In 2004, we took our first trip to Mexico. We used Cancun Valet (great reliable van service) for transport to our hotel, the Omni Puerto Aventuras Beach Resort. The Omni is located an hour south of Cancun in the enclosed community of Puerto Aventuras in the Riviera Maya. Puerto Aventuras is built around a Marina with dolphins in one part of it and boats in the other part. There are lots of shops and restaurants all around the Marina. There's also an area with a couple of manatees, and another area with rays.
OMNI: This is a small hotel with 3 floor levels and 60 rooms. The lobby is open-air with a bar in the middle of it, and some rattan tables and chairs around it. The reception is to your left as well as the hallway and the stairs to the guest rooms. The hotel's Da Vinci Restaurant is to the right.
ROOM: 2nd floor. Very nice size. King size bed. 2 chairs and a table in one corner of the room. A closet to hang clothes and a 2nd closet with shelves and a small safe. Drawers along an entire side wall. Armoire with television. Mini-bar. Ceiling fan as well as air conditioning. The bathroom sink is in its own space in the room but not enclosed. A glass door takes you to the other part of the bathroom where the toilet and the large shower are. The glass door has no lock (a bit annoying for people who have little ones - if you have one, you know what I mean). A sliding door separates the shower from the long patio where the jacuzzi is (we didn't use it so can't say whether it was great or not). The rest of the patio had 2 plastic white chairs with a table. At the end of the patio was a small sofa. There's also a hammock there that you can unfurl and use. You can access the patio from the bedroom as well. We had a view of the Marina with the dolphins and a couple of the shops around it. Nice view. By the way, no bugs at all. We sat a lot on the patio, people-watching, and left the sliding door to our room open.
POOL: Past the lobby bar is the big swimming pool that actually looks like 3 different swimming pools (a narrow passageway links them). One pool is 1.8 feet deep, great for the little ones. The two other pools have some shallow ends where you can put your lounge chair in. There are no umbrellas for shade but there are palm trees around the pool, so you can easily find a spot for shade.
BEACH: Beautiful. White powdery-soft sand. Clear, light green water. You can go at least 100 yards out and still be waist-deep in water! Loved that. You can snorkel there. Just standing in the water, without snorkeling, we saw 3 different varieties of pretty-looking fish. The first three days we were there, the water had some waves. Nothing huge, but just enough to make it fun (it had rained heavily the four days prior to our arrival, the day we arrived and the morning after). On the fourth day of our stay and afterwards, the water was completely calm. There's a bar at the beach that plays music. There are palapas on the beach for shade with chairs and lounge chairs.
FOOD: Just one restaurant at the hotel. Very average. Very limited menu selection. But the number of restaurants around the Marina make up for that. The times we ordered room service, there was invariably a mistake with the order. The mistake was always rectified instantly. We think it was a language issue more than anything else. Thank goodness, my Spanish wasn't too rusty. :-))
STAFF: Great, great, great. Incredibly nice and friendly. All of them.
SIGHTSEEING: We rented a car for two days. We went to TULUM one day. Beautiful of course. A bit saddened by the number of tourist shops at the entrance and seeing the sign for the fast-food place Subway!
The second day we went to COBA in the morning. We were pleasantly surprised with Coba. We were really hesitant about going there with a 2-year-old. We had a vision of narrow walkways to ruins, deep in the jungle, dark, mosquitos buzzing, etc... It wasn't anything like that. The best part for us with the 2-year-old were the bike drivers you can rent. They'll take you to the ruins. My son and I had one bike driver. My husband had his own bike driver. We did Coba in about an hour. My son loved the bike ride! My driver was wonderful. This young guy acted as a guide and spoke French as well as English. So we were going back and forth between Spanish, French and English. Fun!
We went to YAL-KU LAGOON one afternoon. It was wonderful. The water visibility was incredible. Without snorkeling, you could see all the beautiful fish.
FINAL THOUGHTS: We really wanted to go to Chichen Itza but thought the drive and 3 straight days of ruins sightings might make for an unhappy child! The best thing of this entire trip is that we did not encounter big crowds at our hotel or at the places we visited. We loved that! This trip was wonderful. We will definitely go back to Mexico one day to see more of that beautiful country.
