[kmnarizona]

Thursday, July 3
Brad and Alison went downstairs to pick up the free 2-day car rental. I guess it wasn’t free – we paid with 2 hours of vacation time while listening to the time share salesman. Oh well. Al wanted to sleep and hang out in the Jacuzzi as he was pretty worn out from the day before so he told us to have fun, don’t worry about him and he’d see us later. We gathered up a few things and took off in the car. We decided it was time to check out Mamitas. Alison & Brad had been there on their last trip but thought it would be fun to go again. The beach was pretty crowded but it didn’t take long for us to find a palapa with some chaise lounges underneath. The waiter took our order and before long Brad had a Dos Equis and Alison and I each had a michelada. I say “before long” but it did take a while to get our drinks. Funny how the topless girls on the beach got their drink orders delivered very quickly and the waiters were oh so attentive to them. I have a great picture of me on a chaise lounge under a palapa but can’t post it because there’s a girl in the picture sitting next to me and she’s topless. Gotta follow the forum rules about pictures with nudity.

Busy beach at Mamitas
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Thought this was funny - a woman buried in the sand
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Well, we ended up ordering some food too. Ordered guacamole & chips, shrimp cocktail or ceviche (don’t remember what they called it) and fried calamari. The guac was fantastic but the shrimp cocktail/ceviche was horrible and the calamari was really tough.

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Alison and I were intrigued by the menu listing of banana margaritas so we ordered one each. Mistake – it was nasty. We made our way through about ½ of it before giving up and ordering more micheladas to wash away the flavor of the banana margaritas. All in all we spent a few hours there before heading back to Fisherman. Relaxed and hung out with Al. Dinner at the resort – we were finally getting tired of the food there. They have beautiful displays, pretty good quality and a large selection but we became burnt out on it. They had theme nights; Italian, Chinese, Mediterranean, etc. Most was very good – in fact earlier in the day I was craving mussels. Lo & behold – it was Italian night at the resort and one of the pasta dishes was kind of like a cioppino and there were tons of mussels in it! We weren’t impressed with the Chinese food night though.

Alison and I ventured out after dinner to hit the grocery store again. This time we decided to go to Chedraui. We wandered a bit, checked out the grocery aisles and of course, we wouldn’t be women if we didn’t go through the shoe and purse departments. Picked up a few things, found the Hot Nuts!!!, and then went to the ice cream shop within Chedraui. Alison got a cone with Neapolitan ice cream and I had Dulce de Leche ice cream in a waffle bowl. Huge servings of delicious, creamy ice cream for a really good price. Thank God we never indulged at one of the Hagen Daz locations on 5th.

Later we went out again in the rental car and decided to just park the damn thing in the valet parking just outside of the gated neighborhood where the resort is and right at the south end of 5th. Walked 5th, taking in the sights again. Stopped at the Beer Bucket and turned in our license plates (one old Arizona plate Al had from a vehicle he bought in 1973 and Alison’s fairly new Arizona plate she kept after going with a specialized plate). Got our t-shirts and free beers!!! Spent a bit of time there having a few drinks & shots and then walked back to the valet parking and headed back to the resort.

We decided that driving the streets of Playa in a rental car was not the way to go. We were much better off going by taxi and not having to worry about the responsibility of a car (parking, crazy taxi drivers, etc) so the rental got parked in the resort lot and never came out again.

Before we went on this trip Alison and I had planned to go to the fire show at the ****** on this particular evening. I was really excited about it but when I realized it just wasn’t going to happen I had a little melt down. I guess it was because this was a vacation of a lifetime to me and in my mind I had this mental checklist going of the things I really wanted to do and that was one of the things. So I was given time to have my little melt down and then everything was fine. There, I said it. I was a baby and now it’s all done.

**I've noticed that it appears we are grocery store fans. That may be true but you have to admit, a grocery store in any country besides your own can be pretty interesting.