Cancun Week 1 - Jan 13 - Jan 19

It's a good thing we're here for 2 weeks because if it was a one week vacation we'd be going home in 3 days and it doesn't seem like we've begun to relax.  I'm starting this on Wednesday but will be adding for the first week.

Monday, Jan 14 we decided to take Lucio's suggestion and take a taxi to Superama for our grocery shopping, the driver would wait while we shopped and bring us back for $300 pesos.  Last time we shopped at Walmart and really liked it.  The first time we went we took the bus there and a taxi back because we had too much to carry.  They had the best homemade tortillas and pico de gallo in addition to a huge selection of Mexican pastries.  He told us Superama would have that too.

Well, it turns out that Superama is an upscale Walmart grocery store, with higher prices, smaller selection and none of the good things we wanted.  It did have a lot more atmosphere than Walmart but that wasn't what we were after.  We were VERY disappointed.

We took our disappointed selves down to the beach and took a great 3.5 mile walk.  When we came back we went to the liquor store, made Margaritas (read about that here), made some queso that never quite melted and had egg sandwiches for dinner that were really good.

Tuesday, Jan 15 we took the bus to Walmart,  $34 pesos round trip for both of us, and bought all the things we really wanted including a watch to replace the one I lost at the airport and a 4 qt container for our Crystal Light Arnold Palmer (1 pkg lemonade and 1 pkg iced tea).  Then we could use the 2 qt container that came in our villa to make Margaritas that we could put in the freezer. 

Love the pico de gallo

And the pastries

Since we didn't walk on the beach, we decided to walk around the mall across the street for some exercise before going to Tequila tasting.  We saw this interesting sport??/ride?? - he reminded me of Ironman but it looked like fun.  He was moving all around and up and down using water as the force behind it.

We played dress-up at the Tequila Tasting 

and on the walk back to our villa Larry couldn't decide which car should be his and which should be mine.

Once home we had a great dinner of appetizers - tortillas, cheese, pico de gallo and margaritas.  We were going to have a salad but somehow that never happened.

Wednesday, Jan 16 was the day for our owners update.  It was the day I got to voice my grievances about the Wifi that is pretty much non existent in the rooms (great on the beach), not that Craig could do anything about it but it felt good to gripe.  Next time I'm going to bring a router and see how that works because there is an ethernet connection and ethernet cable.  I'm so glad I brought my laptop so I could use it and not be totally frustrated.  We went to the beach in the afternoon where I kept falling asleep listening to my book - the weather was really nice.  I didn't feel like I had to wrap myself in a towel like I did the previous day.  At 3:30 we stopped for happy hour at Avieno, the pool restaurant and had pina coladas and Larry had a hamburger with sauteed onions, bacon, lettuce and maybe more stuff - forgot to take a picture even after I left the camera out after taking the drink pic.  Hopefully he'll have one again and I can add it,  I didn't have anything to eat (besides some of those chips) since I didn't eat breakfast till almost 1:00.

We were going to play miniature golf but it was almost closing time for getting the clubs so we took a walk over to the Starbucks and bought a bag of coffee to bring back to the room and just walked around for awhile.

Thursday, Jan 17 is the first day of just relaxing.  Our plan was to get up early and take a walk on the beach and we did just that.  It was a glorious morning, when we left at 7:00 and it was even nicer when we finished our 3 mile walk and came back for breakfast.  The wind was pretty peaceful, waves were quiet, just perfect for putting the tube in the water and drifting around.  While we were having breakfast we took turns blowing up the tube, the one we bought the last time we were here, and were so excited to get going.

AND THEN . . . all of a sudden the clouds started to roll in, the wind picked up and it even rained a little.  So it's almost 1:00 PM and we're sitting in our room, watching the water and waiting for the sun again.  Guess we'll have lunch.

At least we finally got to have the salad we kept not eating.  The weather never got any better today.  We went to play miniature golf and it started to rain so it was a day indoors with me on my computer.

But, we did get to have our own Happy Hour with our special recipe of Perfect Frozen Margaritas (the margarita recipe from here and put in the freezer for 24 hours).

Friday, Jan 18 is another cloudy day but we got up to go for a walk even though it looked like it would rain at any time.

A little repair work on the palapa.

It never rained all day in spite of the dark clouds.  After our walk we played 2 games of miniature golf and I beat Larry both times.  We each got a hole in 1 on the 11th hole the first game.  Then I got another one on the 13th hole.   During the 2nd game I got 2 more hole in ones but on different holes, 12 and 15.

 Then we played 3 games of ping pong and Larry won all of those.

I finally figured out the other day that the elevator pictures came out good with my iPhone rather than a camera.

 Later in the day the dark clouds changed to light ones and in the late afternoon some blue sky appeared. 

We were pretty lazy the rest of the afternoon, Larry read and I did stuff on the computer.
I was too lazy to get dressed to go get something to eat so we made a salad and ate most of whatever was left over.  I think we've had our fill of tortillas and pico de gallo.

Saturday, Jan 19 we decided we needed to make a run to Walmart.
We had a great bus ride and I had a perfect seat for a video.

I love the Cancun Walmart.  Unfortunately we spent 2 hours here and by the time we got back the sun was gone again.  Fortunately we got out for a good walk before we went.  Out goal was to get to the Hyatt at the end of the point but while we were walking I remembered that I never put any sunblock on Larry's back and it was pretty sunny out so we turned around before the last bend.  We did get 12,200+ steps in - no GPS so couldn't do miles but more than 3 round trip.

We went to Fish Fratanga - the taco take-out stand to get something to take back to the room at night.  Fortunately we met a woman, originally from Mexico who had just returned a year ago from 12 years in Michigan and her two kids who worked as our transaltors and told us what the items on our menu were and ordered for us.  They were great!!  We're going to go back and eat at the restaurant later this week.