155/365 (June 5, 2011) – The business stuff started for Kirk this afternoon and so we have moved into the hotel now. Gorgeous place. Not a great shot this, too grainy, but you get the idea. It’s the only photo I actually took today, but it sums the day up nicely.
Most of the guests arrived Saturday evening and there was a meet and greet cocktail and dinner party on the terrace at the edge of the beach. A wedding was taking place a few hundred yards away on the beach, the sea breeze making a beautiful spectacle of billowing white fabric. When the sun set what I am assuming to be tree frogs started up their nightly symphony. We hung out for awhile, then went and changed into our swimsuits and slipped into the pool for a late night swim. Who closes a pool at 7pm? The staff don’t really seem to care much if you are in after hours though. I gather that unlike North America, if you do something stupid and cause yourself injury, the fault and blame lie solely with you and you can’t stupidly turn around and sue someone for failing to protect you from your own idiocy. Now if only we could learn that in Canada and the USA. Later we grabbed a bottle of wine and settled in to watch a movie. – Agora – highly recommend it!
Yesterday (Sunday) we had a quick breakfast (the fruit here is amazing! It is actually truly ripe and full of flavour!) and met in the lobby to register for some activities. Most people are doing things like zip-lines, dolphin swims, etc. We can zip-line at home, and I’m against holding aquatic animals captive so humans can get in the water with them and consider them entertainment. If they were free to interact but able to leave if they chose, then I’m a little more “ok” with it. But not when they are restricted from their natural behaviours and habitat. Kirk and I wanted to do a tour into the Sierra Madre’s but the planner said he couldn’t set that up unless he had at least 11 people. So Kirk went into sell mode, and managed to find enough to make it happen. So that is Friday’s activity. Apparently we will head towards the South end of the Banderas Bay region and visit a working town (El Tuito), which was founded in the 1500’s. We will visit a number of small villages, stop at a working tequila and racilla distillery, a cheese factory, see 1200 year old petroglyphs, and visit the botanical gardens. I’d rather learn something about the people, and the country and its history, than exploit nature. Dave has a full day out on a catamaran planned for Thursday and I think we are heading down somewhere towards Yelapa that day. So we’ll get our snorkeling fix in then.
Yesterday I went into town with Brenda and another couple and we stopped at her friend’s jewellery store. It’s not the usual stuff one finds with the tourist vendors, and I picked up a couple of pieces. We wandered around Old Town again and just generally enjoyed the day before heading back to the hotel where I read a book by the pool and tried (unsuccessfully) to even out my burn. When I thought I was out of the sun I burned, when I actively tried to generate a mild burn to even things out, I failed. Go figure!
So this morning Kirk is off to work at 8am, and I am mulling over what to do. I thought maybe I’d take a bus into Old Town again, a friend gave me the name of a jeweller to visit and I thought I’d see if I could find it. I pulled out the slip of paper she wrote it on before we left Vancouver, and started to laugh. It is the same jeweller’s I’ve already been to twice, and where I bought something yesterday. Cassandra Shaw. OK then, I’ll go on a walking tour around this area instead and see where I end up. I’m working on building the little Spanish I have, and am discovering that it’s not the hardest language to work out. There is a lot of crossover between English, French, and Spanish. Some stuff is easy to catch the drift of. I made it about three exchanges with a fellow yesterday and then he started to really talk and I was lost. I apparently got that glazed expression that I remember seeing when I got going with the Japanese visitors to our lab. He stopped. “No comprende?” Nope, lost me.
