07-15-2009
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#1 (permalink) |
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añejo
 Join Date: Apr 2001
Location: Playa del Carmen
Posts: 16,242
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Puerto Morelos/Playa Trip Report June 23 - July 7
Well, I’ve been home for over a week now and my tan is fading quickly. Boo!
 I’ve finally got the photos resized. Here’s a pretty brief trip report. I won’t go into too much detail because, well, we didn’t really do much.  We stayed in Puerto Morelos for one week, at a condo in the Casita Blanca building. We brought our friend Mike a bunch of stuff down, and in return he picked us up at the airport. As we were going through customs, our suitcases were in the scanner and the guy working the machine kept rolling our bags back and forth, back and forth. A customs official asked me to step aside and wanted to know who I was traveling with. I pointed out Corey, who was behind me, waiting for the bags, and he asked him to step aside as well. I was starting to get nervous. We had a couple of big bottles of pet meds in our bags and so I took out my letter from Maureen to have handy. More officials arrived, and they took our bags and opened them and started searching. God, I didn’t even do anything wrong but I was literally starting to shake! Well, when they found the drill bit sets that I brought down for Mike, they showed them to the guy running the scanner and they all looked relieved and started to laugh. It turns out that the scanner guy thought they were bullets!!! We put our stuff back together and left the airport. Mike was waiting outside. Yay, Mike!  Boy did I give him some shit for those drill bits!  Luckily he had a cooler full of beer waiting, and we all popped open cold Sols for the trip. We dropped in at the condo to get rid of our stuff and then headed to Cantina Habanero for dinner and drinks. Here are photos of the condo and the area. the road outside the condo:  the kitchen area:  the dining room/living area seen from the "study" and through the curtain of beads:  the bathroom:  the bedroom:  The condo is small and plain but provided everything we needed. There is an air conditioner in the main room and in the bedroom. There is a small balcony with a hammock off the living area. Here are some views from it.   The grounds are very well maintained and pretty. flowers:  a walkway near the pool:  Here are some more photos. our unit is the middle one, with the hammock:  another shot:  the pool:  our palapa:  another shot:  the beach north:  the beach south:  In those photos there is a lot of turtle grass washed up on the beach, but normally someone comes by in a tractor in the mornings and picks it all up. The next morning we headed to the pool/beach. While we were sitting at our palapa, our friend Emily came up. Yay, Emily! She is a blast. We drank some beers and then headed to Bar Ixchel, practically a stone’s throw away, for some run and cokes. the bar, so cute:  OK. That's a start, right?
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"You can lead a horticulture, but you can't make her think." --Dorothy Parker |
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07-15-2009
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#8 (permalink) |
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añejo
Join Date: Apr 2001
Location: Playa del Carmen
Posts: 16,242
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That evening we went to Spaghettino for dinner. I had the tortellini, which I thought was undercooked. The best part of dinner was Sweetie.
Emily and her partner Patty have adopted a street dog named Sweetie. Sweetie used to pal around with another street dog, Jet. But Jet died this past year and Sweetie was alone, so they gave her a place in their home. While she was hanging out on the beach with us that afternoon, Emily kept saying that we should take Sweetie home with us. We were all, “No thanks. We have enough dogs.” So, we’re eating dinner outside at the restaurant and this dog comes up to me and sits down next to my chair. I’m petting her and she’s really cute, reminds us of Sandy. I take a moment to look at her tag and….it’s Sweetie! She’s come and found us! Oh boy oh boy oh boy did I fall hard. So we talked about maybe taking Sweetie home with us, but it turns out that Patty is too in love to let her go. So that’s OK, because she has a home and someone who loves her. Here is a photo of the two of us. She is currently staying with Diane, the owner of Mama's Bakery, because Emily and Patty are in the US. Diane is the Saint Francis of Puerto Morelos. She takes in strays and gets them fixed, etc. She's a great person. me and Sweetie:  After dinner we went back to Cantina Habanero for drinks. I will add here that we went to Cantina Habanero EVERY night while we were in Puerto Morelos. The food is good, the drinks are affordable, and we always know we’re going to find friends there. the Cantina sign:  Jenaly (I'm sure I'm butchering the spelling of her name), the very pretty bartender:  Ed, the incorrigible and very lovable owner, being his usual charming self  : That picture makes me laugh!  It makes me remember him and miss him. I'm very fond of him. me and Jessily, Ed's daughter (it's a bad pic):  I'm teaching her to make brbrbrbrbr sounds with her finger over her lips (another bad pic): 
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07-15-2009
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#9 (permalink) |
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añejo
Join Date: Apr 2001
Location: Playa del Carmen
Posts: 16,242
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The next day we spent on the beach and then at Cantina Habanero.
 Friday was our 11 year wedding anniversary. Ed had been hinting that there was going to be a bit of party on our behalf. We spent the afternoon, again, on the beach. I kept my Bubba Keg mug filled with what I call Sunshine Punch, which is made of rum, pineapple juice, and orange juice. Delicious! When we arrived at Cantina Habanero that evening, this sign greeted us.  There were also balloons EVERYWHERE. We ate and drank and had a great time. At one point, the band announced that they were going to sing a special song for Corey and Sue, and you know what it was?????? “I used to love her, but I had to kill her….”!!!!!!!!!  They also brought out a lovely, delicious cake for us, which we shared with everyone at the bar. Saturday and Sunday were really rainy. Saturday night we went back to Cantina Habanero and Vertigo 777 played again, this time with full electronic sound. I can’t believe how awesome they are. If you are ever in Mexico and see that they are playing, GO!! They are extremely talented, amazing amazing musicians. Honestly, they should be in the US making lots of money. I wish I had some photos of them. That night was sooooo fun. Everyone was drunk and dancing and laughing. It was such a blast. Tom, who owns Cabanas Ixchel and Bar Ixchel, bought everyone friendship bracelets and then Corey and I went back to his house, which is on the beach. Oh, man I wish I had photos of his place.  It is the coolest house on the earth. It is like a huge playhouse. It’s a cabana but it’s fully built to withstand the elements and it’s like one super huge room, except for the bathroom, which is huge and two rooms and the first room is like a huge walk in shower with a sink in it. It is truly amazing. It’s got a big conical cabana-shaped roof that goes up sooo high. He’s a lucky guy.We staggered back to the condo (almost next door to Tom’s place) at around 4 or 5 in the morning and then I got up at 9 to back to Tom’s. We went to the Jungle Spa for massages. It took awhile to rouse Tom from his spot at his computer and get him going. We were driving through the colonia, on the other side of the highway, and he decided to stop and get some tamales from a woman selling them on a corner. After we got going again, I saw a horse. Tom told me to feed the horse a tamale, so I did. I got out and tried to hand it to him but he wouldn’t take it. So I put it on the ground and as I got back in the car, I saw the horse reach over and pick it up!!!! He must have liked the corn husks. I spent about $45 for an hour and a half massage and it was AMAZING. The tables are set up in this pavilion in the middle of the jungle, and there are “rooms” made from hanging sheets. You go into your own private area and get completely naked and then a woman comes in and you get the best massage ever. At a couple of different points I had two women kneading and massaging me. The woman who runs the place, Sondra, also stands over you with incense and prays to Ixchel. It’s really cool. I finally got back to the condo at 1 or 2 in the afternoon. The weather was still pretty crappy so we sat around in the condo. We were both still pretty hungover from the night before, even WITH the awesome massage. So – what do you think we did later that evening? Went to Cantina Habanero, of course! Corey had a huge cheeseburger, which he said made him feel a LOT better. I drank beer. There weren’t many people out that night. Ed sat at the bar and talked with us. This is an example of talking with Ed: Ed: I can’t get over that guy last night with the steering wheel in his pants. Us: What? What are you talking about? Was that after we left? Ed: Yeah, I came back after you left and there was this guy walking around with a steering wheel in his pants. He had a weird accent, like an Englishman or a pirate or something. Us: laughter Ed: I finally said, “Dude, is that a steering wheel in your pants?” He said, “Aye! It’s driving me nuts!” Us: groan I love him. He’s so funny. Monday was beautiful again. I sat out by the pool and watched a guy play with his kids in the water. There was a girl, about 5 or 6, and a boy, probably about 3. The girl kept bossing and bossing around her little brother. It seemed pretty obvious that she was mad that Dad was paying so much attention to him. God, she was bratty. At one point she hurt her foot and cried and cried, but it seemed like she was crying for the attention and not so much because her foot hurt. Anyway, they later went out onto the beach and she got about a foot or two into the water and she started SCREAMING. Her dad carried her up past the pool and I thought, “Here we go again!” Only this time she had blood streaming from her foot and I felt bad immediately for mentally rolling my eyes. I heard her from their condo screaming, “I WANT TO GO HOME!” Roberto, the manager (who is awesome, by the way), heard her screaming and I told him that she had hurt her foot pretty badly. He ran to their condo and ended up taking her to the local doctor. I saw her later in the pool, calm and quiet, with a band-aid around her toe. It turns out she had gotten stung by a baby sting ray. I saw her the next day, before we left, at the pool, and she was with another girl who was also staying at the condo. I heard her say, “I have something YOU CAN’T HAVE! MANGO!”  Anyway, like I said, Monday was a beautiful day. I drank Sunshine Punch and we hung out on the beach the entire afternoon. That night we went to Cantina Habanero to drink and say our good-byes. I bought an ice cream cone just off the town square and it was HUGE. Now I know why he wouldn’t give me three different flavors – only two. They wouldn’t have all fit on the cone!!!! God, I couldn’t eat it fast enough. It melted all over my dress….but it tasted good. Tuesday we got up early in order to enjoy some time on the beach before going to Playa. Our friend Mike picked us up. It turns out we had to go to the airport first to pick up someone Mike works with. We had a beer there while we waited for him and then we were off to Playa, once again with a cooler full of beer in the truck. Here are some random shots of Puerto Morelos. Mike:  flamboyanes, which I decided I wanted to incorporate into my tattoo:  a pretty house: 
Last edited by Sue; 07-15-2009 at 02:41 PM.. |
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