All the way from the Caribbean Coast of Mexico

Today, Thursday, March 9th. I'm writing this from the balcony of our hotel in Akumal Bay on the Cancun peninsular in Mexico. Looking out at the turquoise-blue sea of the Caribbean is a surreal outlook. We're six hours behind the UK, so it is strange when notifications come through on devices for things happening back home later in the day.

It is 0600, that's 1200, back in the UK, and the hotel is starting to wake up. The workers are busy ensuring the beach and pool areas are up to standard. The beach is particularly challenging as an onshore wind brings seaweed from the fields into the bay, which feeds this diverse ecological area of the world. Out in the bay live three species of Turtles and Manatees. We have witnessed a sting ray already coming close to the shore. 

The bird life is diverse. We have already spotted Pelicans flying over. Now, that was surreal, and now an Agouti is walking across the pool deck as I write this. Last night, while walking, a Coati dashed across in front of us. We witnessed a Hooded Oriole flying around the trees, and there were several Great Tailed Grackles. They are the Blackbird/Crows of Mexico, and they are pretty chatty and almost tame as they come quite close to us—nothing to do with the food we have, naturally. We walked along the beach this morning, and one displayed to a female: it is spring.

While back and forth from the beach this morning, two large Iguana's were around the pool. The biggest of the two saw me coming and scuttled underneath one of the poolside beds.

The waters of Akumal Bay are hot, hopefully not too much of a global warming indicator. Today, we donned our snorkels and explored the bay's waters. We saw a few fish and the beginnings of the coral reef, which is a little too far out for our swimming abilities.

Tomorrow (Friday), we are off on our first trip to the Coba pyramids (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coba), the tallest in the world. We are meeting a Mayan Shaman and will have a blessing for our wedding anniversary and a swim in the sacred cenote (a sacred well formed from limestone). Hopefully, we will see more wildlife there. We are then due to meet a Mayan family and make tacos with them. They have asked to take apples with us to give to the family. We're going to Chichen Itza next week and swimming in a cenote there.

It's early days into our long-awaited holiday and tenth wedding anniversary. We have a lot to be thankful for, the trip of a lifetime, for me at least.

I scheduled this correctly to publish at the usual time of 0700 on a Saturday, all being well.

I'm sure that there will be more to report next week.