Riviera Maya Vacation - Part Seven

Yep.......it is all about the beach........and I absolutely love this beach. I actually have nothing to complain about. All of the people were friendly. Everything was rather well kept and taken care of. The fish were friendly........hehehe. Many things to look at and focus on...........very relaxing atmosphere, yet fun. Very therapeutic and not hectic at all. Ocean City, MD is not like this. Then again, Ocean City is not on the Riviera Maya. The water is not cold here and it is very calm.
I was on this beach each and every day right after breakfast and stayed there until almost dinnertime. We hardly spent any time in the pools.......yet the pools are very nice. I suppose I would need a few more days for that..........oh well.........it IS all about the beach.

Here are a few short videos of the beach. They describe it far better than what I could write about it. Notice the sounds........and imagine yourself sitting there, as I did............







That's it for now.........I have a lot more to share with everyone........Princess Fartknocker became a star on stage.......and yes, there is some video of that.

Stay Tuned!

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Riviera Maya Vacation - Part Eleven

Yeah..........I will miss this place.........I am missing it right now as I write this. None of the pains of Baltimore here..........no Mayor Sheila Dixon trial..........no thugs roaming around..........no pestering phone calls............no places to have to be...........no stress............hmmmm........well.........maybe a little bit (I will explain later).

This sure beats dodging old ladies and their grocery cart steering skills at the supermarket.

So I sat there............and looked around.........lots to look at..........

I looked to the north...........in the distant, there is an "abandoned" resort just past the flags.......I might just want to go have a closer look.............but I am not much for being able to walk long distances.......especially walking on sand.

It was time again for water aerobics.......they did this every day.

What they do is bring out a large speaker and hook it up to a cd player.......plug it in to an extension cord and pump some thumping exercise music out towards the water.........unfortunately, they set it up right behind our lounge chairs. It wouldn't have been so bad except that one of the staff had to keep running back and forth from the water to "fix" the bad speaker connection. I got tired of hearing it sputter and quit........so I got up and "fixed" it myself so the guy didn't have to run back and forth. I actually got cheers from people.....hehehe.

I got tired of that..........so I decided that I would try to walk past the flags and see the "abandoned" resort. Supernurse stayed in the lounge chair as I walked.

I kept thinking to myself..........I must be crazy to even attempt this.........what if I drop?........Then what? I stopped frequently and paused because of the extreme pain in my upper thigh/hip. On this day it was the hottest it had been and I felt like a steamed crab on Labor Day.

But I trudged along..........it ain't easy walking in sand..........but I made it. The beach front here is somewhat natural.........and a bit unkept. I could see the turtle nesting areas.......concave dips in the sand. I didn't get to see the turtles.......they do their thing at night.

The reason that this resort is "abandoned" is that the government of Mexico stepped in and declared it off limits in order to protect the turtles.

This was the beach bar...............I rested by sitting on the rope that separated it from the beach.

I decided that I had walked far enough already and that I just might survive the walk back to Supernurse.

Here is another turtle nesting spot.Each spot had a small sign which read "No Mover"........huh? I guess that means "Do Not Disturb".

When your leg hurts like hell and you look in front of you and see just how far down the beach you have yet to walk........well..............it just adds to the pain and stress.........ahhhhh.........I told you that I would mention the stress. There would not have been any stress at all except for the fact that I was participating in what you might call a "natural cardio stress test". If I survive this without dropping......my heart must be doing fairly well.

At this point I was beginning to sweat like it was no tomorrow..........uh oh........and I had nothing to drink with me. So, determined as I was.........I kept on walking and walking.......and it hurt even worse.....I honestly did not know if I would make it. I remember thinking that if I collapsed right here and kicked the bucket, I could not ask for a better place to drop.......it was beautiful............but I also remember thinking what a hardship it would be for Supernurse...........okay........this means I have to make it the entire way. Well.......I made it.........I got back to my lounge chair and plopped down next to Supernurse. I could hardly breathe and was sweating profusely. Supernurse and I walked over to the beach bar and got some drinks and sat down in the shade. There was about fifteen or so minutes there when I was wondering if I was gonna make it..........I felt really ill. After drinking down some cold soft drinks I started feeling better. I never had any chest pains but I did get dehydrated. I suppose that this is what it feels like when you suffer from real exhaustion. I then got up and went back to the beach.........I was 100% better.

Life is full of challenges and sometimes you.........even foolishly.........create your own challenges. That long walk up the beach was one of those personal challenges.........and yes......perhaps a foolish one at that..........but I did it and in the process, overcame the fear and apprehension of doing such a thing. I kind of did the same thing when I was in Aruba and went snorkeling for the first time..........I cannot swim and I had to jump off a boat in deep water.............yeah.......talk about overcoming fear and apprehension...........but I did it. You know the old saying "Nothing ventured, Nothing gained."...................also........"No Pain......No Gain".

Stay tuned..............I will be wrapping this up next.

Riviera Maya Vacation - Part Three

So there I was......................at the beach................and there is nothing better that I can think of doing other than being right there..................and absorbing everything............the sun......the scent........the sound of the waves reaching the shore..........my eyes being filled with so many things to stimulate my brain...............the taste of the air..............the sand.................the sky.............and the assorted people from all walks of life. The bold.......the shy......the pleasant........the arrogant.............the beautiful and the ugly............all of these people were here.......right there on the beach...........and while I was there looking at all of them........they were there looking at me too.......................well....................I guess I stood out just a little............they couldn't miss me with the long ponytail, the ravens shirt, and those hideous sunglasses.

When we first hit the beach, I was a bit surprized to see as many people there as I did. For weeks and weeks I had been checking out the assorted pictures of the beach that were posted on the Palladium Addicts website........and from what I saw, it never looked to me that there were ever very many people on this beach or even at this resort for whatever reason.......particularly in November. I had even been frequently checking the four webcams that are on the website. The pool cams and the beach cam............same thing...........hardly any people to see. On this day.......different story. This day I am there in person to see things with my own eyes and I like it.

We positioned ourselves right about dead center of the entire coastline of the resort....located right up front where we could be seen easily by friends or family that might happen to be checking the webcam from that Palladium Addicts website. Right away, Supernurse and SmileyNurse began their mission to soak up the sun and relax. Me?...........think of me as the "eye-witness".........hehehe.
Wouldn't you want to do this everyday?..........Look at how calm the water is............simply fantabulous..............I felt like the camera being used in a Corona commercial.

While some people just relaxed on the beach, others joined the Palladium staff for water aerobics.

At he farthest point here in this picture is the area where the turtles lay eggs.

People of all shapes and sizes...............roaming about..........and having the time of their lives.

Sometimes you have to try to look away............but it is like when you are driving on the highway and there is an accident up ahead and you just gotta turn your head and look at it.............arrrrgghhhhh!............hehehehe.

The lifeguard tower is where the beach webcam is located. The sign marks the ideal spot to wave at the camera. This was our view to the south from our spot on the beach.

A picture worth a thousand words.............and yet none of those words can even describe being there. There was trouble brewing to the south and we didn't know it at the time...........as beautiful a sight the clouds are as they dump a curtain of water to our south.

There is more to tell and more pictures to show you.
Stay tuned for Part Four!

Riviera Maya Vacation - Part Two

After we got ourselves assimilated and ready.........as if we weren't ready....hehehe.....we proceeded to roam about and begin baking in the hot sun of Quintana Roo, Mexico. It didn't take me very long to ditch my black Ravens cap.......which was baking the gray matter inside my head......so I went to one of the shops located in one of the lobbies and bought a white cap. I also had forgotten a pair of sunglasses when we left Baltimore..........how stupid was that?.......so I bought a pair of cheesy purple and white sunglasses as well. Now I was ready for the business at hand........hehehe.

The first thing I took note of is the hugeness of this resort. There is a ton of walking to get here and there.......which is good cardio.....not a bad thing for me since I need that kind of thing.......but when I walk any kind of distance.....even a short distance.......my upper right leg and hip starts killing me. Oh well......I just had to suffer through it........and what a place to suffer, eh? I would rather suffer here than in Baltimore.

Iguanas were pretty much everywhere..........well........not everywhere.........but they were around throughout the resort.......especially along walkways and near the pools. Iguanas do not bother anyone........they just hope for something to eat and they love to sit in the sun.......just like alot of people do.

It seems like there was a pool everywhere I looked. Huge pools, smaller pools for kid and even an adult pool which was a bit more secluded in that it was surrounded by bushes for privacy. The small pool in the picture above was one of those for kids. To the left was one of the huge pools.

The huge pools have, of course, pool bars.

Around the outer edges of the huge pool are lounge chairs. In the picture above, you can see that the pool has built-in loungers so you can lay right there in the pool.

I realize that it appears that there aren't many people here. This was not their busy season and the resort was not even half-full. Even if this had been their busiest season, it would still seem like it wasn't very busy because of the huge expanse of the property. I cannot write words to describe it and the pictures only go so far with telling the story........this place is the largest I had ever seen.

We spent some time at the adult pool. You can see that the jacuzzi is surrounded by large white columns. As you can see in the picture, I was fighting for my life and reaching for help so I wouldn't drown.........hehehe.

The adult pool area was very nice and the only shenanigans that I saw was a few exposed breasts.........one pair of which would float above the water.....hehehe. The other entertainment in that regard was an interacial couple that played in the pool. The woman was huge..........let's put it this way..........when she got the the pool, the water level rose at least several inches.......hehehe. As it happened, she and her husband frolicked in the pool and I couldn't help but watch as he attempted to lift her out of the water and body slam her back into the water......it was hilarious to watch......but a bit sickening to see her exposed extremely huge sagging breasts flapping around in the water..........then again.......there are some people that enjoy such a thing. No harm was done and it was obvious that the couple was simply enjoying themselves and having a great time.

Don't you wish you could have been there?

Supernurse was soaking up the sun as she listened to music on her mp3 player. One of my favorite things to do is to sit next to her and watch her enjoy the music that I put on her mp3 player. I could do that all day. She was happy, happy, happy.......and I was delighted.

The pools alone would be more than enough for some folks..........but I am not really a pool person since I cannot swim. Somehow, along the way, in my life, I had acquired a love of the beach. There is something about the beach that is good for the soul.........and for me, it is a necessity. The problem is that I might only get to a beach only a few times in a year. Needless to say.........I was here for the beach and hit the beach i did.

In this picture, I am looking south towards the rocky reef area. This area is prime for snorkeling, which I didn't do this time. The salt water pool is located just on the other side of the point......but more on that later. Our suite was located in the 3-story villas that you can see in the distance.

What do you do when you are at the beach and the sun is going down behind you?........well.........you sit right there and enjoy that which is right before your eyes. It was like being in a Corona commercial.

One day at the beach, we spotted a cloud that was forming a water spout. It was interesting to watch it form and unform and eventually it made it to a complete funnel down to the water. While this was happening..........I was in the water with Captain Morgan. Supernurse took the opportunity to snap off a couple pictures of the event.

Perhaps the water spout was an omen. Maybe it was a sign of things to come. At the time.......I had no idea what could be heading our way.

Stay tuned..........there is plenty more to tell and there are plenty more pictures to show you.

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Caribbean Cruise - Part 8

Hispaniola is one large island consisting of two countries..........Dominican Republic and Haiti. As impoverished the Dominican is.........Haiti is said to be in far worse shape. Maybe it is not thought of as a vacation spot but the Royal Caribbean Intl. cruise company owns a piece of property in Haiti called Labadee.

This is Labadee, Haiti as seen from where the Grandeur Of The Seas was anchored. It looked pretty good from here and we were told that this place is fun.

One of the first things I noticed was that the place was well landscaped and the signs were not chicken scratch. This is a bonafide resort area..........without the hotels. The grandchildren wanted some fun and this was the place for that.

Lots of stuff to do here.........and kids lots of stuff especially for them.....like this waterpark with all sorts of inflatable things to jump on and climb upon..........but for a fee, of course.

The Monsterchild and Inky. I must say that of all the various places I have travelled, this spot had the warmest and calmest water. Perfect for us.

Aside from having fun in the water, there is some shopping here. Two large buildings that house kiosks and shops. One building was obviously a higher scale and the other was extremely local. No harassment in the upper scale building........but an entirely different story in that other building. You could negotiate some pretty great deals with the locals. You cannot pass by the building without having arms of the salespeople reaching through windows and other openings.....trying to get your attention and inviting you in to see their wares.

Next to the buidings was an area of open market to stroll past.

And, yes, we did negotiate on some Haitian artwork. All handmade stuff piled high. The vendors would not let you walk away without spending some money....no matter how little you spend. If they wanted 20 bucks for one thing.........you could end up getting five or six things for 10 bucks. Apparently, Royal Caribbean arranges for the locals to make a few bucks here within certain guidelines and rules of conduct. These people are grateful for the opportunity to make a living. Consider that the annual per capita income on Hispaniola is about $100 US dollars............that's right!........could any one of us live on a hundred bucks per year? Also, Labadee is fenced off from the rest of Haiti. It is a secure area and we are safe. Elsewhere in Haiti, it is not recommended to roam around........desperate people do desperate things.

One thing becomes obvious to you if you visit island countries...........music is a huge part of their lives. Not only does it provide some income........music is a necessity in their culture. My guess is that RCI enlisted these guys to perform on their property, but I suspect that the only pay they got was when people like me bought their cd. Everybody has bought a compact disc of music, somewhere at home......and I guarantee you that never has anyone been so grateful that you bought it, as these guys. They were absolutely excited that I bought their cd.

One note.........this band played continuously the entire day!

Plenty of beach chairs, and never over crowded.

Almonds. I had never seen that before. Some people never noticed this............they were busy looking at..................

.............this kind of stuff........hehehe.

The weather was great and the sun was extremely hot. I guarantee you that most of the people from the ship got toasted here. Very strong sun here.

In contrast to the area of the waterpark and calm waters..............a stroll to the other side of the resort takes you to an entirely different beach. Waves and a zip line. Alot of wind too.

The sun was going down and we had our fill of this place. It was as advertised by the cruise ship.

I never dreamed I would set foot here.........and yet I did.

And so we set sail again............we would be heading north for home. Two long days ahead at sea. Last port of call........Baltimore.

Stay tuned.......I gotta wrap all of this up.