My dream beach vacation with BeachBound
Three and a half years and two kids later, mom and dad needed a vacation! I am happy to have had the opportunity to partner with BeachBound, a website that allows you to book everything- your flights, hotel, and often free luxury airport transfers-in one place.
If you’re thinking of planning a beach vacation of your own, but not sure where to go, you can take BeachBound’s Perfect Beach Finder quiz! My eyes lit up when I saw that Hotel Xcaret Mexico was an option as an all-inclusive beach resort. About five years ago, my husband and I vacationed there and had an amazing time. We didn’t have to think twice about returning!
We booked our flights and rooms through BeachBound. Hotel Xcaret Mexico includes free airport transfers, and picked us up promptly at the Cancun airport. Hotel Xcaret Mexico was truly a dream! Everything is five stars- the restaurants, bars, hotel rooms, and unique excursions (I will get to those soon!). We were able to upgrade our room to Casa Fuego, the adults only part of the resort. Our hotel room had an incredible oceanfront view, as well as a hammock on the balcony! Staying in Casa Fuego gave us exclusive access to the Fuego restaraunt and the rooftop pool and bar!
Now back to the unique excursions I mentioned. What is unique about Hotel Xcaret Mexico is that staying at the resort gives you “All-Fun-Inclusive” access to several parks, such as Xcaret, Xplor, Xenses, Xel-Há, and others! These parks are huge and will likely cost you several hundreds of dollars per park per day if you stay at another hotel.
Each park is expansive and offer unique activities. A few highlights for us at Xcaret: swimming with sharks, stingrays and dolphins, snorkeling with sea turtles, and the exciting nighttime show they offer. The possibilities seem endless! At Xplor, we enjoyed: driving ambiphibious vehicles, zip lining, canopying through waterfalls, and swimming through caves in underground rivers. At Xenses, a park dedicated to the 5 senses, we walked through an optical illusion town, slid down a massive water slide, took a “Bird Flight” zip-line, and enjoyed their “Xpa”, where we floated through a salt river, followed by a mud river!
The beauty of staying at Hotel Xcaret Mexico was that we were able to hop on and off Hotel Xcaret’s buses to their various parks at our leisure. People who chose to stay at other resorts are usually required to spend the entire day at the parks due to limited transportation.
A typical day on our vacation looked something like this: sleep in til about 9, eat breakfast at either Fuego or one of Hotel Xcaret’s delicious buffets (El Mercado has the most amazing homemade quesadillas being made every day! And the customized omelettes at Xin-Gao’s breakfast buffet are to die for!) After breakfast, we usually headed to one of the parks to have some fun! Later in the afternoon, we often explored the beach and lagoons around the hotel, or headed to the rooftop pool at Casa Fuego. At the Casa Fuego rooftop bar, we enjoyed beautiful views, delicious drinks and great food! Then, we headed to dinner at one of the hotel’s amazing restaurants!
A few notes on dinner-I recommend making reservations for Xin-Gao in advance (it fills up quickly!). Xin-Gao has a Japanese-inspired menu, and we enjoyed trying their small plates of sushi and fried rice! Another highlight for us was our dinner at Há. Há is an additional fee (around $135 per person without wine pairings), but it is completely worth it in my opinion. Há features a 7-course tasting menu from renowned chef Carlos Gaytán, the first Mexican chef to receive a Michelin Star. If you are a foodie, you won’t want to miss this! Everything was delicious and dare I say exquisite! Our favorites were the plates caviar and his savory “beignet,” topped with freshly shaved truffle!
We truly had the trip of a lifetime, and would 10/10 recommend heading to BeachBound to plan your next beach vacation!
