xel-ha

On Friday we went to Xel-ha (pronounced shell-ha) waterpark.

It's an ocean inlet that has been turned into a waterpark.  Snorkeling, tubing, underground caverns, rope swings, ziplines, dolphins and manatees, bike paths, and hammocks.  

Xel-ha is about 45 minutes away from Playa.  We were incredibly proud of ourselves because there were many people who tried to sell us transportation to the park, most offers between $60 and $80 for the four of us to get there, but we happened to check at the bus station and discovered that if we bought our Xel-ha park tickets from them, they would give us free transportation.  Free is much better than $80. We still had to buy tickets to the park, but hey, we got there for free.

Us at the bus station, ready to go!

We spent the entire day at Xel-ha.

It's an all-inclusive place, so they have a couple of buffet restaurants you can enter anytime you are hungry. The food was delicious--mexican and mayan food mostly.  

The park. We swam across this channel at one point, thinking it would be faster than walking.
We didn't realize there was a current. And we were headed upstream.  
Walking would have been much faster.  But a lot less funny.

One of our favorite parts was the rope bridge.  We tried to cross it several times, but Kent was the only one who successfully made it all the way across.  He lost all feeling in his hands by the end but he was determined!

The rest of us made it about halfway each time, but then got laughing so hard we couldn't hold on any longer.  

We walked all around the park, exploring the twisting jungle paths.   They built the trails around the trees.  

Notice the excited stick-figure people for the bathroom sign.  We got a kick out of the signs at the park. Everyone was excited! Even the handicap parking sign stick person was cheering.

On the far side of the park, away from the stores and restaurants and people, we found a little pathway that no one was walking down.  We ventured down it and found this:

A river, between two steep cliffs, dark, a little bit creepy and so awesome!
It ended with a rope swing that Kent and Allison risked their lives on.

We jumped of the "Cliff of Courage" (14 ft drop into the water) several times over--I'm laughing and I have water dripping into my one eye-hence the pirate face.

Tubing down the mangrove river.

Beautiful Caribbean water.

Next to the rope bridge and the free delicious food, our other favorite part was the underground caverns we swam through, but I'll show you those another day.
Ellie's waking up, and so ends my post about our day at Xel-ha.