Mexico Day 2

Monday AM. We slept in until 10:00, which didn't surprise me, I had no intentions of getting up early. When we checked in we were given a notice saying that we were to meet our Air Canada rep at 9:00 AM, but I knew that there was no way that was going to happen. And if I wasn't going to be there, you can be darn sure that the kids weren't going to be there either!

Instead we woke up and took our time figuring out the shower. It was a big walk-in with all sorts of jets and knobs, none of which worked really very well. I find that hotels and resorts never have good water pressure, and while the set up looked impressive, it wasn't really. 

Looks are deceiving...

The main shower head was actually not bad, but the jets only had a small drizzle. But it was still an excellent feeling to shower off +24 hrs worth of airplane grunge.

We called the kids and headed up to the main buffet for breakfast (the soylent green one from last night) only to find it closed during breakfast hours. Whaaat?  Not boding well folks, not boding well....however, we discovered that there is a second one, just as nice and with much more in the line of gluten-free foods (for Linnea, who is celiac) down by the pool.  It was perfect, we sat outside by the pool and ate our fill. Eggs, sausage, bacon, pancakes, waffles, all manner of fresh fruit, cereal, yogurt, a plethora of freshly squeezed juices, plus things like cactus, rice, beans, and dishes that looked like spicy dinner foods. Something for everyone. Steven was sad that I turned down his request for a pina colada. I understand the concept of "All-inclusive", but liquor for breakfast? Nope.

Finally! Real food!

After everyone filled up we went to find our concierge to book some dinners and massage treatments. It took forever and a day, the fellow was super-nice, but a when they say "It will take 2  Mexican minutes", they really mean "30 Canadian minutes." I'm not overly impatient, but when the question is: "Can we get a dinner reservation at the Brazilian restaurant any day this week?" and they make a multitude of phone calls, and talk excitedly to 3 or 4 different people, and get put on hold for "2 Mexican minutes" and a half an hour later they say: "Sorry...she ees all fulled for this week." I have to try extremely hard to not sigh and roll my eyes.

It eventually turned out that the 2 places we mostly wanted to eat at (Brazilian and Japanese) were full, as was the Italian, so we settled for Cajun, Mexican, Mediterranean, The Steakhouse and a "special" Christmas Eve Dinner (which we found out later was "special" because every restaurant and buffet in the whole resort was serving a turkey dinner on Christmas Eve, so you had no other choice!)

So, it took a while, but eventually Carlos got everything booked for us, including some spa treatments for the kids, and then we went into the lobby and spotted the Air Canada rep so we decided to talk to him about booking a few day trips.

When we introduced ourselves (he is Eduardo) he sadly showed us where our names were not crossed off of the meeting that we were supposed to attend at 9:00 AM, apparently we were the only "no-shows". I hung my head and felt properly rebuked, but he cheered up in no time when we told him we wanted to book probably 3 tours for 5 people. I think they get a bit of commission, so he whipped out his books, brochures and calculator and we got down to business. About 4 Mexican minutes and $1,200 Cdn dollars later, we were ready to roll!

Lots of  room, lots of sun, lots of heat. NICE!

I know that sounds like an alarming amount of money, but we booked 5 of the Coba Mayan Encounter at $129 US each, 5 Catamaran/Tulum Sailing Trip at $115 US each and 5 Jungle Maya at $99 US each. He gave us 10% off, and then Scott decided to not do the Catamaran and we changed the Coba Mayan Encounter to a half day at half the price. It was all quite confusing and Mexican-minute-ish, but it all worked out in the long run. We all breathed a sigh of relief and decided to check out the beach.