I booked two excursions for Saturday–snorkeling the reef during the day and a food crawl in the evening. We had to wake up super early and take two trams to get to the pickup spot for tour buses. The bus was late, and when it finally came there was only room for one of us. They hadn’t counted Bob. So, we decided to reschedule for the next day and went back to hang out at the pool until our evening tour. There were pools all over the place, but we went to the smaller one nearest to our room with less kids than some of the others. There were cement chaise lounges built into the pool, but it was hard to relax in one without sliding down into the water. They needed handles or foot pegs or something. There was a swim-up bar but I wasn’t really in the mood.
We ordered shrimp tacos poolside and I found a little cove with those white canopied beds you see in all the Instagrams. No one was around, so I had some time to just relax by myself and enjoy the mild breeze.
We got ready and made our way back to the bus pickup. We waited for the bus. And waited. And waited. I had texted with the people earlier in the day, but now my texts went unanswered. We finally returned to the room and ordered room service. This is the only trip in my entire life where I stayed ensconced in a resort and never made it into the actual city. I always believed that line about being a “traveler, not a tourist,” and seeing the REAL country and the REAL culture. But I guess when Covid is still raging and you are exhausted and stressed out, there are worse things than eating ceviche and lounging by the pool at a resort all day. The resort had a “Mexican Village” down by the water. It turned out to be like Knott’s Berry Farm’s “Old West” town. There was something so sad and ironic about little pretend shops and restaurants in the safety of an enclosed resort, that was honestly pretty hard to leave even when you are really trying. At least they had ice cream. And Churros.
They even had Gouda cheese ice cream.
It was too surreal for us though, so we didn’t eat dinner there. We probably should have. We went to the Italian restaurant, which was terrible. I started out with burrata, which I guess was OK, but there was a burned kind of balsamic. They had a nice harpist. But the risotto was like glue. I can see why so many contestants go home on Top Chef or get yelled at by Gordon Ramsay due to risotto. It can go really bad. They had the same crazy ass bread basket as the Cirque du Soleil.
We went and checked out the alligators before turning in early.