So, every year, Meghan’s company does an incentive trip for their salespeople. If they meet certain quotas and criteria and whatnot, they and their spouse get to go. They also bring support personnel based on some unknown set of criteria. Since Meghan has been the person in charge of making all of the arrangements for these trips for the past three years, she’s been fortunate enough to be invited each time as well.
So the past two years, we’ve gone to Marco Island for this trip. Last year, it apparently quite a bit more expensive that it had been, and since most everybody on the trip had been there more than a few times already, they decided for this years to check out other options. After consulting with a travel agent, they decided on Cancun.
So for Valentine’s Day, my wife took me to Cancun. Pretty awesome, eh?
The view from our balcony
We stayed at the Riu Palace, which is an an all-inclusive resort, meaning food and alcohol are all included with your stay. Just like our honeymoon, they gave us a bracelet to wear while we were there, and that let us eat and drink to our hearts’ content, and generally have an awesome five days.
Unlike our honeymoon, we had a direct flight from Minneapolis to Cancun, which was superawesome. Meghan made sure we were in the exit row, too, so we had plenty of leg room for the entire flight. We left our house a little before 7am, and were drinking beer at the hotel by about 4:30pm.
Our room
Our room was very similar to the one in Cabo, although we were a little disappointed that there were no towel swans waiting for us. They made up for it by putting actual name-brand liquor in our liquor cabinet, though. We of course started our stay with a tequila shot.
Good thing there was no Jack
After checking out the room, we met up with another couple on the trip and went “exploring”. We made it about as far as the nearest bar. We had a few (read: seven) beers & blue drinks before getting some food, and then meeting the rest of the group in the lobby bar. We spent the rest of the evening all hanging out as a group enjoying the weather.
On Thursday & Friday, Meghan had training meetings in the morning, so I spent the first morning hanging out on the balcony of our room listening to music and waiting for the maid (who didn’t come until after lunch). When Meghan got back, we headed down for lunch, and then hung out in the pool all afternoon. As part of the trips, we’re require to participate in team-building for tax purposes, so they set up a volleyball game in the afternoon. In Marco, this usually meant I was laying in a lounging chair on the beach while the sun slowly turned my skin to char for three hours. In Cancun, this meant I was in the pool watching the Mexican volleyball referee cheat his way to victory. And the sun was less severe for some reason. I didn’t get much of a burn until Saturday. After several hours of pool drinking, we decided to head up to the room to chill for a while before the big group dinner.
At this particular Riu (and the one we stayed at in Cabo), you have about 5 options for dinner. There’s the buffet, of course. But they also have several themed restaurants, for which you’re required to make reservations. Meghan & I didn’t get to try out any of the restaurants on our honeymoon, because reservations had to be made on the same day, and all of the reservations filled up early in the morning. Fortunately, at the Riu Palace, they allowed you to make reservations for your entire stay when you got there. For the big group dinner, the travel agent worked with the hotel to reserve room for all forty of us have dinner at The Steakhouse.
They served us a four course meal, including caesar salad (which I didn’t eat), seafood platter appetizer (which I didn’t eat), the main course, of which there four choices to choose from (I had the rack of lamb), and dessert.
Dessert
ON FIRE
DESSERT ON FIRE
Meghan calls it a Baked Alaska. The Riu Steakhouse calls it a Frozen Flambeé Cremé Blaceé. I called it Fried Ice Cream. It was only slightly more exciting to look at than it was to eat. They used some sort of high-proof alcohol to set it on fire, which then soaked into the little cake underneath. So some bites were good, and some bites were DRUNK.
After dinner, we headed back up the room and Meghan fell asleep. I went back downstairs to check my e-mail. While I was sitting in the lobby, a nice waiter kept coming by and giving me a new beer. Sometimes before the one I was drinking was empty. And once, a bunch of people from our group found me, and two of them sat on me in the chair while another took a picture.
Eventually I wandered over to the bar outside, and listened to a Canadian guy and an Texan argue about foreign policy. I believe the Canadian’s basic point was there’s a lot less people in the Canada, and their military is quite a bit smaller then the US’s, so it makes sense that they don’t have any troops in Iraq, since most of their military is already tied up in Afghanistan. And I may be wrong, but I’m pretty sure the Texan’s viewpoint was FUCKYOUI’MDRUNKANDYOU’RECANADIAN.
There was also a nice young couple from London that kept snickering for some reason.
Friday morning, I decided to take it upon myself to obtain the best poolside lounge chairs possible for afternoon volleyball. So around 9:30, I snagged 4 poolside seats (two for us, and two for another couple), sat there for a while and then went back to the room. I went back out around a quarter to 11 and drank beer, waiting or Meghan to get done with training.
This is an evening shot, which is why noone’s at the pool
For some reason, volleyball didn’t happen, though. The referee guy put up the net and then disappeared. So, we basically all just hung out in the pool for a few hours. Afterwards, Meghan and I went back to the room, but the maid hadn’t cleaned it yet. Meghan called down to the front desk and had them send up the maid, and then we went for a walk around the property, made dinner reservations for the following night, and went across the street to check out the little shops that were there. None of them were very interesting though, so we ended up back at the bar. At one point, Meghan asked the bartender what his favorite blue drink to make was, and he came up with this:
Blue Lagoon
He called it a “Blue Lagoon”, but when Meghan asked a different bartender for a Blue Lagoon the next night, she got something completely different. After Meghan got her “Blue Lagoon”, a couple other girls at the bar wanted one, so he made them some, which started a chain reaction, and he ended up making about 30 more before the last one was gone and nobody new saw it. Hehe. I started out drinking a Coco Rosa (fruity!), but ending up settling on C.C. Collins (Canadian Club Whiskey, Lemonade & Soda).
While we were enjoying our parade of alcohol, one of the other couples from the group came back and informed us they had an extra reservation for dinner at 8:45 at The Steakhouse. We figured it was good once, why not have it again. So, this time, I had the rib eye and it was excellent. I was looking forward to Dessert On Fire again, but apparently, they weren’t doing the live flambeé thing that particular night. We finished dinner around 10:30 and headed straight to bed.
Saturday was the free day, and we had made reservations ahead of time to go on what’s known as a “Jungle Tour”, which as it turns out has nothing to do with jungles, and isn’t really a tour. Despite going to bed so early on Friday night, we still slept in past 9 on Saturday, so had breakfast at the buffet and then hung out on the balcony while the maid cleaned our room (early today!).
Since we had made the reservation for the jungle tour on the internet ahead of time, we were in charge of finding our own transportation, but the hotel had taxis ready and waiting. We asked the taxi driver if he knew if there were taxis at the marina we were going to for our ride back, but he didn’t know. When we got there, he offered to come pick us up, so we told him to be back at 2:30.
So the “Jungle Tour” is actually a speed-boating/snorkeling excursion. We knew this full well before we made the reservation, I just think the misnomer is funny.
Weeeeeeee!
Each couple in the group at the reserved time was put on their own little speed boat, which we all drove in a line, through the mangroves to the reef, where we then were told to get out the boats and snorkel for a while, and then drive back.
I tried not to be nervous about it beforehand, but I will say I was a little… yeah, I was nervous. But I figured, it’s a popular thing to do, people must do it all of the time, so it must be safe. And it was. And our guides were really nice. The only downside was that the snorkeling mask didn’t seem to fit me right and I kept getting water up my nose inside the mask. The snorkeling was really crowded, too, and there weren’t very many different types of fish.
When were ready to head back, the guide was turning the boat engines back on and forgot he had told one of the guys to put his throttle all the way down so he didn’t accidentally trip over it while he was walking across the boats. As a result, the boat tried to go full speed away while tied to all the other boats, and with a woman in a bikini laying on top of the front of the boat. LOL. The guide managed it kill the engine before anything too terrible happened, though, so it was okay.
Then the guy who was driving that boat decided it was too dangerous to be tied to the rest of the boats, and untied his boat. Unfortunately, his boat was right next to our boat and the guide’s boat was right next to his boat. As a result, after his boat started drifting away, the guide’s boat started drifting away, too, and the rope dug more and more into my arm. Eventually the guide just untied his boat, too and threw the rope in my direction. So I untied our boat and threw the rope to the next boat. I failed to notice that the guy in that boat wasn’t paying any attention, and thus, essentially slapped him in the face with a wet rope. Whoops.
Then, those of us who were untied just kind of drifted around while we waited for the other boats. It occurred to me that I could totally just go driving off in the boat, which was kind of tempting. Hehe. But I didn’t.
We ended up getting back right at 2:30 and found our taxi driver waiting outside. We headed back to the hotel and had a late lunch, since our dinner reservation wasn’t until 8:45. Then we went for a walk on the beach and found the sandbar.
Look, it’s shallow!
This is where I died and went to heaven.
After the beach, went back to the room and changed so we could walk around the property and take more pictures.
Hotel Front
And here I am in heaven.
And, of course, we eventually ended up back at the bar for more beer & blue drinks.
Meghan tried to get a “Blue Lagoon” again, but it was a different bartender, and his Blue Lagoon was orange juice and curacao. So, Meghan took a tour of blue drinks, including a Blue Ocean, Blue Hawaiian, and a Blue Sky. She decided the Blue Hawaiian was the best. I had a little trouble getting the same type of C.C. Collins, too, but eventually the bartender and I found common ground.
For dinner, we had reservations at the Sakura Japanese restaurant, which I was a little hesitant about, but after all the alcohol, I was starving and willing to try anything. Our dinner began with a sushi plate, and I ended up devouring most of it.
OMG I’m eating salmon!
And it was actually pretty good, if my memory can be trusted. I’ve avoided sushi my entire life based on horror stories of people getting extremely sick, and here I go eating it for the first time in Mexico. Yep, I was drunk.
For the main course, I had chicken skewers with peppers, and Meghan had beef something-or-other. Dessert was another variation of fried ice cream, this time deep-fried in tempura batter. It was thoroughly awesome.
And that’s pretty much it. We had another early night, as we went straight to bed after dinner. We slept until almost ten on Sunday morning, and were headed home by 12:30pm. All-in-all, it was a huge step up from Marco Island, which in itself, was always pretty awesome, too. The owner of Meghan’s company swears he’s never going to back to Marco, though. Hehe.
OH, I almost forgot!
LOL!