HEAVEN ON EARTH

Our view as we walked into the hotel lobby

Our room building - building 18

It's Sunday morning so we have spent a day and a half on the resort so far, and it's been awesome! When we arrived on Friday afternoon, we did the bare minimum at the front desk, wanting to get to the buffet and then the beach as quickly as possible. A nice touch was being served a delicious piña colada right there in line at the front desk! We immediately went to our room to get changed and find on our map where we should head for lunch. We are staying at a hotel called Iberostar Paraiso del Mar, which is located about 10 minutes outside of Playa del Carmen. The hotel is one of five Iberostar resorts on this same property, so throughout our stay we are able to use amenities from around the Iberostar property, which includes additional buffets and restaurants, pools, and entertainment. With so many hotels and activities, the property is quite large, so I'm sure it will take is a couple days to learn our way around. 

Beautiful blue water

We decided to slip into our bathing suits (of course still rocking the matching hats) and head to the lunch buffet by the beach before hitting the sand. (Never thought I would say that phrase...buffet then beach, in a bikini...not the best order of events!) So we both ate a couple servings of fries, some ice cream, chips and guacamole, and some other uber-healthy items, in addition to another piña colada. Now, beach time. We grabbed a mojito to go and headed to the sand. The beach was fairly quiet, with people spread out enough that we were both able to take a 30 minute cat nap while listening to the ocean waves. 

Perfect place for a pool side nap

Bridge over the lazy river

Didn't eat this...



Soya Appetizer



Now we decided it was time to check out the pools and pool bars. We found empty chairs, immediately dropped our stuff and got in the water, swimming over to closest pool bar. We were just floating around chatting about how wonderful and relaxing this was, when we noticed some activity starting up near us in the pool. There was a rope and a pseudo surf board in the pool, but most importantly a group of very cute guys! :) Thankfully, one of those guys came over to explain the game and encourage us to play. You needed to climb up on the surfboard, they pushed you towards the rope (about a foot over the water), where you jumped over the rope and needed to land back on the surfboard. We were very hesitant to play and said we wanted to watch some people try before we did. The more people we watched, the less likely we were to attempt this pool game. The guy picking people to participate kept calling us out in front of everyone and we kept saying no, so eventually we had to run away while he was distracted. We decided it was only day uno and we would do some pool games another day. 

 We then decided to come back to the room and get ready for our dinner reservations at the Japanese restaurant at 7. We get to have two dinners at the resorts nice restaurants during our trip, so we decided to pick our first and last nights for those dinners. The dinner was delicious, and Kelly and I, feeling super fat, were the last ones left at the table after our second trip to the dessert bar for this amazing chocolate mouse concoction. And here goes the delicious-looking food pictures (the majority of my camera memory on this trip)...



Steak /shrimp combo and the veggies being cooked





The delicious dessert... Before and After




Kelly and I at the Japanese dinner


We went back to the room after dinner to change for going out and then went to the nightly show in the hotel's theater. The show was decently entertaining, an adult show with members of the audience competing for who could do the best strip tease and other tasks. We left there after only 30 minutes to drop the camera off at the room and go to the main hotel bar and then the Star Wars themed discoteca named "Galaxy". Well, none of our plans worked out when we both planked on our beds the moment we got into the room and passed out!

So after our 10 hours of sleep since we passed out so early, we woke up to our first full day at the resort - so excited! We headed to the hotels main buffet for breakfast, which was amazing. We were greeted at the door with a glass of cactus orange juice, delicious! We then were showed to a table, and went to scope out the buffet - and were very impressed. Being the food (and chocolate) obsessed people we are, we were in heaven. Donuts, churros, omelettes, waffle bar, hash browns, and lots more made our first meal of the day a success! We then decided to head to the pool to try to make friends to go out with that night. We swam up to the pool bar and had a couple drinks there before deciding we should lay out for some sun. We were sitting there relaxing and talking about how this place couldn't get any better when we were proven wrong. An employee of the hotel spa came up and asked if we had been offered the trial massage yet. Why no, actually, we have not! So, right there in our poolside chairs, we each got a five minute trial massage, which was wonderful. When that was done, two more hotel employees were walking around with a toucan bird taking pictures with people holding the bird. We both wanted to do this so we swam across the pool to have our pictures taken. One taken together, then each of us took 3 more: one holding the bird in our hands, one on our shoulder, and one on top of our head. Kelly's on the shoulder pictures turned into the bird chomping on her sunglasses and my on the shoulder turned into the bird pooping down my back and me immediately jumping into the pool. :)

Then, we decided it was time to hit the swim up pool bars. We saw a big group of people around our age so decided to be social. Turns out they were there as part of a wedding party for the week, which of course I loved because my dream is to have a destination wedding one day, and this group sold me on that idea even more! We ended taking "dirty frogs" with the group - when we asked what this shot was, no one had any idea other than "something with tequila in it" - uhh ohh! We took a few of those, went back and forth between pools, meeting people at each bar we went to. Somehow the hotel staff - the "Star friends", who host all of the activities around the resort - convinced us to learn the bachata on the pool deck, so we proceeded to dance in front of everyone for a solid 30 minutes. Looking back on it, and watching others do the dance lessons later on, might not have been our most graceful moments.

Anyways, we continued meeting friends, played some pool football, took a few more tequila shots mixed in with the Bahamas Mamas, and somehow we both ended up back at the room around 5 in the afternoon, where we passed out the rest of the night. So much for our plans to go into the city and possibly to the resort discoteca or even to Coco Bongo. 

Mexico - 2

Sydne and Kelly -  0

Now we are ready to start the day this morning. We plan on staying at the resort until mid afternoon then heading into the city of Playa del Carmen for the food festival called "Taste of Playa". And tonight - WE WILL MAKE IT OUT...hopefully!