Our Last Day In Puerto Aventuras

After Hobie cat sailing earlier in the morning, Ken and I decided to stay at the resort and just relax by the beach and pool bar.  (See Ken in picture above at the bar?)

After brunch, we settled in on the beach ... near the bar.  With the skies clearing, this was the perfect way to wrap up our vacation ... the beach, a lounge chair, and a waiter bringing us drinks!

The bar wasn't too far from our chairs ...

After sailing and some sun, I was a happy girl!

We eventually made our way to the pool bar, and I actually had to put on a t-shirt to keep from getting burned.  We socialized with the other guests and met a lot of great people during our stay.  Their homes were from all over the world ... Canada, Spain, Germany and Romania to name a few.  We met two couples not much older than us that have been to the resort over a dozen times!

The resort has several pools, and we watched some games involving tequila being played in the pool nearby.

We tried not to think about the fact that we'd be headed home the next day ... the tequila helped.  The margaritas were a little weak, so I asked for an extra shot on the side ... they used a champagne glass! 

That evening, we got cleaned up and enjoyed another great meal.  Because of the location of the resort, we weren't able to view the sunset from the beach but we weren't complaining ... at least it wasn't raining!

The next morning we filled up on breakfast and took in the views one last time.

Even with dodging the rain, we had a great time in Mexico and couldn't have been happier with our choice of all-inclusive resorts.  We've been back home just over a month now, and we're already wishing we were back in Mexico.   As usual, it's been a busy month since we've been home ... all for reaching the goal of permanent living in the tropics!

Hasta luego ... until then.  Mid-Life Cruising!

Hobie Cat Sailing in Mexico!

Me and Herman,  a sailor for over 20 years

As I mentioned I was going to do in my last post about snorkeling in Akumal, I woke up on our last full day in Mexico with a plan.  The very first thing I was gonna do that morning was walk straight to the lifeguard stand on the beach and see if I could manage to talk my way onto a Hobie cat sailboat.  Free sails came with our all-inclusive stay at the "Catalonia" resort, but there had been no sailing throughout our entire stay due to bad weather.  I was hopeful that things would change before we left.  After all, the free sails is what prompted me to choose the "Catalonia" resort.  Not too many all-inclusive resorts offer free sailing, and I really wanted to go sailing on one of these little boats.

As I turned the corner towards the lifeguard stand here's what I saw ... sails ON the Hobie cats!

I walked up to the guy at the lifeguard stand and asked if they'd be sailing that morning.  As you can see in the picture above, the skies were pretty gray and I was hoping we could beat the rain.  The guy didn't speak much English, so I turned to the guy messing with the two sailboats and asked him if he could give me and my husband a sail.  That guy turned out to be Herman, and he said if I hurried back with my husband he'd give us a sail before the weather turned bad.  I told Herman that I'd be right back, and I had to refrain from running back to our room to get Ken.

A few minutes later Ken and I were putting on our life jackets and helping Herman push the sailboat off the beach.  Although the skies were gray, the winds had died down and Herman wasn't able to control the boat as much as he'd like ... meaning we had to hold on tight as the waves broke on the side of us.  Falling off the boat wouldn't be a big deal, if the water wasn't shallow with huge boulders underneath us!  Herman kept trying to get past the breaking waves without much success.  After getting slammed by a wave about a dozen times, I finally said, "Maybe today's not a good day for this".  I couldn't believe I was saying that, but I know Ken was thinking the same thing and I didn't want to bust my head open on the rocks.  

Herman responded by saying that the lack of wind was making it difficult, and that the water was shallow with rocks ... we know!  But, Herman didn't give up and after a few more tries he was finally able to catch enough wind to get past the breaking waves.  We were finally sailing, and getting away from the rocks.  I'd never been on such a small sailboat, and it was kind of weird sailing so far out into the sea on a little sailboat.  We kept going further and further out, and Ken and I couldn't stop smiling.

A few more Hobie cats from other resorts also started to head out ...

and we sailed further away from shore.

Herman asked if we were scared of fish ... did he see a shark?!  No, he just wanted our permission to throw out a fishing line.  We said that would be great, so he grabbed a simple piece of wood with fishing line wrapped around it.  He showed us the lure, threw it out, and pulled on it every now and then.  I would have loved to see him pull up a fish, but no such luck.

The other boats caught up with us and we sailed about 10 more minutes before heading back to shore.

Once we got close to shore and Herman caught a wave, we rode in pretty fast ... so fun!

We sailed for about 30 minutes, and were sure to give Herman a tip for taking us out.  We felt lucky to be able to sail on our last day, and once we realized we wouldn't bust our heads on the rocks we had a blast.

Next post ... how we spent the rest of our last day in "paradise".

Hasta luego ... until then.  Mid-Life Cruising!

Chillin' Out ... Or Trying Hard At It!

The "Chill Out Bar" ... where we did just that.

After two days of exploring Tulum and Playa del Carmen, we were ready for some beach time.  However, Mother Nature wasn't cooperating and once again the forecast called for a rainy day.  We'd been pretty good so far at dodging the rain, but when we woke up and saw a forecast of 90-100% chance of strong thunderstorms every day until we left ... we were starting to have doubts.

The night before we had made it back to the resort from Playa del Carmen just before the skies opened up.  Luckily our hotel room had a big umbrella, which we used to walk across the resort for dinner.  The entire time we ate, the rain was pounding and we had to hold the umbrella tight to prevent the winds from blowing it out of our hands on the way back to our room.

The rain was a bit lighter when we walked to the breakfast buffet, but it wasn't long before the wind and the rain intensified once again.  Ken and I were determined to keep our spirits high, and our thoughts positive.  Once we were back in our room, I decided to check my email and the weather forecast once again ... big mistake!  

As I mentioned briefly in a previous post, we had left home with a signed agreement to sell our rental to our tenant.  We'd gone through the inspection and appraisal period with no problems, and the closing would take place a few days after we got back from Mexico.  But then I had a nice little email waiting for me from our tenants that rainy morning ... they wanted their deposit back because they'd changed their mind about buying the house.  There weren't any problems ... they just wanted the house to appraise for a whole lot more than they were buying it for.  Are they kidding me?!  I guess they wanted to "steal" the house from us, so now they weren't happy.  Ken and I decided that we'd take a deep breath, not let these jerks ruin our vacation, and we'd respond later in the day.

After calming down, I checked the weather forecast and came to a conclusion ... we had to pack a bag and grab a "collectivo" as far away as we could get.  I needed sunshine and beach time, I mean ... really needed it at this point!  I found that Valladolid was about 3 hours away with a sunny forecast.  We could grab a "collectivo" to the ADO bus station, which would take us there.  I had a plan and I was ready ... but Ken wasn't.  He said that we were surrounded by rain and 3 hours away wasn't enough.  I was hard-headed and insisted it would be sunny there, and it sounded like a really cool town.  He'd never heard of it, and Mexico has that bad reputation ... he wasn't going for it.  Good thing I pulled up Valladolid's weather forecast again to prove to him it would be beautiful ... because it wasn't going to be.  Just that quick the forecast had changed to the same crappy weather we were already dealing with.  I swear it said it was going to be sunny just 15 minutes earlier ... ugh!  Well, at least we didn't have to find out who was gonna get their way.  We were stuck in the rain.

 When the rain and wind subsided a bit, we grabbed the chance (and our umbrella) to head to the "Chill Out Bar".  We had to get out of our room and the bar was right on the beach with a roof and pull-down shades to keep out of the weather ... the perfect place to escape.  We grabbed a chair and a drink and enjoyed the view ... for a few minutes.  The wind started picking up and the rain was coming down in buckets.  I'm not exaggerating when I say we were in tropical storm conditions!   Everyone in the bar had to move their chairs and do their best to keep dry.  I smiled ... and hoped this wasn't going to go on for the rest of our trip.  Thoughts of a tropical storm and a buyer who couldn't keep his word ran through my head.  Damn it!  This can't be happening.  I had a house to sell and plans of lounging on the beach, playing in the waves, and sailing a Hobie cat sailboat!

This pic was taken before the bar filled up ... and before the tropical storm weather arrived.

We hung around at the bar and the restaurants while it poured off and on all day.  There was a break of just drizzle in the afternoon, so we grabbed the umbrella and walked down the road to check out the marina again ... I love looking at boats.  We also wrote an email back to our tenants and kindly told them that nothing that we'd agreed to had changed, so we planned on moving forward.  We did, however, offer to install some hand rails around the deck and pool since his insurance company was requiring it.  Before we went to bed, we received an email that they'd move forward ... Hallelujah!  Now if we could just get Mother Nature to cooperate ... perhaps tomorrow would be better?

Hasta luego ... until then.  Mid-Life Cruising!

Hola, Mexico!

View from our balcony ... loved drinking our morning coffee to this sight!

I can't believe we've been back for five days already from our getaway to the Riviera Maya in Mexico!  This "escape" was long overdue.  In just the past two months we attended (and worked on for 2 months prior) our daughter's wedding, played tourists in New Orleans, participated in the "World's Largest Crawfish Boil", attended our daughter's graduation from LSU, rode bikes through the streets of New Orleans for a good friend's bicycle wedding, evicted a tenant from one of our rentals & dealt with the filth they left behind, and have been dealing with the on again/off again (on when we left, off right in middle of our trip, and back on for now) sale of our largest rental.  (I hadn't mentioned too much about this, because it's been very stressful and very unstable.  It would be a huge step towards cruising).  This was all while working 5-6 days a week!  Our minds and bodies needed this vacation.  And, we were also celebrating our 25th wedding anniversary a little early ... it's tomorrow!  In some ways it doesn't seem like we've been together for most of our lives.  We're glad we're able to celebrate so many years together, and the future looks pretty exciting.

With thinking (that always gets us in trouble) that the real estate deal was "sealed" and just waiting for closing, we left everything behind for paradise.  On the evening of Thursday, May 29th, we arrived at the all-inclusive "Catalonia Riviera Maya" resort in the gated community of Puerto Aventuras.  It's just South of Playa del Carmen and North of Tulum and Akumal, which was the perfect location for exploring all three areas.  It's also just across the Gulf of Mexico from us, but for some reason we had to fly from New Orleans, to Houston, and then to Cancun ... all day.  Where's the direct flight?!

The grounds of the resort were beautiful ... very lush and tropical!  There were five pools, a swim-up bar (a must for us), free bicycles to tour the area and check out the nearby marina, about seven restaurants, and free sails on Hobie cat sailboats!

Ken walking to the main lobby ...

Another view from below the lobby ...

We found this nice welcome for our anniversary ...

and this cute little lady!

There were several areas to lounge and enjoy the views ...

and we spent a good bit of time at the "Pure Chill Out Bar".

This was our view from our chairs ... perfect for "chillin' out"!

The first morning we grabbed some bikes and rode about five minutes to the marina.  It was very pretty and quiet, with a lagoon that had dolphin and manatee.  While we wouldn't pay to swim with either, it was fun to check them out.  We also went to the marina's office to see how much they charge for liveaboards ... for our 30 foot boat it would be $600 per month.  We didn't think that was bad for such a nice marina in a resort area.  The clerk asked what date we wanted to book our stay ... I wish we knew!

We then returned the bikes, had lunch and then hung out on the beach for most of the day, while waiters would bring us cocktails and snacks ... heaven!  We also started saying "Hola" ... the Mexican greeting.  I swear we must have said it about twenty times a day.  Everyone was so friendly.

This is an overhead view of where we hung out that day ... the "Pure" lounge area by the beach.

and this was the entrance, with the bar to the right of the picture.

While waiters attended to us, we weren't far from the bar!

This was our view!

Later in the day we moved to the pool ...

and the pool bar.  There's Ken sitting at the end, on the right ... his favorite spot!

It took a while, but by the end of the day we could feel our worries melt away.  The next day (and next post) ... the Mayan ruins in Tulum!

Hasta luego ... until then.  Mid-Life Cruising!