Trip to Playa del Carmen – Day 3 of 9
Day 3 of our trip was designed as our first “full” day enjoying the resort, with the intent to hit the various pool options and the water park.
Laguna — pancakes!! 🙂
book two day trips
walk around resort to see cenotes, lots of iguanas, a drone, Mayan ruins
giant leaf — hot! 🙂
The resort is billed as an “eco” resort with lots to see, and we decided to do a tour on our own. We walked around the basic eco paths that wind through the resort, and then headed up into the “north-eastern” corner of the property where they have some ruins, and the area also looks like it was once the entrance to the property, with a place for a mini-market for sellers. We saw some of the Mayan ruins, and a guy flying a drone, but the real fun for me was to see all the iguanas enjoying the “sun square”, probably 25 or so across the area, all of different sizes. Very cool.






Toscana — pizza and pasta
water park — slide! saw underwater (with goggles), played in star fish
Tortuga pool — cold, deep, quiet
After a lunch at the Italian buffet, we headed to the water park for J to play. I was curious to see if he would “grow” more comfortable and want to try the bigger ones, but he stuck to the smaller slides and had fun. One meltdown when a kid banged into him from behind at the bottom of a slide (J’s neoprene suit doesn’t slide as fast as some of the regular bathing suits the other kids were wearing), but he recovered eventually and played with Mom while I hung out on the pool deck. I have no idea how to help him get over it when he has these meltdowns over really minor things, and it is incredibly frustrating for me, so better for me to absent myself for awhile to get over the frustration separately.

After the water park, we moved on to try the smaller pool called the Tortuga (spanish for turtle). Nice pool, but it was late afternoon and the sun was below the treeline, making it quite cold. We played for awhile in the pool, but it was just a mite too deep for J to touch, meaning it was more us holding on to him and let him swimming back and forth (he might have had more fun if he could touch and was able to chase us).

Brazilian restaurant — too long
Starting to rain lightly
Laguna — pizza (J), tacos (A – authentic!), ribs (P)
Played game, read books
We tried to go to the Brazilian restaurant for dinner, and while there was hardly anyone waiting, they told us it would be about 35 minutes. I suggested to Andrea that we could go over to the reception and do a couple of errands (exchange money, etc.) and the restaurant said, “No, it’s not a reservation, you have to stay here and wait.” No, I really don’t. (I’ll come back to this issue in the next post, as it was the second biggest frustration of the trip.) So we left and went to Laguna instead. Andrea was happy as she got tacos that were closer to the authentic taste she had experienced when she was in Mexico for seven weeks back in the day, J was happy as he got pizza again with some other stuff, and I tried the ribs which were actually quite good.
A pretty good day at the resort and we managed to also take a bunch of photos of various buildings and layouts for our souvenir collection.
