Today, we had scheduled a tour of Chichen-Itza. It was scheduled to leave at 9:00, so we woke up early to get ready and run to the breakfast buffet before departure. We made it to the lobby (where you get picked up) at about 8:55 and sat waiting for about 45 minutes when we realized we must have been forgotten. Our tour bus never came. This was VERY frustrating because Ryan went back to the lady who booked it and after apologizing profusely, she rescheduled it for Monday (our last full day), when we already had a snorkeling excursion planned with Brian and Desiree. Ryan thought it was more important for me to see Chichen-Itza so we had to cancel snorkeling. That bummed me out, it bummed B&D out because that was our only excursion together, and it bummed out our other travel agent who booked the snorkeling trip for us because the refund he has to give us comes straight from his pocket. He didn’t have any cash on him when we went to break the bad news to him, so we’re still waiting for our refund. Hopefully that gets taken care of today. I kept apologizing to everyone because it was really inconvenient for all, but I had to stop because it wasn’t our fault at all. I guess in the end we saved about $140 by cancelling the snorkeling trip, but I was still sad. Obviously I hope Brian and Desiree have fun, but I hope it’s not the best snorkeling trip ever because I’m supposed to be there and I can’t be.
After we realized we weren’t going on an excursion, we came back to the room to get ready for some swimming. We spent some time in the pool playing Frisbee and getting Miami Vice’s from the swim up bar, then got out for lunch at the buffet.
We caught a taxi and went into Playa Del Carmen, which is the closest big city and a great place for shopping. It was very interesting to have all the vendors try to get us into their stores. They would say things like “My turn, come in my store”, “Come in, let me rip you off”, “come take a look at my crap”, and my favorite “It’s practically free”. We got a little obsidian statue of a Mayan man and I had my first shot at bartering to get it. It started out at about $40 and I got the guy down to $27. I probably could have gone lower if I were more experienced. Either way, I like what we got. The city was HOT and we went into any store with air conditioning or fans. We ran into a guy with two spider monkeys and Brian and Desiree paid $5 to take some pictures with it. Looking back, I wish Ryan and I had done it too. It was cool.
When we came back from the city, we headed back to the pool area, but instead of getting in, I took a nap in the hammock while everyone else went to the ocean (where they swam with 3 sea turtles, MAN I missed out).
We had a late dinner reservation (9:00) at a French restaurant. This was my least favorite of the three main restaurants we ate at. I had French onion soup (eh) and a file that was very over cooked. Two nights before I ordered my filet medium and it came out raw, so tonight, I ordered medium-well and it came out very dry, so I only ate a few bites. Here, even the desserts were gross. Desiree and I ordered a chocolate cake and it had some kind of jam preserves layering it, as well as dried fruit. The menus here have very minimal descriptions, so when you order something, you either ask the waiter to explain what’s in an item and try to understand what he is explaining, or you just order something and wait to see what it is. For example, there was a soup with a long strange name that I couldn’t understand. The description of the soup said “with French baguette and parmesan”. Mmmm, sounds delicious. Just to be safe, I asked what was in it and found out it was a broth with fish, shrimp, clams and octopus. As soon as he uttered the word “clams”, I interjected with “I’ll just have the French onion”.
After dinner, we came back to the room and went straight to bed. We were exhausted.
· Iguana sightings: I stopped caring
· Miami Vice count: 3
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