Occidental Xcaret

Saturday would be our day to check out.  But since the flight didn't even leave Cancun until 9:30, there would be another full day basically of the pool, the great food, the awesome weather, funny laughs, and just a whole bunch more drinks too.  The hack wasn't due to pick us up until 5:45.  

Our luggage was transported to a central room in the lobby and we continued to enjoy all the Occidental had to offer.  By five, it was a bunch of regrettable nods to get back into the clothes in which we arrived in.  The pool atmosphere is usually finished by then anyway.  But it was a tad sad, even though I am sure we all wanted to get back home.

Maybe all of the resorts are like this, but I was struck by the size, and how cavernous some of the buildings are.  The main entrance area of the resort has a roof/ceiling that seemed to be well over 100 feet off the ground.  It was substantial.  In the beach front dining area which became our breakfast spot everyday, the roof and ceiling there may have been between 60 and 80 feet off the ground.  It makes for beautiful space that easily allows air to flow through the rooms, but it just seemed unnecessarily big.  The roofs were covered with thatched grasses, and then black netting .

There were just a whole bunch of wild and native animals on site.  Spider monkeys were basically always to be seen.  The pig-like agouti were very common.  Iguanas were probably the most common to see.  There were also a bunch of raccoon like animals with ringed tails.  The resort had 2 white tailed deer in captivity, but one morning I saw 2 in the resort just walking around.  Whether they were the same ones, I am not sure - but still.  Each morning the resort set out bright red Macaws on perches throughout the lobby.  Maybe they had their flight feathers removed or something, but they just stayed there all day and people would take pictures with them and such.  But there were all kinds of birds.

We saw one lady each day with a pretty big hawk on her arm.  It was a trained hawk like you would see at a Medieval Times show or something similar.  She would set it down, then give it a command and it would retrieve something and then come back.  Other times the hawk had a hood over its head and eyes....  It was always at the breakfast buffet - maybe it was just getting something to eat like us!  

But I mentioned all of the green space in another posting and it really was quite impressive the lengths they took to build the resort with the natural lay of the land in mind.  There were so many trees, that I don't think any of the rooms had a view of the ocean.

There were a few archaeological ruins on the resort.  One was a lighthouse, and the other was once a church.  We didn't really get into how old they were or anything, but I would think a thousand or so....