Great excursion. Really fun guides - open bar and Latino dancing on the boat commute, for those interested -- and then fun snorkeling. Would have been nice if we hadn't been so far above the reef, but we saw lots of fish, a baby shark and a baby turtle. Good for beginners. Nice beach as part II, with fun sea toys for kids - ie. water trampoline. Pretty bad lunch. Highly recommend for children.
We enjoyed the animals at the rescue center - got to hold and feed some. Howler monkeys adorable -- we held them and fed them a bowl of lettuce. Apparently very picky, as they threw out everything and finally ate the lettuce leaf at the very bottom ;) Interesting collection of animals. Nice (easy) guided nature walk. Very pretty beach, and very nice pool also. Slightly better lunch.
River tour by boat, of nature and Mayan ruins. VERY large volume of people on this tour, so we were herded around... ie. line up by two's to use the bathroom kind of thing. Thankfully broke into smaller groups to get on smaller boats for the river tour. Enjoyed that - we spotted fair number of animals and interesting vegetation. Slightly too long. Really lame lunch at tourist trap that was over-crowded because of many large tours converging there. Long lines for bathrooms (no facility on boats or buses), lines for lunch. Then into a bus -- which hadn't been advertised, I had thought we'd see the ruins from the boat -- for 1/2 hour. Interesting ruins. Would have been nice to hear more of the history. Because we were such a large group, much of the focus was on making the logistics work smoothly. Glad we got to climb the ruins. Then an hour in the bus back to port. Wouldn't have picked this one if I'd known how crowded it would be or if I'd known it would include 1.5 hours on a bus.