Puerto Morelos, Mexico!

 

Hello beautiful readers!

Hope you're enjoying springtime! I've got a few manuscripts in to my editor and agent, and am now waiting for revision notes and news... At this point, the only thing I have to share with you, writing-wise, is that my new book (involving chocolate-making and the rain forest and magical dreams and a treasure hunt) will be coming out in Fall, 2018 with Scholastic! Oh, and I redesigned my website (by myself... quite the challenge!)... here it is if you'd like to check it out.



I thought I'd share some photos of our fun family trip to Puerto Morelos, Mexico, back in February...

Here's where we stayed, at Rancho Sak-Ol, just a 15 min walk from downtown.

My Lil Dude (not so little anymore... he just turned 10!!!) loved the hammocks....
 

He wanted to bring his guitar, but we compromised on bringing my much-smaller uke instead...



The bed swung from the ceiling... this was relaxing for reading in bed, but for actually *sleeping*, it was a little weird... every time you shifted positions,the whole bed would swing. ;-)
 

Some cool snorkeling right off shore...

 

To get downtown, we walked down a road through a mangrove swamp, complete with crocodiles.
 

Puerto Morelos is nestled between the busy, super-touristy cities of Playa del Carmen and Cancun.  We just flew into the Cancun airport and took a half hour shuttle ride to this sweet little fishing town. There were more locals than tourists, which was nice... we liked hanging out in the mellow town square, where local kids came to play after school.

Nights were magical... we ate outdoors at the yummy restaurants downtown and watched street performers like this fire dancer.

Playground in the town square at night... my dude got to practice his Spanish...

 Lots of bougainvillea...

Very walkable...

Street art!

Our favorite cafe was El Nicho, right on the town square...

 

Some parts reminded me of Huajuapan, the town where I lived in Oaxaca... 
 

Another restaurant we loved-- DK's... This place was made from a shipping container (in this pic, it was closed, but when we went, the walls opened up and cafe tables were set up around it.) Tasty blowfish tacos!



 

We went to Xcaret for a couple days-- it's kind of an eco-theme park.... One of the coolest things about it were these underground rivers that flowed through caves... you could float along the crystal-clear water for about 45 minutes on each river. Enchanting!

There were jungle paths and animals to see along the way...

Swimming and snorkeling...

My dude loved this blowhole!

He and Ian had a blast on the ropes over the water in one of the little coves...

 Thanks for swinging by!

xo,
Laura

The Lauras Go to Mexico

 

Hola, queridos amigos,

Just got back from a soul-filling writing retreat in Tulum with one of my closest friends, Laura Pritchett... and it was abracadabrant! In addition to sharing my name, Laura also lives in Fort Collin, also is in Old Town Writers' Group, and also gets the winter doldrums in February (and this winter's been tough-- snow on the ground since November, plenty of days in the single digits and teens) .... and we also both had airline vouchers just waiting to be used.... So we spontaneously decided to soak in some sea and sunshine and tropical greenery and warmth together last week to lift our spirits.

 SUCH a good idea!

Laura writes books for *grown-ups* although there's some crossover with older teen audiences.... her most recent novels are Red Lightning and Stars Go Blue, and they're fantastic and you should read them (along with her other 6 books)!  More that we have in common: celestial things like Lightning and Stars in our titles, and colors like Red and Blue/Indigo in our titles... and we both have 8 books out at the moment.... and we like old stuff and Mexico (and I could go on and on).  Suffice to say, she was the perfect retreat companion!

Here's where we spent most afternoons-- reading and writing ("working") on the beach and taking occasional ocean dips and beach walks.

Passion fruit ice cream!  I love this flavor so much-- perfect mix of tart and sweet-- and the crunch of the seeds is deeply satisfying.  Here, we're on the beach chairs of the Alma hotel, but our favorite evening place for food (and magical ambiance and live salsa music) was La Zebra.

 

Before this trip, I'd just finished yet another revision of my futuristic speculative fiction YA novel, which is set on a tropical island (specifically, on a a beach, in a jungle, and in a mysterious lab facility.)  So of course I was noticing all the subtle multi-sensory details of the water so I can describe it better when I do the inevitable *next* revision.

 Seaweed has some significance in the book...

I also jumped back into my new manuscript-on-progress, which is middle-grade (ages 8-12) and involves chocolate and the Amazon rain forest.  I love working on something in a new place-- I always get interesting ideas and think more outside-the-box.  I read that working in expansive places makes your mind think in a more expansive way.... and that was definitely the case sitting with my manuscript in the expanse of sea and sand and sky.

 

So, let's see... we *did* do some things beside write and read and walk and swim.  Laura visited the cool Coba Mayan ruins, where I've already been a few times, and wrote about in another post. I went to a yoga class in this studio on the beach... behold my view from the mat!

One morning, we visited a nearby cenote (a freshwater lake connected to an underground cave system, sacred to the Maya). This one was called Cenote Encantado, and was just down the road by a campground. It was surrounded by mangroves, and supposedly there were some baby crocodiles floating around nearby. We rented out a little boat and did some snorkeling and felt minorly freaked out by the baby crocodiles (which stayed hidden).

We stayed in a simple, sweet ecolodge called Las Palmas Mayas on the side of the road opposite the beach, which was just a one minute walk away.  Woulda been nice to stay right on the beach, but this place was much, much cheaper. And it had a kitchen where we could fix ourselves breakfast and tea and snacks, which made it very budget-friendly.

View from my window:

In the courtyard area:

 

Palmas!

Always fun to check out the folk art.... I got some smaller skeletons for Lil Dude-- a snorkeling skeleton, a dog skeleton, and a guitar-playing skeleton, since that's what he's into these days. :-)

It felt so good to soak in flowers and leaves and COLOR after being in the brown and white landscape of Fort Collins for the past three months.

So grateful to Ian for taking such good care of Lil Dude all week and taking time off work for sled-riding on the snow day.  (Did I mention there was a *blizzard* while we were gone?)  

Thanks for reading!

xo,

Laura

Jungle & Beach & Ruins around TULUM!

 

Hello darlings,

Ian and Lil Dude (who is really not so lil anymore, truth be told-- almost 8!) and I spent the first wonder-filled week of 2015 in the jungles and beaches of Tulum, Mexico.

We've been to this area a few times before-- flights from Denver to Cancun are direct and fairly cheap, and then it's a straightforward  1 and a 1/2 hour rental car drive to Tulum.

Here's the lovely guesthouse we stayed in:

Previously, we'd stayed in cabanas right on the beach, but this time, we stayed in the jungled inland-- at the little La Selva Mariposa bed and breakfast, which was an easy 20-minute drive from the center of Tulum.

The place is in a rural area, on several beautiful acres of forested land, with a few cabanas for guests and an open-air dining area.  There were several private or shared "cenotes" on the property that you could swim in-- we shared ours with our neighbors. The little blue pools were human-made, but very rustic-looking, with waterfalls and stones and gardens. The water came from underground, where there are springs and caves and real cenotes. 

(And we actually did snorkel in real cenotes one day-- three deep caves near Coba... so magical.)

There were pretty trails on the b n b property...

And enchanting  little spaces where you could read on hammocks.  The book I brought along was Jandy Nelson's I'll Give you the Sun.  It was incredible, one of my new favorite YA's.

The temperatures at home in Fort Collins had been sub-zero/single digits/low teens for a while, and we were ecstatic to get away from the bitter cold.  Just being near flowers and leaves made my heart happy.

Winter in Colorado lasts too long (if you're not a skier, and I'm not.)  

By the end of December, I'm ready for sunlit green...

Here's what the inside of our room looked like.  There was a little sleeping nook for Lil Dude.

And look, a temazcal-- a Mesoamerican sauna.  This one was for relaxation, but I've done temazcals in rural Oaxaca as healing practices-- they were part of my Master's fieldwork in anthropology. 

Our last night in Mexico, Ian and Lil Dude and I sat in the temazcal and told each other what we were thankful for.  We try to incorporate this little gratitude ritual into everyday life... 

Lil Dude went first with: "I'm grateful we don't have lice." 

(This one often comes up in our gratitude listing... because no matter how bad things are, they could always be worse. Not that there was anything bad that tropical evening-- it's just our gratitude-reflex now.)

After the lack-of-lice came: swimming with dolphins, snorkeling, Mayan ancestors, loving family, etc....

Our b n b was close to the Mayan ruins of Coba... we went there in the late afternoon/early evening-- the light was gorgeous, and the ruins not terribly crowded at that time.  

I love the jungly nature trails that you walk or bike along to go from building to building-- very peaceful.

I included this picture because Lil Dude's feet are so dang cute I can hardly stand it. 

He lost his fifth tooth right after our trip! He's at that toothless smile stage now, adorable.

So, I have this policy of not posting pics of him (at least not his face), but I have to show you my imitation of his standard photo pose at these ruins: arms spread out wide, as if to say, "Behold!  My ancestors' masterpiece!"  We adopted him from Guatemala, which means he most likely has some Mayan blood-- and he is extremely proud of this ancestry.  He practically takes personal credit for the temples and ball courts...

Usually we try to avoid big theme-parky-places, but we decided to go to Xel-Ha for various reasons, and were glad we did!  

We were pleasantly surprised at how thoroughly... pleasant... the whole experience was. 

 Twas a completely delightful day of snorkeling in natural lagoons and caves, zip-lining, doing an obstacle course, swimming with dolphins, eating at the yummy all-you-can-eat-and-drink traditional Mexican restaurant... it definitely surpassed my expectations.  

And Lil Dude said about fifty times that day that he was in paradise, that this was "a dream come true."

The whole place seemed very efficiently run and eco-friendly.  There were plenty of cool paths through jungle foliage and wildlife like coatimundis, tropical birds, and of course, stunning fish.

We hung out on the Tulum beach for a couple days...

 Usually Lil Dude is a huge fan of the beach-- he especially loves surfing-- but we didn't spend too much time on the beach this time because the mountains of seaweed freaked him out.  There really wasn't any place to build sand castles because the seaweed had the prime wet-sand real estate.

So nice to eat fish caught that same morning....

 

One evening, we went to the Tulum ruins, situated right on a cliff overlooking the ocean-- so pretty and picturesque, but not as exciting and interactive as the Coba ruins.

We just resorted to old-fashioned selfies, since Lil Dude's photos often result in missing heads and blurred torsos. Lots of people had those selfie-sticks-- first time I'd seen them.

I tend to make impractical purchases while traveling-- things that are a pain to try to carry back on the plane. These large ball pendant lampshades were a craft specialty of the tiny town where our b n b was located.  I wanted to get a three-foot-diameter one to hang from our back porch roof (which we have yet to build, haha!)  Ian gently helped me realize we'd never get that thing back on the plane, so I settled on a 20-inch one.  We stuffed it with clothes and wrapped it in cardboard and stuffed more clothes on the ends of the duffel bag.... and it survived the trip! 

In the spirit of brutal honesty, I will also share with you the un-fun moments of the trip, too...

1) Despite the cuteness of Lil Dude's sleeping nook, he refused to sleep in it, and insisted on sleeping with me in the full/queen bed, which meant giving Ian the boot... which did not sit well with Ian.
Bedtime conflict, every evening.

2) Lil Dude received his first hand-held electronic gaming device for Christmas, and was naturally inclined to play obsessively... so there was much struggling over Nintendo-boundary-setting.

3)  I had my own little melt-downs, the main one over artificially scented toilet paper.  I hate the stuff.  I hate anything artificially scented, but especially toilet paper.  I'm ridiculously sensitive to smells, and this variety, in particular, drives me crazy.

4) And since we tend to spend money on cool trips rather than vehicles and their maintenance, *neither* of our cars would start the night before the trip (partly because of the cold, and partly because of aging batteries), so we had to do some stressful scrambling to come up with Plan B, which was an inadequately heated airport shuttle at the crack of dawn in sub-zero temps.
 (Everyone's feet were numb by the end of the one and a half hour ride to the airport.)

So, now you know the warts on our trip, too... but overall, it was an abracadabrant getaway.

 I have more travel coming up soon, this time *solo travel*, of the adventurous type... 

and there will be plenty of green involved!  More on that later.

My upcoming travel is related to a new book idea... but as you know, I tend to stay quiet about books-in-progress.  And this Tulum trip, too, was related to a book-in-progress, but one at the revision stage.  That's what I've been busy with since our return.  I hope to be able to tell you more about that one, soon.  I also hope to be able to tell you the new title for The Impossible Caravan and share the cover with you some time in the not-so-distant future!

May you find your own colorful way to make it through winter... 

or maybe you're already in some beautiful green-blue place, in which case... lucky you!

Thanks for coming by!

xo,

Laura