Mexico Day 2.5

Our resort,  the Grand Sirenis, was pretty nice but  I'm always surprised at how different things look in real life, as opposed to what you see in pictures, even if it's 'the same' as the photo, it's always not quite the same. That's the difference between 2 dimensional and 3 dimensional I suppose.

4-way stop in the middle of the grounds...in the 'jungle' with no signs!

The grounds were huge and confusing at first. It always takes a few days to find your way around, to discover short cuts, and come upon little nooks and crannies that quickly become your favorite spot. When standing on our balcony we could see a path to the pool, hardly a stones throw away, yet it took us almost 3 days to figure out how to find it when we left our building. Up until then we had to walk through 2 buildings and down a set of stairs and then follow a winding path to the pool area.

Standing on our deck...I can see the huts around the pool!

The finding of the restaurants was harder , although at least all of them were in the same area. We figured we should figure out how to get there a day or two ahead of our dinner reservations, so we took our map and set off.  It wasn't bad actually, a bit longer of a walk that we had anticipated and when we found them (remember, it's about 30 degrees Celcuis and the humidity turned my hair into a ball of friz within seconds of stepping off the plane) we were exhausted, but thrilled! "Look!" I shrieked, happy albeit somewhat hysterical, "There they are! The Mexican, the French, the Mediterranean, oh...the Italian and Brazilian that we won't be eating at...there they all are, all in a row." I felt like I had discovered a lost Mayan ruin. There they sat...except wait, where's the Cajun? I looked again, read the names out loud again...nope, no Cajun. Check the trusty map, and sure as God made green apples, the Cajun is the only one that isn't near the others.

So, off we headed again, further into the depths of the resort grounds. We crossed a bridge, passed a pool, wandered down a path, came across another pool  (was it another? Isn't that the same swim-up bar? Are there 2 swim-up bars? Are those the same iguanas lurking at every corner? What do they want? Are they waiting for me to fall in a humid heap on the ground and sob with frustration?. Finally, finally, there it is. And what's more...it's beside an ice-cream parlour! Oh, I sent thanks to the Mayan Resort Gods, and we quickly took note of where the Cajun restaurant was (but who really cares at this point? Not I.) and ran into the ice-cream store.

It was small, with maybe 4 or 5 tables inside (ahhhhh...air conditioned) and a few more tables outside. There was perhaps 8 types of ice cream and you could have a small dish, or a cone. The few people in front of us were all having coconut for one scoop, and mango-chocolate chip for the other. Who am I to buck a popular trend? We asked for the same, and it was so tasty that Steven got in line for a second.

As we were sitting there, a group of kids came in, I think they were with the resorts Kids Club. There were about 12 of them, and 4 adults, the kids were all in the  4-8 year old range and apparently they had already had more than enough sugary ice-cream. They were bouncing off the walls, hollering and screaming for more. (now I understand "I scream, you scream, we all scream for I scream. Translation: Ice cream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream!)

One little boy pointed at a flavour and screamed: "I want THAT, I want THAT!" and his keeper said: "Nathan, that's cappuccino, it's coffee, you don't like coffee." and he wildly screeched back at her: "I love cappuchino...I don't care what  it is, I love it, I want it!"

I am so glad my children are grown....

We then wandered off to find the Lazy River. I've never been on (or in) one before, I wasn't even sure what it was. It turns out to be a long and winding "river" with a current that moves you along. You hop on a tube at one end, and just relax and "go with the flow", so to speak, until you come out at the other end. We couldn't seem to find it, no surprise there, but a golf cart came by and we hailed it down and asked for a ride to the start of the Lazy River.

These carts cruise the property and you can just hop on/hop off as you please, a marvelous idea. He took us for what seemed to be a long ride (is the Lazy River at a sister resort? We seemed to be going down some  dark and gloomy jungle-type areas.) and he finally stopped and pointed to the end of a path. We were reluctant to go that way, thinking: "How do we get back? What if there are no more carts? Can we curl up with an iguana for the night?" Do the carts cruise the resort during the evening, looking for sobbing lost souls?.

As it turned out, he had taken us on the golf cart route, and by looking at the "You are Here" sign, we discovered we could take a short cut and walk to our building in a manner of minutes. Hooray for shortcuts!

This was a fun, fun thing. As you rounded the corners, iguanas would balefully glare at you for disturbing them. It was about 3 feet deep, so you could get off your tube and refresh yourself by dunking under.

So far today we had booked all our dinners, adventures, spa treatments, we had explored the resort and had managed to find the restaurants, pools, and the towel place. Yes...the towels. A towel story is come come later. Damn towels.

We checked out the schedule for tonight's entertainment, which was Mama Mia (eeek! One of my favourite soundtracks!) There is a large stage area where they perform a different show every night. We went to the ones at our resort in Cuba as well, it's a touristy yet fun thing to do for an hour in the evening. The type of thing that you'd be sad if you'd have paid money for, but you enjoy it and smile a little condescendingly at it when it's free.

Now we had a few hours before dinner so we decided to check out the beach a bit more and to try and get a bit of sun. I quite liked our beach area. It was in a cove and you couldn't see any of the other resorts at all. In Cuba the beach was a massive long, white stretch of sand and you cold stroll from one resort to the other, whereas here it was like we were in our own little world. The water was so warm, and extraordinarily salty, it didn't just sting the eyes, it burned them, but the salt made it easy to float and bob around.

We found a little hut of our own, and just relaxed until the 4:30 wind came up. It got windy every evening at the same time and that was our signal to head back to our room to get ready for dinner. We were always sticky enough and salty enough and sweaty enough that a shower was called for more than once a day.

Tonight's dinner was at the Cajun place, luckily we had not only found it, we had discovered a short cut as well, so we planned to meet the kids in the lobby and head over for some tasty eats. By the time dinner was done, we were tired and ready to hit the sack. Tomorrow is The Jungle Maya day and I was pretty excited about that!

I make a pretty good jambalaya myself, but it's always better when cooked by someone else, AND while on vacation .