All Daya to Playa

On the Road

Today ended up being a series of little laughs, some at our own expense. It started off first thing this morning. After waking up early, and needing to perfom a series of exercises required of a man who made the foolish mistake of going for a checkup. I put on my ipod and did the obligatory stretching routine. Now I have about 10,000 songs on the ipod, playing on shuffle. The first song was I Would Give Everything I Own by David Gates, and the second was The Other Side of Town by John Prine. You will have to look up the lyrics, but you couldn't find any more diametrically opposite views on the same subject. I found the randomness of the situation to be quite funny, and that set the tone for the day.

Mary Lou finally woke up, with a shriek. She had managed to sprain her finger getting out of bed. It would be the first of her injuries today. I had to pack her knapsack and lift it on her shoulders. We said a quick good bye to Kate and Safari. They are two very nice people running a very nice hotel. I will do a full review of the Hotel Las Palmas when we are back in Toronto. Highly recommended.



The trip over on the catamaran was great, with sunny warm weather. The cab ride to the rental car location was cheap and fast. Unfortunately, we found that the Continental Car Rental had sent someone to pick us up. Great service all around. Small problem in that we had not told them in our reservation that Belize was in the picture, so a different car had to be brought in from the airport. We had some time to waste.


To kill the half hour we stopped next door for a burrito breakfast, at a family owned restaurant where no english was spoken. Fortunately my 11 years of trying to learn Spanish paid off and I was able to come up with such phrases as " dos cafe, pocito lache, por favor", "mui bien" and " donde este la bano". Fantastic meal, fantastic family. Soon after we were on the way with our little Chevy rental.

The trip to Playa del Carmen was quick, and not much different than any expressway anywhere else (that is if you ignore the Mexican love affair with speed bumps). Smooth sailing, though we did go through one check point where 7 men in army fatigues and carrying semi automatic assault rifles were waving us through. I think it was a practice exercise as they did not stop anybody.


I had booked a place on hotel.com the night before called Hotel Villa del Mar, or so I thought. Got great reviews on Trip Advisor. Since the reservations were made on my net book, there was no printout , and I had to fire up the computer to get the confirmation number when we arrived. Unfortunately, it was the wrong hotel. So the owner sent us off with directions, we wrote down the reservation number, but we should have written down the hotel name as well, because by the time we got there, yep, forgot the name. Sooo.. into the nearest hotel to ask them if we had reservations there, and ask them if we could use their wireless key to get the hotel name again. They graciously consented, though not before trying to book us on a timeshare presentation, and we found the right spot, the Kimbe. Quaint setup, kind of Robinson Crusoeish. The room is as big as a tree house as well. Just enough space for the two of us and our knapsacks.

The weather was beautiful, low 30's, so it was a perfect beach afternoon. Just before our first dip, we watched an extremely buxom young lady (she was actually 30 something but they are all young to me at my age) fuss for about five minutes trying to get her top back on after her suntanning session, and she was finally successful in tiying it tight. I laughed out loud that after all that fussing, she dove in and her bottoms came clean off. The top , however, held it's ground, so to speak. To the left of this was an older woman siting waist deep in water, applying a mud pack to her face. Another big contrast, another big laugh.

After several hours of sun, we cleaned up and walked along 10th avenue, a pedestrian mall about a km long with shops, restaurants, bars,etc. Alot of stores were selling brightly colored scarfs and funky colored dresses. There was a place selling cowboy boots at half the price we pay at home. We will be doing a bit of shopping on our way back through towards the end of the trip. We picked up a few head bands for Mary Lou and a hand rolled cigar por moi.

After a full scouting of the street we settled at a place called Frida's. You may have seen the movie starring Selmah Hayek. In her never ending search for rice and beans, Mary Lou had a chicken burrito, and I settled on grouper for the third time on the trip. We were both disappointed. The only meal so far we have not enjoyed. So she goes.

We finished the night out with a moolit walk on the beach. Lots of bars along the strip, with live music in many of them.

Tomorrow morning we step outside the box and head for inland Belize. We are both excited about this part of the trip. The morning will see about a five hour drive, then who knows how far we'll go.


Well, time to go. I will finish things off with my brand new stogie. Night all.