One hour's time difference in Mexico compared to the USA, six hours from home. Still who cares this was going to be a far more relaxing time. Still woke up at a reasonable time so we could head for a luxurious all inclusive breakfast.
Had to run the gauntlet of the "reps" based in our building. They are like a concierge or a holiday rep, but they are mostly sales people. It is there job to sell you excursions at all costs. This is true of all holiday reps though they are there to sell first though people still feel there are there primarily as a helpful point of contact between you and the travel agent. We had reps fighting to represent us who were in no way connected with our travel planners, hmm...
On the way to breakfast we saw more actual wildlife, a wild monkey having a bit of a look round. Someone from the hotel was out taking pictures of him too so maybe it's not such a common occurrence? We would actually see plenty throughout our trip, so maybe they were just monitoring.
We saw parrots too, though these were staged. Were they happy? Did they have their wings clipped? They were there as decoration for the hotel, a bit sad.
Breakfast was good, lots of choice. These things always look best on the first day, it's easy to be spoiled and go "oh no not another cooked breakfast again" by the end of the week. Of course I ate slightly too much, quickly settling into a routine of potato products, mushrooms, bread, chilli sauce, fruit, and then variations of other vegetable type things on different days. I did go for the beans the first few days, but then I saw a recipe for these starting "first fry the lard..." and thought it best to back away. Plenty of juice including guava and "green juice" but mostly I stuck with orange.
After breakfast to the pool. The pool was huge and sprawling, spreading throughout the complex with sub pools all joined up by little canals. The pool was a consistent 1.2M deep (four feet in old money) though did fade out to a beach type entrance at one end. It's quite wild, overhanging trees (including exotic birds and monkeys) so it must have been a constant effort to clear the leaves and things out. Lots of loungers around the pool, we founds some in the semi-shade very close to our room. We were close to the swim-up bar which was handy, so we had to try that ASAP. We had to duck under a waterfall to get to it, then you can sit on submerged stools and drink at the bar, looking back across the pool. Pictures of all this just added to the usual place.
We all our meals in the main restaurant too on the first day. I think the spread for breakfast was a bit better than the dinners but there was still plenty of choice.
Grandpa and thing one relaxed in the cool of the room in the afternoon but Clare and thing two and I explored more of the site. We saw TONNES of iguanas and other smaller lizards. Still no tarantulas yet.
At some point we tried to meet up with the "rep" (see above) who we'd been told we should see as she would give us details of our transfers back to the airport at the end of our trip. However she was really late, and she became uncommunicative when we said we only wanted to know about transfers and not about booking excursions with her. She was so late to meet her we cancelled her, and booked some tickets for XCaret the next day through someone else.
We arranged to meet back in the sports bar before dinner, but it did not allow children so met in the courtyard bar instead. There was a little market of very expensive tat there every evening, but plenty of access to cocktails and things so lovely.
Pool, lunch, dinner, drinks, sit, relax, it all blurs into one here. If I have focussed more on the negative points here I don't mean to, this really was an awesome time, very hot, nice and relaxing. I'm sure we'll do more tomorrow.
Paul Clarke's weblog - I live in Hythe near Folkestone. Wed + father to 2, I am a full stack web developr, + I do js / Node, some ruby, other languages etc. I like pubbing, parkrun, eating, home automation and other diy jiggery-pokery, history, genealogy, TV, squirrels, pirates, lego, and TIME TRAVEL.