Playa del Carmen, 2005 Day 1 and 2

Well, I'm stateside again, after a 5-day trip to Mexico with Carlos. I kept telling people I was going to Cancun, because that's where we flew into, but we were actually closer to Playa del Carmen, menos mal.

We stayed at the lovely Mayan Palace, Riviera Maya resort, in a time-share suite that we bought off of the brother-in-law of one of Carlos' friends. The suite was pretty big for the two of us, but we enjoyed the space.

The resort was nice, large, with a ginormous pool, actually a series of interconnected pools that kind of resemble the inside of mitochondria. We spent some time there on Saturday, but I'll get to that later.

I arrived on Wednesday, Dec. 28, and drove myself to the resort in my Thrifty car. I actually did a loop-de-loop trying to get there: I thought I'd gone too far, and didn't reconginize the entrance, and actually ended up turning around right in front of it. And not because it's small, because it's one of the biggest entrances on that highway (307). I was just crazy, apparently.

So I arrived, had a quiet evening, Carlos and I just hung out after dinner for me and the gym for him (simultaneous). The next day I went to the pool to swim, but was so tired I quickly gave up. We had breakfast at the breakfast buffet - probably the largest breakfast buffet I've ever seen - I'm not sure I even got to it all. Delicious, but still not cheap. In the afternoon we headed to Playa del Carmen to check things out.

Here's Carlos in the main tourist peatonal. There are tons of shops, not all of which sell the same souvenirs, neat restaurants with cool layouts, almost all of which are open-air. We walked a bit, looped down to the beach a little where we saw a mariachi band all in black traipsing about in the sand, funny sight, but some people got in my way when I tried to take their picture.

After the beach we decided we were thirsty/hungry, so we stopped at some all-natural place (100% Natural) for a couple of the enticing fruit drinks people were enjoying at the "street"-side tables. We ended up having lunch there - good, but service was slow.

I know this image isn't great, but it gives you an idea of the place. After lunch we went to try to find a grocery store, both of us with blisters on our feet by this time.

We ended up, after a jaunt down 307, at Chedraui, a fairly large grocery store selling everything from fresh cheese and produce to wine, to kitchenware to clothing and toys. We stocked up for a week, even though we would only be there 3 more days, but at least we didn't have to pay for breakfast anymore. We had a lot of leftovers, but just filled out a form when checking out of the resort and left them for the cleaning staff. Cool.

That night we headed back to PDC for dinner at Playasia, a Japanese restaurant. It was pretty neat inside, with multiple levels, some only for one or two tables. It had a little "pond" in the middle that changed colors. The food was good, healthy and not too badly priced.

And that was Thursday.