Cancun part 4

Ok, so HERE'S the picture of the sinkhole. (I forgot to include it on my last set.)
So, that brings us to Friday night. On Friday night, we had a special cocktail hour and then the big Gala reception. A fancy plated dinner, desert and big "surprise" entertainment. Here's a picture for all the foodies of our desert. Cute huh? The pryamid was a chocolate mousse with Mexican spices, the sign and crescent moon were made out of chocolate, the sauce was a mango puree, fresh berries and a "mini cheesecake". (We had to laugh because the cheesecake was no more than a tablespoon. It was tasty though. The suprise entertainment was the band "LIFEHOUSE" and they were absolutely incredible. (They sing "Hangin' by a Moment" and several other pop/rock songs that you would know if you heard them.) I have video that I shot on my camera, but since we were right in front of some speakers and so close to them it's distorted :( Oh and "yes" that is gum in the lead singer's mouth (Jason Wade") the blonde guy in the white tee. After they finished and did a great encore, we were treated to a band called "Boogie Nights" (lots of 70s/some early 80s) music. We didn't stay for that as we were completley exhausted.

Here's a picture of the clocks in the lobby. I always like to see the different time zones. (Cancun, MX is an hour behind Virginia.) I didn't even think about shooting any other pix of the HUGE lobby. It was pretty incredible though.

The next picture is the view when you walk out of our room. (All of the rooms open up with balcony's looking at the ocean and then when you leave your room, you get a similar great view.) We stayed at the Fiesta Americana Grand Coral Beach. (There are pictures of the outside of the hotel online if you want to search for them.) They say that they have the best part of the beach of Cancun...who knows...we really liked it though, so no complaints for us. We did find out that all of the beaches in Cancun are public, so the locals and people from other hotels could come to "your" area of beach. We didn't have any kind of "influx" of people and in general when looking at the other hotels (while on the jetski) none of them seemed overly crowded on the shore. There was ample room for everyone. One thing we discovered after talking with our tablemates at dinner one evening was that the next hotel over from us had a large pool with their own personal dolphins in it and you could actually go swimming with the dolphins there! We never made it over to the hotel to check it out up close, but I did take a photo from one of the balcony's in our hotel. (It's too blurry to see though, so I am not sharing it.)

Ok, so now it's Saturday and it's our FREE day. We stayed out on the beach ALL day. With complimentary drinks all day. We ate our lunch under our tiki hut umbrella, went on a jetski and basically just relaxed. It actually worked out perfectly because Saturday was the BEST day weather wise too. We had toyed with the idea of going on another excursion to an underwater cave/tour/river thingy, but decided we needed some sun. Unfortunatley DH got burned in several places, I only got burned on 1 side of my leg. (Not exactly sure how that happened since I put lotion on.) Anyhow, we never made it into the pool...can you believe that? And we never got to enjoy drinks at the swim up bar either. That evening we had dinner at one of the local places called El Sombrero and it was very tasty. One thing I was worried about was that things in general would be overly spicy. I didn't have to worry at all. Things were regular and almost mild at all of the events and restaurants. They did have several different sauces so you could "kick it up a notch" and DH learned quickly that he liked their green sauce (made from Habanero's), but he would break out into a sweat if he overdid it. Saturday night, they had one final get together. It was a private party for us at the Hard Rock Cafe, but we ended up not going. It didn't start until 9 and we were sunburned and tired...plus we had to be up at 2am to check out and catch our shuttle bus back to the airport for an incredibly early flight.

Which reminds me. Our shuttle was supposed to depart the hotel at 4am...it never showed up! We ended up sharing a taxi with another guy and heading back on a very WILD ride. The guy was driving so fast - it was insane. DH caught a look at the speedometer and told me not to look. I can tell you this though...when we caught the shuttle bus from the airport to the hotel, the ride took a good hour. Our taxi ride to the airport from the hotel (mind you it was about 4:15am and no traffic) took 15 minutes. We caught a quick bite of breakfast at Bubba Gump's and then caught our plane and headed back to the states (through Miami - what a strange airport!) and then back to Dulles. It was a fantastic trip.