Allure of the Seas - Day 6 - Viva Mexico

Today, I woke up with one thought and one thought only. I need to breakup with Andrew! I'll tell him that I think we should start seeing other people and that it's me and not him, and hopefully he won't take it too hard and understand. 

Breakfast would be in the Main Dining Room. Why? Because it’s an option and we’ve never eaten there for breakfast before. Same routine applied, eat breakfast, go back to our rooms to change and get ready, meet on Deck 5, then proceed to get off the ship together, and of course once we’re out there, take pictures and put on sunscreen. That was the schedule and I just accepted it.

Once we got into the port there was a lot of shopping to be done, but we didn’t bother with it now, since we knew it’d be there still when we came back.

We stood around for a bit and tried to decide on what we were going to do, there was the Forum Shops that the cruise line was recommending for some good shopping, but after talking to my group, discovered that they weren’t really interested in shopping. Go figure! Okay, so the beach it is then!

We walk towards the cab, I see a guy hold up a sign that reads he can offer rides for 14 people, we had a group of 15, Ly was off doing his own fishing excursion, I approach the guy to find out if he’s willing to take 15 people, he told him that we wanted to go to the beach area, he suggested a place that was about 15 minutes away, (every time one a Mexican, gave me a estimated time, I would add 10 minutes to it, no, it’s not a racial thing, it’s just that I think they shorten the time frame for you to get you to go with them, since you’re working on precious time). He said that for $40 it would include a round trip ride to the beach, entrance to the beach, and snorkel equipment would be included, this sounded like a pretty good deal, except one thing, the cost per person. I think we talked him down to about $30 per person, but still felt that it was just too much. At that point everyone in my group became an expert negotiator, and several people were shouting out different things and all trying to talk to him at once trying to get him to lower the price down, so I just simply walked away.

It wasn’t that I was upset or anything, I just felt that you guys got this and could handle it, I’ll go talk to another Mexican and see what he can do for us and compare. So I walk a little further up and talk to a bloke, I tell him that we want to go to a specific beach, the one the other driver recommended before, just so we would be comparing apples to apples, and he goes, why do you want to go there? That beach is full of rocks, it’s a great scuba diving spot, but not the best beach spot, he then suggests the Palancar Beach. Say’s that it’s a lot better, 5 minutes further though, but same deal, $20 per person, round trip ride, entrance into the beach and snorkel and kayaking would be included! Who knows he could have been working for that beach.

$20 per person sound alright, but the good part is that now we can negotiate and get it even lower, at this point I’m rejoined by my entire group, and we’re all listening attentively to the new information, I guess negotiations with the other guy didn’t go so well?

We talk to Alex, the tour operator guy and try to get him to drop the price down to $15, he said no he couldn’t do it, after some back and forth attempts at haggling, he said okay, he’ll do it for $120 for each van, since there was 15 of us, we would require two vans, some quick math tells us that it works out to $16 per person, okay so $1 higher than our projected mark, but okay, we’ll bite. Done!

So he walks us over to his two drivers and introduces us, coincidentally one of the drivers is also named Alex. He was a nice talkative guy, telling us about the area, asked us if there was any other places we wanted to go, such as shopping, a free tequila factory tour, or to visit some Mayan ruins. Did you say FREE tequila? DONE! I’ll take the Shopping and Tequila for $1,000 Alex! We had charted these two vans for about 4-5 hours, so it was definitely doable.

Once we got to the beach, the first thing they have us do, is to take a group photo of all of us with Sombrero’s on our heads, of course we all knew that they would try to sell us the pictures in the end. After that we get in and notice that it’s a rather small, private and secluded beach and not the cleanest. Not being clean as in the sand not being that pure white sand and the water not being clear ocean blue. But whatever, we’re here, let’s make the most of it.

So we easily find a spot to lay our stuff down. I walk to towards the restaurant and one of the servers ask Can I help you? I simply reply, Cerveza!  He says sure and begins to tell me what they have. In the end, I once again order the bucket of Cerveza’s, two Corona’s, two SOL, two Dos Equis, and throw on two bottles of water on top, and we start a tab!

Alex tells us that whenever we are ready for snorkeling or kayaking, just to tell him about it and he’ll set it up for us. Okay, but first let’s play with Wilson. Who’s Wilson? Wilson is a volleyball, did you not watch Castaway?

The volleyball court is small and the sand is sort of rocky, but it’s still playable and okay. We play volleyball probably for about an hour and a bit until I get tired and walk away and go sit with the adults and drink my beers. Shortly after I’m joined by the rest of the group and they tell me they’re ready to go snorkeling! Awesome, I’ll go tell Alex to set it up!

How many of us were there? Alfred, Karen, Sharon, Yuju, Derrek and myself. They sat us down in a little hut asked us what size shoes we wore for our flippers, gave us our goggles and introduced us to our tour guide, no word of a lie, his name was Pedro. Walked us over to a nice spot on the beach, where we were introduced to our underwater photographer, and once again no word of a lie, his name was Alejandro. Gave us life vests that we had to blow up ourselves, told us to put our flippers on and to march backwards, he even brought along a floating mat, just in case one of us gets tired.

So we all swim out there, and every time he sees something worth mentioning he’ll point and tell us to look down, i.e. fish, reef, starfish. He even dove down and brought up a starfish for us to touch and view. We were probably out there for about an entire hour, and this whole time, neither Pedro or Alejandro had life vests on, they were treading water the whole time, and they must have been more active than we were, diving back up and down to take pictures and grabbing starfishes. Incredible!

So after about an hour, we finally make our way back to the beach and return all the equipment.

There was no actual added cost to having a tour guide, all we needed to do was to just tip the guy at the end. I go to my bag to grab my wallet to give the guy a 20. Oh shit! Where’s my wallet? I look through my bag again and can’t find it. I then feel my pockets, oh phew it’s there. Wait a minute, if it’s there and I just came back from swimming, that must mean……SHIT! I had close to $300 in there too, none of the bills were ripped or anything, but needless to say, they were all soaking wet.

At that time it didn’t occur to me to use up all my wet money first, I was just planning to go back to my room, let them all dry out then exchange them in the casino, so Alfred tipped the guy the $20.

We still have few hours to go before we return to the ship, but we’ve all worked up an appetite, so we order lunch. Holy smokes! Lunch was expensive. Right from the get go when I ordered those beers and they wanted $3 a beer, I knew this place was a rip-off, but what can you do? We don’t know our way around Mexico, and we don’t know where to find those great beer prices.

How expensive was lunch? Let’s just say the prices were comparable to what you have to pay in North America. It was almost $10 USD for a plate of three tacos, and of course they give you salsa chips to go with your meal etc. So we ordered a few plates of different stuff, beef tacos, fish tacos, chicken and beef quesadilla’s, chicken fingers. In the end our food bill came out to $129USD. Can you believe that? Lunch in Mexico cost $130 USD! Insane!

Under the direction of the parentals, I paid them with my washed but legit money, they gladly accepted it. Before we left, we also purchased a few copies of the souvenir photo that we took before we entered the place, and of course, paid them with the wet money as well.

So off we go to have a quick tour of the Tequila Factory, where we learn about how Tequila is made and of course sample free Tequila! It’s a small factory in a little village, I suspect that it’s one of the local brands that produce their own and the stuff is mostly sold locally or to tourists like ourselves. At the end of the quick 15 minute tour, we’re given sample cups and we get to sample a variety of different tequila’s, starting off with the lighter and fruitier stuff, then moving on to a chocolate flavored one, a coffee flavored one, and finally on to the good stuff, where it is just pure tequila, we even learn how to enjoy tequila, by inhaling through our noses and exhaling through our mouths.

I don’t think any one of us got drunk off the very limited tequila that we had, but after looking through the pictures, they might have suggested otherwise.

Okay, back into the car for some quick shopping in town as our time was coming to an end. We get dropped off at a high tourist location that the moment you get out of the car, they offer you refreshments, water or booze depending on your choice, and they also give you a free bracelet too. They really know how to lure the tourists in.  Everyone just goes on in their merry own way and we just walk around for a bit. I walk and walk, then I stumble upon a store that sells beer. How much for a SOL? $2? Damn, we paid three earlier, okay I’ll take one.

We walk around and I finish my beer, okay, time to pile back in the car and head back to the port for some more shopping and then back on to the ship. While we were walking around on the ports, several times, I had Mexican vendors shout out the word: Pacquiao to me. They'd just go: Pacquioa. Pacquioa. In return, i'd go, no, De La Hoya, and they would just laugh. They must have thought I was Philipino. Dammit, this happened to me the last time, I was on a cruise too!

Time to get ready for dinner and start our nightly 2 hour meal. After dinner, we made our way over to the Amber Theatre to watch Blue Planet, right from the get go, it didn’t look like it would be as spectacular as Ocean Aria or Chicago, so I didn’t even fight my urge to sleep, I just let the sleep come naturally, however every now and again, I would be awoken by applause or a loud bang and I would watch the show. Of all the shows that we watched on the ship, this one was my least favorite one, I just felt that the choreography was a bit amateurish compared to the others and that it was lacking some severe production value. Even though, it had it's own unique and memorable moments.

Finally, the show is over! You know what this means, time for our nightly rendezvous with the Doctor/Lawyer set. But wait what’s this? Only the Lawyer showed up, the Doctor is too tired to hang out? What is this rotating shifts? We spend about 5 minutes standing up talking to the Lawyer, where she quickly updates us on her day, and then says, okay, she’s gonna take off as well. Oh wells.

Today, was Day 6, and having only about 4-5 hours of sleep each night, I was really frustrated today, maybe it was the fact that we got blown off by the Doctor/Lawyer set, maybe it was the fact that I missed out on two events (Mosaic and the Love Quest Show) because I had to baby sit Andrew or maybe I was just simply tired. Either or, I was irritated and had a short nerve, so I didn’t really want to talk to anyone, just in case something would set me off and I snapped at them.

So when we were all sitting at the Bow & Stern having drinks, I chose to sit by myself. Of all the times that I’ve purchased alcoholic beverages on this ship, or heard stories, not once have I ever been carded, but this waitress over at the Bow & Stern bar, decided to card everyone and everyone just complied. I tried to sneak my drink order in and asked for a Corona, but when she asked me for ID, I said forget it. To me this was an absolute insane request. Why? Because we’re all carrying our room cards, which acts as our identification while on the ship, they have different card types and different card codes to distinguish how old you are, plus when they swipe your card in their system, all your info pops up, age, picture, name, etc. So why on earth would you need to see another piece of ID?

Because I couldn’t get my drink from that bar, I just simply walked away, and walked over to another bar, ordered my Corona, and walked back over to where everyone else was. Later I’m sitting there and my Corona is finished and she comes up to me and asks me if I want another one. Yeah, no thanks sweetheart.

What happens when you drink? You need to pee. So I go to the restroom and on my way back, I find a tag along, who is it? It's Andrew. We're walking back towards the group, even though I had no intention of rejoining the group at that time because of my new +1. We walk by the rising tide bar and I see some people, look over in our direction and wave, so I turn to Andrew and say, hey, do you know them? Turns out, they're his family members, his parents, his younger cousins, his uncles etc, they were all having a good time without him!

After Andrew turned around, I noticed that his dad gave me a thumbs up! I have to admit, that thumbs up did hurt a little. To me, it signified that Andrew did have some sort of disability, and didn't have a lot of friends, so I know I set out with one objective and that was to break up with him, but after that incident, I just couldn't find it in my heart to do it.

So we headed on over to Sorrento's where everyone else was gathered, everyone else being our new cruise friends, and we all made the collective decision to go check out the after hours party and party there till we’re all tired and head for bed.