Mexico day 4

Today was a lazy day.The kids had all booked massages for themselves, and Steven and I decided to hit up the lazy river, and to go for a swim in the ocean, and to walk to the little store that was just outside the security gates.  The main beach, with all the little huts, was sandy and beautiful, but you could walk a little way to the left and the beach there was rocky and fairly windy. I thought it was quite spectacular. 

    We had a pina colada and lazed in the sun for while and wandered through the beach area which had a small bar/snack hut that had a great selection of nachos, fajitas, salads and fruit, and also nearby was a juice bar that served no alcohol at all, but had a great menu of healthy fruit and veggie smoothies and juices. If you click on this to enlarge it, the hut on the left is where you can rent sea-doo's and snorkel items, and the one on the right is the little snack bar. Right beside the snack bar was a small hut (I hate to keep using the word "hut", but that's what they were, and I can't think of a better description) where it looked like people were doing ceramics. I wandered over for a closer look, and sure enough, they were painting all sorts of clay ornaments; birds, turtles, masks etc, it looked like a Kindergarten class filled with adults, everyone was concentrating so hard with their little paintbrushes and pots of colours. I don't know how (or if) they glazed and fired them, but everyone was very serious about their work and I didn't feel like I should interrupt.
      However, in the same hut was a young fellow who had stacks and stacks of tattoo books and he was doing extremely detailed henna designs. I was really impressed, and I wanted one for my very own, I love tattoos and henna is perfect since it doesn't last. This wasn't the intricate lacy designs that you see being done in India, this was actual tattoo designs. I asked him how much and I've already forgotten what it was in pesos, but the equivalent in US $ was $50...which is ridiculous, you can get a tiny real one for that price.

     However, Steven wanted one too, and he loves to haggle, so the bargaining was on! As it turned out, the fellow was hungry and the staff (or this fellow and the ceramic fellow beside him) were not allowed to eat from the food areas here, so he looked around furtively and said that he would do it for free if we went and got him and his amigo 6 chicken and 6 beef fajitas from the beach hut beside him. So while he did mine, Steven went and got 6, and then while he did Steven's, I went and got 6. As it's free for us, it was no big deal. He tucked them in a little cupboard and sent us happily on our way.
    So if you look closely at Stevens you can see that it looks "crusty", and that's because it is. The apply a lot of henna and it sort of soaks into the skin and when you wash it the next day, all the crusty stuff (ewww...sounds revolting) washes off and you are left with a lovely, albeit temporary, tatt. (the cool folks say "tatt" and not "tattoo") What they neglected to tell us was that you shouldn't sleep on white sheets with fresh henna. Ooops.

We strolled through the ground to the little store as we air-dried our henna tatts and I ended up buying a few souviners there, the same things that were for sale in the markets, but much cheaper. Scott bought a few t-shirts there as well, and Steven got some aqua-sox so that he could stroll about on the rocky beach area, and I picked up a couple of Christmas ornaments, lovely handmade ones. It was a great little shop filled with everything from Cuban cigars to Pringles as well as handcraft/artisan items.

And that pretty much took up Day 4. Supper was at the Mexican restaurant, which was amazing...I mean, it only makes sense to eat the local food, we found the other places to only be "ok". This one...ohhh....the salsa, the guacamole, the rice &bean dishes...I've been trying to replicate it all since I came home, with no success, but half the time it's because of the ambiance of where you are when you eat.

After dinner we walked around a bit more, watched a bit of the Vegas review, had a drink in the lobby lounge and headed off to bed. Tomorrow is Tulum and we had to get up a bit early. ("early" being about 7:30...but I am getting used to sleeping in and being lazy.)