Monday, April 27, 2009

Day 1: April 21st 2009 - Tuesday

Tuesday morning, flight leaves at 7:30am. We parked at an offsite lot and took the 'Park n Fly' to the terminal, here we are on the shuttle.
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We had a layover in Dallas, which we have found out we love that airport cuz they have free internet. On the plane ride from Dallas to Cancun our pilot sounded like Sean Connery. Here is our first view of the beautiful blue waters. And Kyle is filling out our customs sheet and paper to get into Mexico as vistors.
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We took another shuttle with LamosTravel (aka: funjet in the states) about 40 minutes south to our resort: Sandos Playacar Beach Resort, it's about a 5-10 minute drive south of the town Playa del Carmen.
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We got to our all inclusive resort and checked in took our luggage to the room and headed straight for the beach!!!! Here is a view from our room. The resort was split into three different areas, the check in which was furthest from the beach had an area of hotel style rooms, then as you walk toward the beach you hit another area of rooms that are in their own buildings, (about 8-12 rooms in each pod) and each pod building had their own pool, here is our view of the other pod. Then you walk more toward the beach and you hit the 'Meeting place' this is where we are in the picture below, there was another information desk here and gift shop, then the stage for where the nightly stuff was and a restaurant then continue walking you hit the big pool by another restaurant then the beach. There were another set of hotel style rooms near the beach that were ocean front but you had to be an 'exclusive member' to stay in these. Some sales guy tried to get us to go to a 90 minute 'free' breakfast (hello we're staying in an all inclusive it's always free) to learn about becoming a member or some crap anyway we were happy with where we were. That guy was 'bad' Carlos (as you'll learn there was a good Carlos and a bad Carlos)... we saw him a few more times in the meeting place and just walked the other direction, lol.

Anyway a few views of our room, in the first picture our balcony is the one three doors from the left. The second picture is the other side of the 'pod' where we entered our room, went up the stairs and we were 7423. In the picture of the pool below I'm taking a picture back to where I was standing when I took the first picture (if that makes sense)
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Of course we had to stop and get 'dos margaritas' on the way to the beach. Now I've never really been a fan of margaritas but this was the BEST one I have ever had... good ol' Carlos (Kyle's favorite bar tender)
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After laying by the beach for a while, we moved in next to the pool and relaxed there for a while. You can see the roof of one of the restaurants. This is where the "Iztapalapa" Mexican Buffet was. This place also served Breakfast and lunch.
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There were many different restaurants on the resort. There were a few where you had to make a reservation and they had a dress code (just long pants and close toed shoes for the men) Anyway depending on the number of days you stayed there determined the number of reservations you were allowed. We were allowed 2 reservations and I'll get to those on the days we went. Other than that, there were another handful of buffet restaurants that you were free to just come and go in. This one above, the mexican one was a free to come and go one. (they were all free, but you couldn't eat at the reservations ones unless you made plans ahead of time, they were order of a menu places).

So of course being in Mexico for the first night we had to go to the "Iztapalapa", duh!
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Oh the guacamole was mua bien!!! (Kyle's just wearing the hat for the picture) Our waiter asked to take our picture, then went and got the hat to put on, lol. We also learned this night that we need to put bugspray on as soon as the sun goes down, lol. On the way back to our room at some point we stopped in at the little gift shop, where I saw these mexican whips... I ran over to them saying "OH LOOK, my brother's had these when I was growing up, they're so fun!" SO I attempt to try and remember how they work, swing, swamp, and SPLAT! Right on my back... that was the last time I touched one of those the whole trip, lol. Don't worry the red marks went away by the end of the night.
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Each night had a theme, the sun went down early, about 6:30 which we weren't used to. We felt like old farts cuz it wasn't until the last two nights we were able to stay up for the 9:30 event. There was a disco that was open from 11:00 to 2am.... yeah we never made it to that! Anyway the first night was Mexican Theme and they had vendors in the open area (which at the time we thought they would be there every night) and the mexican band on the stage. They had stuff going on at the meeting point, which is where the below picture was taken, then at 9:30 every night (well in mexican time that meant about 9:45) there was something going on at the Theater... we didn't go to the theater until the 4th night which is a story all in itself... I'm trying to stay in order here so you'll just have to come back :-) Anyway so we enjoyed this music for a bit and then hit the sack, we were exhausted!
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