As much as I love the beach, it can be difficult to walk from here to there, particularly if your water shoes are wet and filled with sand. It’s like wearing cement overshoes. Took me five minutes to rinse everything out before heading in, and I was observed the entire time by a lizard of generous proportions.

It’s those interactions I appreciate about being here. The sense that you’re just one or two steps away from being someone else completely different in a completely different time, looking at an iguana with mutual incomprehension. Our inability to understand each other is a constant, but I suppose so is our ability to coexist.

Lunch at the Poseidon:

They have music now. They do not need music. This means no one can talk. It’s a decision I do not understand. Is this a nightclub? This is not a nightclub. Yesterday there was a fellow strumming on an electric guitar, and while it was a bit loud, it wasn’t distracting. Today they had a guy crooning to backup tracks, and it obliterated any chance of conversation you could want to have. We were reduced to getting in quick snatches of chat between songs.

Howwasyourtennis

Itwasgreathowwasthebeach

LA LA LA LA LA LA BOMBA

The first pass through the line accumulated some gustatory mistakes, so I went back to a big enormous bowl filled with various meats. The Trough of Mexican Meat. That was good.

Let's get some coffee and dessert! Or rather, let's try to get some dessert, a decision complicated by lack of motor skills.

Then we decided to look at the spa. It’s in the building where the gym’s located, and since the gym isn’t that big, we wondered what occupied the rest of the complex.

Briefly:

Eventually we discovered a rooftop pool we hadn't noticed before.

Far above the teeming hoi polloi, of course.

I do wonder about the economics of this place. You think, well, labor isn’t a high cost. Maybe someone got a deal with the concrete monopoly. They knew a guy with a line in marble. I’d expect to pay twice what we are paying, and it includes daily lessons and sessions at a large, modern tennis facility. As it turns out, our niece is staying at a property in the hotel zone, something we learned about when her mom sent us a text saying we should see if we could get together!

Uh, no, because a) we’re a long ways away, and really no because b) any 20-year-old here with friends does not want aunt and uncle to show up.

I looked up the place, and the reviews are not kind. The main attribute that comes up in the guest feedback is “guests said the rooms / bathrooms were dirty,” and you got treated like mud if you didn’t sit through the timeshare pitch. Jacuzzis belched out yellow water with brown particles. And so on. Possibly it’s a dump. But there’s a certain type of well-I-never person who expects to be treated like a queen and gets sniffy at the first thing that’s just off or wrong, and enters a state of accumulating grievances.

—

Took at nap at 5, and was convinced that a mob was down below, led by a raving madman. The thump of the music, the exhortations, the chants - I’ve no idea what I was hearing. Possibly pool music. 1 star! Wish I could give zero! I dreamed my wife had a fresh scratch on her cheek, and when I woke realized that was proof of REM. All I need is a quick dip in the REM pool and I’m good, ready to tackle the steak of the evening.

What I really, really want is a hamburger. My craving for one has started to become an obsession.

Dinner at the Mexican restaurant. Of course this is not a review; who cares? It's a study of the decor. The marketing. The presentation.

Charming waiter. He understood exactly what I meant when I said I wanted the Bucket of Mexican Meat. But first, the small things:

Ole, I guess: who doesn't want to dine under the gaze of four busts of a petulant teen Beethoven?

At the end of the night, the usual place - with shadows cast by the lights of the dance floor.

Life as an Apple iPod ad.

And that was the day, more or less. Tomorrow: RAWK OUT, GRINGOS

		Now two ways to chip in!