makes for a difficult eating situation. Do you lean over? Pick up your plate? What’s the correct etiquette here? We both had salads and Tzvi got a cocktail, but the real highlight was the Diet Coke. It came with Diet Coke ice cubes. Sorry, but they have Toddy’s Coffee cubes beat.
When our room was ready, our butler Sylvia came to take us to the room. To get to the room you get on a boat that takes your around the property. It stopped to show us some turtles, ducks and birds. You only get the boat at check in, otherwise you get to use golfcarts or bikes! Yep, the property is large and spread out so while you can walk, its much faster to bike. There are no helmets, but we haven’t crashed yet.
look closely and you’ll see a turtle
The boat docked at our suite (yes, our suite has its own dock) and led us up the bath into our private patio which has a table, lounge chairs and a plunge pool. Next Sylvia brought us into our suite and showed us around. The suite is one very large room. Also, the bathroom has a shower and an enormous bathtub that Sylvia said takes 30 minutes to fill, so if we want a bath we should text her in advance and she’ll fill it. We were greeted by chips and guac and a welcome drink that Sylvia made for us. Sylvia has three daughters. She said they are in some Rosewood sponsored school or something. She isn’t vaccinated yet, as it’s only above 50, but she thinks they’ll open it to hotel workers soon.
We decided to spend some time at the adults only pool so we changed and rode over there. We took seats next to the pool since the beach isn’t actually that nice here. There’s tons of seaweed that washes up, and I think they go out and rake it every day, but it’s still too much. We ordered cocktails and tried to relax, while eavesdropping on conversations. There was a woman there, probably in her 40’s, who has an Instagram following of 20k. She was talking about how she gets paid to wear bikinis. Then she started talking about her OnlyFans account. She said she is very high end, only subscription based, and it’s $1,000 a month. Then you have to pay for other things. She said one guy pays her $500 to put socks on her feet, wear them, take them off on video, and then mail them to him. Sounds high end to me. I should mentioned she has 2 teenage boys and a 7 year old girl. Apparently her teenage boys aren’t in love with her profession, but her daughter thinks she’s famous.
ew. seaweed.
We left the pool around 545 and I headed to the gym. They have Pelotons here which is nice. Tzvi stayed in the room and video chatted Hallie, who seemed pretty happy but was still coughing. Then we got ready to go to our first dinner.
Around 8:30 we took a golf cart to Al Fresco, the restaurant at the beach. Our table was in the sand, which takes me back to our meal in the sand in Aruba. Good times. Our waiter made table-side salsa which was delicious and of course came with more chips. I normally don’t like salsa but I guess if it’s made with roasted tomatoes and sautéed onion and garlic (and made in Mexico) it works for me. Everything we’ve eaten so far just tastes so fresh. I don’t usually like cilantro, but I can actually tolerate it here because it actually tastes different. Also, all of the avocados we’ve had have tasted better than avocados we get in New York. Avocados from Mexico really are better when you’re in Mexico (and I guess not shipped for days up to New York).
Next we had this amazing appetizer called a Black Bean Tetela, which was basically tortilla pockets filled with black beans and topped with a green tomato and chile sauce. Tzvi had a dry chile pepper stuffed with oaxhaca cheese that had a bunch of interesting vegetables around it. For the main I had mole with avocado, sweet potato and cauliflower. Mole is apparently a special Mexican sauce that has 25 ingredients and takes hours to make. They take it very seriously here. Tzvi had striped bass wrapped in a corn leaf that was stuffed with shredded onions and topped with avocado and tomatoes. He said it was incredible. Everything was beautifully plated and delicious, but dessert was the best. We had this chocolate tart that had so many layers of flavor – orange, coffee, caramel, I don’t even know – and of course, we also had churros which came with a dulce de leche sauce and ice cream. It was like Disney Mexico, but real.
After dinner we came back to the room and passed out. Good day.