Better late than..later?Western Sept 05/09 **Updated 11/11** About This Page:

[rlb38]

Mike returned from his pedicure to find me relaxing on the verandah. Mike reported that the staff at the spa( who all seem to be South African beauties) were excellent. Mike's feet aren't the nicest after several minor surgeries so he was thrilled that I'd arranged for a pedicure. He was also supplied with a list of products that "might" help smooth out the scars. I think the cheapest of the 3 products was $79. Mike was also told that there was a spa villa available tomorrow afternoon . He was telling me all this villa info that the beauties has bestowed upon him. When he finally stopped I smiled at him and said" Did they tell you the price is over $300 or are the offering up a discount since it's still available with less than 24 hours to go? " He had to admit that the price is a bit steep for us and NO discount was being offered. I seriously need to take this man to a DVC presentation because he'd be signing on the dotted line in no time

Rachel arrived and decided that she wanted to go to see Plamen for dinner instead of hitting the buffet line or getting room service. I agreed to accompany her but warned that I may have to leave in the middle to get ready for Palo. We went to Animator's Palate found our table with a milk waiting and just put a hand on the seats when a CM came out of no where and said we were in the wrong spot. I was confused but she insisted that we were in the wrong restaurant. You should be in the same restaurant as last night. so we turned around red faced and headed to Lumiere's. I was some what annoyed when Rachel decided she'd have chicken nuggets and fries. Ummm, those are pretty available up on deck 9. Undetered she looked at me and said " mom, I can't know what the restaurant will be offering until I look at the menu" Right. Chicken nuggets it is. It was a struggle to get Plamen NOT to bring me anything even though I explained I was eating at Palos in a half hour. I stayed with Rachel until she ordered dessert but had to leave to change for Palo.

We showed up a couple of minutes early. The head CM told us we would be with Laci again and asked another CM to lead us to our table. The head CM then looked up and said " I trust it's okay with you to have Laci again. I replied " He was superb at brunch and he's easy on the eyes" This earned a chuckle from both CMs. The head CM rolled his eyes and said "oh, he knows it too". CM ushering us to our seat implored us not to tell Laci what we said or she'd never hear the end of it !

We were seated in an awkward spot in the restaurant. Right beside a couple that we seated with a window view. I could have easily reached over and plucked something off of his plate. This made for an uncomfortable dinner because you could not help but overhear EVERYTHING. So we curbed our conversation since we knew we'd be overheard but the couple beside were not slowed down in the slightest. It was the strangest conversation . At first we thought they were on a first date. I noticed that there were singles meets in the Navigator and thought maybe they'd met that way. He was blathering on about how Walt Disney was a great business man. He would say " do you know about the land Walt acquired in Florida ?" And she would say " School Me" to every question he would ask. Later he was complaining that he'd known her for 4 years but didn't know where she lived. Then finally near the end of the meal they were talking about how they'd decided to come on the cruise as friends but had started fooling around the night before and just who's fault that was and what were they going to do about it. Mike and I tried to keep our own conversations going just to try and stop from overhearing but the guy rarely paused for breath we were out matched. This really did effect our dinner, I was just uncomfortable.

We decided to split a pasta of the day for an appetizer. I sadly didn't make notes on what we ate but if Mike was willing to split pasta it was tomato based sauce and likely had meat in it. I do remember that we both enjoyed it. I had the beef tenderloin with Palo Signature Barolo Red Wine Sauce it was very good but I found the beef I had at Animator's Palate the first night was better. Mike swears he had fish but a look at a posted menu didn't ring any bells for him. Possibly it was a special as well. For dessert we ordered the chocolate souffle with vanilla sauce and Chocolate Amaretto Indulgence. Both were excellent but we preferred the Amaretto one. Mike also enjoyed a couple of glasses of red wine possibly the Barolo which Laci recommended . Laci provided excellent service once again and we tipped him accordingly.

Overall we preferred Palo for brunch but would certainly try to get reservations for both dinner & brunch on future trips. Enjoyment of dinner was impaired by being seated so close to another couple which I still don't understand since there were many seats that remained empty throughout our service in closer to the kitchen.

After dinner we wondered the deck for a few minutes to unwind and have a conversation that was filled with comments like " Can you believe he said that ? , that was so strange and I thought he'd never shut up! " That out of our systems we returned to our stateroom to meet Rachel and head out to Twice Charmed. We all really enjoyed the show. The actor playing Franco was wonderful. I know this seems to be most people's least favourite but I think it was my favourite. I managed a few flash off shots of the curtain call.




Rachel headed back off the club after the show and Mike and I strolled deck 4 then headed to our verandah to read and have a glass of wine. There was some thunder and lightning off in the distance that was wonderful to watch. Can't beat the warm ocean breeze and that lovely swishing sound the boat makes as it passes through the water. So peaceful.

UP NEXT: dune buggy/ snorkel

[Colexis Mom]

Another great update! Interesting dinner conversation at Palo! I too preferred brunch over dinner! More please!

[chezp]

That was one interesting conversation! I say take Mike to a DVC presentation - and quickly!

[Kenny]

I'm sure the girls at the spa were very convincing... and ... and Mike was just passing the information along... yeah, that's right!
I liked Palo Brunch better than the Dinner, too, but as you say, I would try for both reservations on future cruises.
We liked Twice Charmed, too... 'course we liked all of the shows!

[Big Baloo]

Great update!
And that Palo dinner? Awk-ward!

[iloverags2]

Other than that interesting (to say the least) dinner, your evening sounded wonderful! Strolling the deck, wine on the verandah. Ah! The cruising life!

[tootogether]

DVC- here they come!

[FanOfMickey]

Just caught up on your TR and am loving it More please

[rlb38]

Originally Posted by chezp

That was one interesting conversation! I say take Mike to a DVC presentation - and quickly!

I would love to get Mike to a DVC presentation, maybe if I'm successful in my current plot to do a March break trip , I'll get him to one!

[rlb38]

Originally Posted by Kenny

I'm sure the girls at the spa were very convincing... and ... and Mike was just passing the information along... yeah, that's right!
I liked Palo Brunch better than the Dinner, too, but as you say, I would try for both reservations on future cruises.
We liked Twice Charmed, too... 'course we liked all of the shows!

I KNOW the spa girls were convincing .. and I'm sure you remember the South African beauties from your time at the Rainforest too!

We liked all the shows as well but Twice Charmed never seems to get very good reviews and I'm not sure why ?

[rlb38]

Since I can't seem to master the multi quote so I'll just say thanks to Marnie, Cheryl and Kenny for sticking with my TR and welcome to the few new PP'ers to my report!

COZUMEL

My notes are a little lacking for this day. We woke up around 8 and headed to Lumiere's again for breakfast. Rachel wasn't thrilled about coming down to breakfast but decided she didn't want to eat by herself. She perked up considerably once she saw the menu. I can't find a menu to refer to but I'm pretty sure it was waffles in a sea of dulce de leche. Once I explained what the dulce de leche was she perked right up. We usually have a bit on ice cream so to have it with breakfast was just another plus to cruising. Not sure what the adults had although I know it's sugar content was much lower than Rachel's. I do remember both the service and the food being good. And Mike was thrilled to have a table right beside a port hole.

10:45 was our meet time for the dune buggy / snorkel excursion. The transition from the meet room to meeting Fito our host for the day on the quay was quick. We quickly made the long walk to land and up an escalator to a cat walk that took us to a parking lot where the dune buggies were. I believe there were 8 groups with 2 groups of 2 sharing the buggies. One group would drive out to the lunch stop then would switch drivers after lunch.

Now I have to say if you're concerned about vehicle safety this is NOT the tour for you. Mike's seatbelt was not fastened to the floor. I took the back seat and was trying to twist it back to it's fastener but it never held for more than 20 seconds before it popped off. The back seat cushions were not fastened down and while driving they would shift and push me forward since no one was beside me to help hold them down. But we did enjoy ourselves !

Not the greatest photo but this is Mike's seatbelt hanging the bolt it should be secured to is to the right.




This is a scanned photo of the photo we bought from the tour not sure why the quality is so lousy... but you get the idea. We drove for about 3 minutes and pulled over to the side of the main street. We crossed the street over 4 lanes of traffic . Also not for the faint of heart or possibly those with small children. While Fito had a small stop sign to stop traffic much like a school crossing guard. Several people crossed on their own before he could assemble everyone to go with him. We headed behind a house which I believe was advertising itself as a spa. The was a pool that had no water and the grass roof of the house was caved in on one corner. There was a sort of hut with washrooms and a big bottled water container where you could get a drink in a paper cup. There were also lockers at an additional charge of $3 US. We were given our snorkel gear and a quick instruction/ safety lesson and then filed back across the 4 lanes of traffic to a beach.
The spa?






We dropped our bag on the beach donned our gear and walked on a path of sandbags into the ocean.


Rachel has just spotted a plastic penguin from the movie Happy Feet she was able to dive down and retrieve it and Mike stashed it in his pocket for her. She was very pleased with herself!



The water was very clear again but the fish were not a plentiful but we were very close to shore. Again we were snorkelling between the shore and where the ships are docked. The waves were higher than at Grand Cayman and the group was larger and crammed together. Fito was having us swim along behind him and he was basically swimming in a large square. Out maybe a 100 metres from shore then across and back to shore. Rachel and I made the mistake of leaving our flippers off and it was harder work with the waves to stay on course.
There was a stingray place that was penned in and we swam by it on our way back to shore. Rachel and I both found it very tough to stay still to see the stingrays the waves were forcing us up against the fence and we both decided we'd had enough and headed away from the fence and back over to shore. Others had more success than us !







We slipped out of our snorkel gear and headed back across the 4 lanes of traffic to the "spa" area to return our gear. Now there was an outdoor shower here but it wasn't working. Someone in the group pointed this out to Fito and he quickly ran up the driveway and found a garden hose and invited us to try a Mexican shower He was calling out "Mexican shower, shower with a Mexican" he held up the hose over anyone who was willing to be hosed off. We took him up on his offer & it felt good to get rid of some salt. Not mention having a new experience of showering with a Mexican .

Once we were all cleaned up we headed...that's right...across the four lanes of traffic where we were all pros at waiting for Fito to stop traffic and then dash across.

We drove for around an hour here are some from the buggy photos.

Lone tree surrounded by beautiful blues.

Queen of the front seat

Sky darkens on the driver's side while the ocean view is sunny

Who could ask for anything more




We reached our lunch destination which seemed a bit isolated. Lunch was a buffet with pop or water (one per customer only while supplies last) The buffet was a fajita bar with fresh guacamole ,salsa, chicken, beef , chips and vegies. It was all quite tasty and I made a couple of trips mostly back for more guacamole which was Taaa-steeee My only beef about lunch is only being allowed one drink it was $3 US for a second drink . The buffet staff was very pleasant and was always encouraging me to fill my plate higher. Also the manager came around and asked if everything was all right to let his staff know if there was anything we needed. There were clean bathrooms as well.

After lunch was free time for about an hour. There were 2 women offering massages , hammock hanging in the shade and a rock enclosed area for swimming. Rachel finished her huge lunch of 10 chips and 3 pieces of chicken and headed to wander around. I grabbed the camera and headed out to search for shells or sea glass.













The beach had a fair amount of litter on it which is always disappointing to see. I did pick up a couple of small shells and one piece of sea glass. We were soon back in the buggies and on our way back to the ship. There was one more stop to make...

Fito took us to the back of building a told us we were under no obligation to buy anything. There were plenty of souvenirs but no price tags. The vendors did not try to entice anybody to buy anything and no one did. It was a quick stop and we were soon back in the streets of town.







We parked a bid Adios to Fito. He was a friendly guide who didn't push for tips but in his closing speech he mentioned how difficult it has been for the tourism trade since the H1N1 breakout and I then felt a bit guilty for not buying anything at the Peepee stop. It was almost 4 when we left Fito. I should have mentioned that we were given a token to take to one of 2 bars to receive a free alchoholic beverage one of the restaurants was Carlos and Charlies. I was looking for vanilla and Mike was interested in buying some tequilla. After tipping Fito we had very little cash on us.
We were supposed to buy some peso during our long wait in Philly but forgot all about it. perhaps it was the lack of sleep). Anyways, again there were no prices on the souvenirs and vanilla I was looking at so it's obvious they want you to barter. But I'm not good at it and then we were approached by this guy


He had a display of bracelets and was saying he could put any name on the bracelet. I was looking at a different display and he asked Rachel if she saw her name in the bracelets. She said no and he asked her name she told him and he ran to his stand yelling at me...." 5 minutes and I'll have it ready for you". I shook my head and said no Thanks. We then spotted a tequilla shop and headed towards it just before I entered the store he started yelling at me again " 5 minutes & I'll have it done". This made me and I yelled " I'm NOT buying it, NO ! We chatted briefly to the tequilla salesman who was quite pleasant despite my outburst. Mike was trying to make up his mind and I decided that I just wanted to go back to the ship. Rachel decided to stay with Mike.

UP NEXT: souvenirs & back aboard ship

[iloverags2]

The water is so gorgeous!!! I think I would be a bit faint at heart with seatbelts like that, though!

[chezp]

You're right about that not being a tour for the faint hearted...

[lauriep]

Lots of "local color" on this excursion! Too bad about the trash on the beach. How fun that Rachel spotted the toy penguin--an odd, but cool souvenir of Mexico.

[Kenny]

Great pictures, Roberta!
Ahhhh, who needs a seatbelt! You're on vacation! Now, the 4 lanes of traffic!.. that's a different story! The street we took to the dolphin excursion was very busy! Some of the vendors there were a bit pushy, but the guy with the bracelets was a bit over the top, I think!
Overall, it sounds like you had a fairly nice time in Cozumel, as did we.