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Published: March 6th 2014
Why are we the only ones with sarongs instead of the Club Med towels?!There's nothing like the first day of a vacation. Everything is still new and exciting and you have the satisfaction of knowing that you have it all ahead of you. We headed down to breakfast on our first morning and was able to sit outside to eat this time, now that the pesky mosquitoes were tucked up safely in bed. After a leisurely and rather hearty meal (damn those breakfast buffets!) we strolled down to find a good spot by the pool to spend the day. Eeek, what the heck! It was only 9:30am and it appeared that all of the sunbeds were taken, each one being occupied by a coral-colored Club Med towel but only about 10% occupied by people. We quickly learned that you had to rush down before breakfast and reserve your lounge chair for the day by 8am at the latest! I really hate this system, but it was a case of "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em!" Luckily, after circling the whole pool, we managed to find two free ones right in the corner. They truly were the last free ones! Now that we had our spot secured by the pool, it was time to
Aqua-aerobicsbring on the cheesy activities! Our daily routine entailed joining in with aqua-aerobics at 11:45 each morning. I am pretty sure the teacher hated us as everyone seemed to take it pretty seriously apart from us. We would hang out at the back and Kyla would have fun being splashed around to the music, playing peek-a-boo with the exercise weights, and generally acting the clown! Right after aqua-aerobics was "Crazy Signs." This entailed several of the employees dancing on the edges of the pool to super cheesy songs such as "Blame it on the Boogie" while all the tourists encircles the pool with them, copying their actions. Kyla loved it so we tried to make it every day! Other activities we did were archery and Scott did a few pool team games such as water polo. Being so pregnant, I couldn't try a lot of the activities such as the climbing wall or the trapeze.
Some days we went down to the beach for an hour or so. Kyla absolutely loved it and could have played in the waves for hours if our backs could hold out that long. It is really tiring holding onto a toddler's arm as
Pool steps - Kyla's favorite placethey run fearlessly into the waves covered in slippery sun cream! Luckily she could be enticed out of the water to play in the sand, especially on the day she found a turtle and an iguana made out of sand. She tried to "feed" the turtle some shells but ended up caving away half of its face - oops! I was amazed when she ran down to the water's edge, gathered some wet sand and pretty much repaired it all by herself! Her favorite part of the beach, however, was getting to play in the shower afterwards. I had felt guilty about wasting water until I saw the kids' club set up a slip 'n' slide one day. The hose pipe was on for at least one continuous hour so I guess a bit of shower water isn't too bad in comparison! The kids' club would hold a different activity each afternoon and we tried to join most. Besides the slip 'n' slide, we took Kyla to see the tie-dye T-Shirt craft and the treasure hunt. She was obviously a bit too young for most things but would love to run off and play on the playground. It was seriously
Reading by the poolhard to drag her away so we ended up having to take the long way around at various times so as to avoid her seeing it!
One day we took the short boat ride over to Ixtapa Island. From what I had read in our guide book, the side you got dropped off at was quite commercial but you could walk to the backside of the island and reach Playa Corales, which supposedly had some nice snorkeling. I was expecting that we would have about a 15 minute trek through the trees on a dirt path to reach an almost deserted beach, where we would lay out our sarongs under the shade of a tree while we took turns swimming in the clear waters. Hmm, it wasn't exactly what I had imagined. It was only a five minute walk across the island and Playa Corales was covered, and I mean covered, in beach loungers and umbrellas. As we walked along the beach every single restaurant owner hassled us to take one of their chairs. I'd worried that an hour and a half was way too short but soon realized that it was ample. We threw down our sarongs on
Ordering a mocktail at the pool bara free patch of sand and spent most of the time at the water's edge. It was definitely more clear than the beach in front of the resort due to the dense coral sand, but there were a ton of rocks too and a strong side current, making it quite stressful with a baby. By the time we got on the boat to go back to Club Med, we were really ready to just go by the pool again!
As the week went on, meals got easier to navigate. They would have a different theme each night but the basics were always in the same spots. I was actually quite healthy, opting for "safe" things such as grilled veggies all the time. Seven months pregnant wouldn't be a good time to get food poisoning! Scott, on the other hand, tried everything including raw fish and lots of shellfish (and he did end up sick, but that's for the next blog!) With there being such a huge variety of food, I had decided that it would be the perfect time to experiment with Kyla and get her to try new foods. Each night, I would make several runs to the
Yummy!buffet, bringing back different foods each time. As she rejected each one, I would run back and get new things for her to try. It was so incredibly wasteful and I felt guilty at first, but then I'd remind myself of how much we had paid for this trip and I didn't feel quite as bad. Never mind that the world is full of starving children, I just wanted mine to eat something with a bit of nutrition at any expense! As the days went by, she ended up eating fewer and fewer foods until all she would eat was a doughy white hot dog bun with a slice of processed cheese! She was even rejecting her prior favorite food, yoghurt. By day four she seemed to be on a hunger strike and barely ate a thing other than bottles of milk - this was my worst nightmare!
After dinner we would go to the theater to watch a show. Some were surprisingly good but others were totally cheesy, but Kyla loved them so we were happy! By night five we noticed that Kyla felt really warm and seemed super lethargic so we headed back to the room. A
archeryquick swipe of her forehead with the thermometer told us that she had a fever of 102 degrees F! Yikes! We gave her baby Tylenol and then went to bed, checking on her once in the night (fever was below 100) and just hoped she would be OK by morning... Little did we know that this was the beginning of the end of the vacation! 😞
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