We are back and although a time share is a truly poor investment from a financial perspective, we absolutely love the resort at the Grand Luxxe and look forward to our trips every year. The pace at which they are adding buildings and amenities is truly impressive. We have owed at the Grand Mayan resort for ten years now and have made six trips to the resort and each one just seems to be better. It is truly a home away from home for us. The staff are tremendously well trained and especially the concierge and the activities staff go out of their way to make your vacation a truly memorable one. Darla and I had a relaxing and invigorating week. The weather was hot and humid and it did rain one day (Thursday) all day and we just relaxed in our condo and read and slept the day away. Friday and Saturday were the best days with bright blue skies and temperatures in the mid 90's. It felt a good ten degrees warmer because of the high humidity, but we spent Friday by the pool from morning until after happy hour at 5 PM.
We also took an excursion this trip with Vallarta Adventures. It was a catamaran (see above) with 75 people on board. We met at the Dolphin Experience just down the road from our resort at 7:30 on Wednesday for breakfast and were on the boat by 8 PM heading to the port in Puerto Vallarta to pick up the rest of our passengers. From there, we sailed out to Los Arcos and a small inlet where we snorkeled and kayaked for about an hour. They served lunch after that, a surprisingly good deli spread with several salads, ham, turkey, roast beef and cheeses. From there they opened the bar which was included in the cost of the excursion and Darla and I enjoyed rum punch, margaritas, rum and coke, tequila sunrise, etc. We arrived about 40 minutes later at Yalapa, a small fishing village that is only accessible by boat. Half of the passengers went on a fifty minute hike up to a small waterfall (that was only a trickle as the rainy season starts in about a month), while the rest of us took up residence on the beach and were pestered by the locals selling cheap jewelry and trying to get us to take a picture with an iguana. We relaxed and drank and Darla went into the ocean. I slept on the chaise lounger provided. The hikers joined us later with tales of the tiny drip of water that was the waterfall and the land mines of horse manure all over the trails from the horseback riders.
We were back by 4 PM in time for a quick swim and then happy hour at 5 PM. We aren't big drinkers and went through about three 2 liter bottles of soda in our room. My bill for the whole week, including the meal plan, our voice card that Darla used to keep up with home, Darla's two massages, our drinking and tips was just $600. We had a great time and are already looking forward to our next trip when the new pool over by the spa tower will be open and tower 4 will be complete. We hope to bring Sam someday and will reach out to John to see if we can talk him into it. It truly is safe in our gated resort.
The picture of the young girl and the musicians behind is from the airport where a group of young locals set up and played for the passengers as we waited for our flights. They were all quite talented and we enjoyed their show. The second picture is of our night at Gong restaurant. We have avoided the restaurant since we showed up and they refused to take our meal plan tickets back when Darryl and Cheryl came with us. Darla didn't want to go (who eats Asian food in Mexico?), but we had a great time there. The appetizer of shrimp tempura was the best appetizer we had all week and the sukiyaki for two was paid for by one meal plan ticket and included cabbage, rice noodles, mushrooms, onions, bamboo, carrots, celery, tofu and thin strips of rib eye steak. We cooked it at our table and enjoyed it so much we came back twice for the same dinner. The only change was we had tempura ice cream the first night and fried bananas and ice cream the second. The Gong restaurant is now on our rotation. We also ate for the first time at the Mexican food restaurant, Epazote, in Grand Luxxe Tower One. It was good, but definitely last on our list what with Punta Arena Seafood restaurant, Tramonto Italian and now the Gong restaurant. We ate well and the dinners alone added up to $414 for just the appetizers, main course and desserts for the six meals. The breakfasts are kind of optional (buffets), but go for $16.99 apiece, so we certainly made out on the meal plan. Darla and I both have the omelets, the closest thing to ordering off the menu.
We arrived home last night at 6:30 and Neil picked us up with our Explorer. We stopped at the Pro Shop Saturday and picked him up a golf shirt with the Vidanta logo on it for helping us. Darla and I were exhausted and ordered a pizza for dinner. We slept in this morning and missed church (heathens!), neither of us ready to say goodbye to our vacation just yet. I decided to re stain the stamped concrete today as Darla was busy with her Silpada gig. I mowed the lawn and cleaned the pool, also cleaning the tile with acid, but waiting until the water is a tad warmer to get in and use the pumice stone on the tougher calcium deposits. The staining took me about three hours broken up by breaks to watch the Memorial golf tournament on dvr. The playoff between Na and Matsuyama looked more like an LPGA event (The Asian players dominate there). The work felt good and was a good end to my vacation. I will put down the sealer on it next Saturday. It looks like a good warm week this week (it was 95 degrees today) and the pool is close to 80 degrees now. It should be just right next week. BTW, we avoided the Grand Luxxe pool this trip as it was too hot, probably 90 degrees. The Punta pool was much better and has a swim up bar as well.
Well, that is it. I want to go out and do some hand watering on the lawn. I am off to our Sacramento IBA golf event tomorrow at Serrano. Pete called me today and one of his guys had to drop out. He called me to get Neil's number and Neil is playing in Pete's foursome tomorrow. I'll be in the office for two days and then Matt and I drive up to Eureka for another golf event, where we will defend our title that we won last year. I hope everyone is doing well. We will talk soon. Ciao.
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