Tuesday, December 18, 2007 (Ron)

There was some confusion (on my part) on the meeting time, but we made it out to the front gate by 9am to meet Alfredo. He rode with us to Sandos, the resort. It is located just north of Playa del Carmen. Alfredo introduced us to a girl who took our information and introduced us to our sales rep, Gregg. Gregg is a gringo who grew up in Wisconsin. He’s very friendly and talkative.

Gregg took us to the restaurant for breakfast. It’s a buffet similar to the one yesterday at Mayan Palace. After breakfast we did the usual song and dance – we were shown around the resort, told how wonderful it was, blah, blah, blah. Then Gregg took us in for the kill. It was a different program than any we’d seen before so it took a while to explain and then we had some questions. We finally got out of there after five hours! It took a lot of our day but hopefully it will be worth the time when we go on our excursions.

After getting out we went into Playa del Carmen. Playa del Carmen is a nice little town. With a population of about one hundred and fifty thousand, it’s a lot smaller than Cancun and much less developed. The main tourist area has a street that has only pedestrian access so it’s easy to wander from shop to shop, or just look around. We headed for the beach to start with though; we needed some time to relax after that sales presentation. The place yesterday was good and that’s where we ended up again today. We hung out there for a few hours, then walked the two or three blocks up to the pedestrians-only street for some more looking around. When we got to the north end we hailed a taxi back to Mayan Palace. Relaxed a little, then off to bed.