Day 11 - Toallas

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I was ready for a big hangover Sunday in our new digs at the Hostel Playa, with only a small wall-fan to blow my headache away. Ian, however, was having none of it. I’ll remember this. He got up early and went souvenir shopping for the girlfriend and family, because he’s nice like that. (My mum always tells me not to spend my money on her, so I don’t.) He came back with a bag full of noisy souvenirs and, thankfully, managed to avoid getting his ear pierced. One of the pushy shopkeepers in Playa tried to sell him a silver earing with an inscription of his birthday in the Mayan calendar. He walked out when the guy offered to ‘throw in the piercing for free’. I reckon it would have clashed with his gold chain anyway.

After our slightly conspicuous exit last night, we wanted to avoid the reception at Rui Palace Mexico, but our wristbands still assured us day visitor entry to the Riu’s other palace, the Maya Riviera. Technically, you can’t eat there, but the fact the wristbands were exactly the same meant we could discard that one. Our biggest problem was that our towel cards for the pool didn’t work at this palace and we couldn’t really ask reception to exchange them. Don’t worry though; some more basic Spanish, a cheeky smile and some faux, child-like learning difficulties when trying to learn the Spanish word for ‘towel’ encouraged the young girl on the towel desk to give me two.

On the beach, we made some new friends playing beach volleyball with a number of Hollywood actors, including Owen Wilson. He was too focused on winning to talk much and when he did speak it was with a perfect Dutch accent. I can only assume he was in character for a new movie. Then, after showering in the staff changing rooms, we were supposed to meet Luis at the Japanese restaurant over at the other Palace. We had a dilemma: it was too dark for approach from the beach side and walking in past reception would have been wristband-suicide. Sorry Luis. Instead, we destroyed the Maya’s buffet and befriended a new waiter called Omar, who would be pivotal in the following night’s activities. He also explained to Ian that he can’t go round saying ‘de nargas’ instead of ‘de nada’ (meaning ‘no worries’) even if it does make people laugh. When Ian asked why, Omar drew him a very graphical picture. We laughed.

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Photos

Pre-buffet, all smiles
pic taken by Omar