We will spend this entire day in park Xel Ha, 30
minutes
far from Playa del Carmen by car. We will swim with dolphins there and
enjoy the natural features of this particular river mouth.
After
Our indications for today are just being at Square
Pelicanos at 7:50 AM. We’ve been informed it is on the crossing of 10th
Street with 10th Avenue. We wait here until a van comes to pick us up.
It takes a bit more than one hour on delivering us in Xel Ha.
We’re taken by Delphinus staff and get into the
park by a special door direct to the dolphinarium. We’re assigned
lockets and towels here and they ask to us if we’re ready for having
our session immediately. As we answer yes, we just appear with swimming
suit and vest to join the 9:30 AM session.
The session is quite mechanical: we’re given
specific instructions to get the pictures which later they’ll try to
sell as if they were gold. Out of the photo moments, we pass the most
of the rest of the time looking how the rest of the group are doing the
same or just waiting.
We’re assigned 2:20 PM as time for the snorkel
with dolphins and can finally go around to the park. Our first stop is
for breakfast.
It’s almost 11:30 AM when we join the crowded
breakfast buffet and enjoy it.
Once with a full stomach we walk through this
clean jungle to the transport terminal, where a long vehicle full of
seats picks up people to take them to the beginning of the river. When
we arrive, we must take a vest, put all the things we don’t want to
bring with us to the water in a bag they close with a locker and will
be delivered to us at the end of the river, choose if we want a rubber
ring and start the itinerary with our snorkels.
This beginning is going through a dense mangrove
with a beautiful picture, then the river opens and the options for
snorkeling with it.
As we’ve started around 1 PM, we’re enjoying this
river mouth and its underwater wonders for an hour. When we finish we
have just the time for get our things in the bag back and reach the
dolphinarium for our snorkeling.
This time is a session with more freedom than the
one in the morning: a big group of people spread over the water surface
and the dolphins is randomly swimming through us, allowing us to touch
it when it comes close. There are no pictures here.
Then we go to lunch and after we go to explore the parts
of the park we still haven’t been. We take the floating bridge for a
round walk by the Mayan cave, the cenotes, manatees, etc…
We were asked by the van driver to be at the same spot we
were delivered at 5:15 PM, and we are there at that time. While we’re
waiting the only missing couple it starts to rain hard. A bit later we
leave the place to be delivered on our hotels.
The only thing we do in Playa del Carmen is picking up the rented
car, which we leave in the same parking place it was, to be able of
starting tomorrow early.
We spend the rest of the evening resting at our room and eating something from the food we have here.
