Well, enough whining from me. It was a beautiful, hot, sunny day here, as seems to be the norm. We slept in, had a lazy morning, did some reading, and went down to the beach, ahhhh. Well, the others went down first, and I just wanted to check my E-mail... Yes, E-mail, eBay, the Canadian news, argh - yes the conveniences of modern communications, more of a burden really. Before the days of the Internet, we would just lose track of happenings back home and catch up when we return. But now, I can be more on top of Winnipeg news than someone in the 'Peg - because I have more time to sit and hit "refresh" on http://www.cbc.ca/news and http://www.winnipegfreepress.com . Kind of sad when you think of it. In fact, last night at 23h00, I felt like listening to the news in the 'Peg, so zoomed over to http://www.cjob.com and listened to the local news. Technology!!!
Then again, I can call my mom daily using Skype or some of the other telephone programs; I can use E-mail to keep tabs on my friends and monitor their goings on; I can pay the bills that I forgot to pay last week before leaving on holidays (oops); and harass those I call my friends : "check out my blog, I'll be calling with a verbal quiz when I get back!"
Anyway, with the my electronic media craving duly satiated, I went down and sat on the beach. Shortly thereafter it was lunchtime, and once again we had a great meal here at the condo.
Eric had a siesta, the rest of the men went down to Scott's Travel Co. to enquire about day trips. There are several, perhaps dozens, of tourist information and travel arrangement shops, but most of the others are actually offices of timeshares, so we'd rather avoid those - we had a celebrated encounter with a timeshare when on a trip to Fort Lauderdale many years ago, and don't want a repeat!
So, what are we considering? A full day whale watching and snorkeling sight seeing boat trip for all ten of us - for us, special deal, 500 pesos each, includes lunch. Eric and I are considering jungle canopy zip line, 1042 pesos each. And I see something about a full day tequila tour up into the old country, sounds interesting. We'll see what happens - this is all new, all new to me! Me, the risk averse, afraid-of-heights engineer, hmm.
Eric purchased a big straw hat for himself yesterday at what we call the "car of hats". It just happens to be two doors down from Scott's. The proprietor told Eric that he has 3 wives and 14 children, so couldn't give Eric the price he wanted, he needed to eat. Well, Eric being the hard hearted guy that he is, didn't think the fellow looked like a Mormon, so insisted on (and got) the price he wanted.
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| Car of Hats and its proprietor |
I didn't get to talk to the proprietor, I got his young, young, daughter. Those big dark eyes pleaded with me when I tried to get a lower price!
"Please, my commission," she pleaded.
"It will still be a fine commission," I advised her.
Well, finally we came to an agreement, then she turned me over to the big guy, who tried to raise the price back up again. I'm not very good at bargaining, but I got my hat at my price. Did I overpay? I have no doubt. Oh well, again leaving money in the hands of those who likely need it...
We trekked back to the condo, where Eric and his cousins were watching Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, I had forgotten how much humour was in that movie! We only made about a third the way through it, when we decided to head down to the beach while Christmas dinner cooked. Once again, the sun was wonderful. I think we're going to run out of sunscreen, what a crisis!
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| Back on the beach with my new, big hat! |
Christmas dinner was a wonderful cooked ham, wow. Dessert was amazing, thanks to Sweet Thing bakery. Is there such a thing as too much chocolate? I don't think so, but tonight we came close! Plus some great ice cream.
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| Hooray for chocolate! And, hooray for the Sweet Thing bakery! |
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