Just tuning in? Be sure to first read Southwest Vacations: When Getting There is Half the Fun (Cancun Day 1).
When you have only three nights in Cancun with Southwest Vacations, you can either try to cram it all in or take it easy. We took one look at at the Moon Palace Golf & Spa resort’s staggering amount of activities and decreed we needed to spend an entire day at the resort doing nothing…and everything.
One of my favorite travel traditions is to go for an early-morning run upon arrival. There’s something untainted and magnificent about watching the sun wake up your new world and I was entranced by what I saw on property. From a curious field of sunflowers overlooking the ocean,
to a tranquil beach,
to a preview of the resort’s seven outdoors pools that are among the largest lagoon-style pools in Mexico.
Sand and Surf
Following a delicious buffet whereupon we discovered the best thing ever to happen to breakfast–sweetened condensed milk on pancakes and waffles–we hit the pools. We were among the first in line to test our surfing skills on the Flowrider where thousands of gallons of water create two lanes of endless waves. Eager beavers? More like we arrived early to avoid witnesses to our inevitable humiliation. We had a couple of options: We could bodyboard on the FlowRider or attempt the standup flow boards. As newbies, we opted for the former and after the initial fear of dropping into the bowl, we felt pure exhilaration as we rode the unbroken waves, carved turns and cut back and forth.
As it turns, face-plants are the norm there so we were in good company.
We settled onto the beach where we played volleyball, glided through the Caribbean waters in kayaks to watch the on-site Dolphin Discovery program, built sand castles and strolled the surf.
Conditions were cloudy yet still warm, likely scaring off the crowds. I settled back to read a book in the temperate weather while the kids played. 
I think some people call it relaxing. It was a first for me but won’t be my last.
The All-Inclusive Obsession
This was my children’s first all-inclusive resort experience and they whole-heartedly embraced it. I gave them some freedom but not as much as Hadley would have preferred. “Mom, I think you need to just let us explore. I mean, set boundaries, of course, but we’ve got it from here.”
By “here,” she meant bouncing between the pool, beach and the Sweets and Coffee shop where we downed about 20,000 calories of mini-cheesecakes (but who’s counting, we didn’t!)
We also became virgin Piña Colada and Miami Vice addicts (the drink, not the tacky 1980s show).
I knew we had a problem when we had to prematurely cut Bode off to rush to make a reservation. Our normally low-maintenance son lashed out, “This is the second time today I have been denied my pina colada.”
His reentry into the real world wasn’t pretty.
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Tune in tomorrow for “Southwest Vacations: A Snorkeling Adventure Within a Misadventure (Cancun Day 3).”
I'm a Canadian-born mom of two, former Denver Post columnist, family travel writer, editor of MileHighMamas.com and 9News contributor. Expert on all things Utah, Denver, family and travel. Lover of laughter and life. Happily married to a man obsessed with growing The Great Pumpkin. 