Pancho & Willie's on Friday, April 15, 2011.
Cancun, Mexico, Royal Islander Resort: We’ve moved down the street now, to the 9th floor penthouse digs at the Royal Islander Resort. I’m sitting outside enjoying a balmy, slightly windy day, as groceries are being purchased from the downstairs store. We brought at least 7 bags of groceries with us. While we were assured
Two-year-olds need to be entertained during dinners out.
that we could “trade” from the Islander to the Sands, there would be the normal “trading” fee, which was something like $159. For $159, I’ll pack my groceries and move, which we did.
The daughter and her friend Emmie Futrell went out clubbing (Daddy-O’s has a revolving dance floor, they reported, and it looked as though some of the sweet young things tottering around on it might fall off at any moment) and did not get home till 2:30 a.m. Still, they had to leave for the airport at 12:30 p.m., while we had to pack up all of our clothing and sundries, which included about 13 bags of groceries from our unit and that of the son and daughter-in-law, who were sharing with their good friends. (That unit had 4 children under the age of 5 inside and one of them got sick and threw up in bed during the night).
We stayed up to watch David Letterman, but, realizing that we’d have to pack early to move, we were not up late. The 23-year-olds in residence at our unit had no such qualms. We took the girls to lunch at LaVeranda restaurant and the Cobb salad was delicious. The Nandas, with children Olivia (the sick one) and Kira were at the next table and they left just ahead of the girls for the trip back home to Chicago, where we heard the temperature was 40 degrees.
Achilles the Iguana will pose with you,,,for a fee.
I am one of the few who has an actual trench coat with her, for
Scott, Mom and Stacey,
the return. Satch was going to wear shorts. The troops leaving are brown and we had all eaten at Pancho & Willy’s last night, which was a last-minute substitute for the Rainforest Café. Son Scott had asked the taxi folk if the Rainforest Café was still in business and received a positive response. When we got there, wending our way through a display of a tiny lion cub on a leash (name: Kira) whose owner jealously guarded any picture taking that didn’t involve a fee, we learned that the restaurant went out of business 7 months ago. (So much for that idea!)
Pancho & Willy’s was right there (as was the Club known as Coco Bongo). We posed for some silly photographs (included here) and then entered the chaos that is Pancho and Willy’s. A person who looked like he had made up his face to resemble a
Achilles the Iguana and Ava from Scotland enjoy the sun,
vampire blew up balloons for the children, but one of the foursome kept chewing on her balloons and they kept breaking and hurting her. She had not had a nap and spent a lot of time crying about the broken balloons.
The twins (especially Ava) seemed smitten with the balloon animals they received and, although Ava is not fond of loud noises, they hung in there pretty well for quite a long time, as they did have naps. I ordered whatever I thought would hurt my inflamed mouth the least. All this salsa and “hot” food is not good for Yours Truly. Therefore, I had a chicken dish that involved stuffing a chicken breast with cheese of one sort and putting more cheese (Parmesan, I think) over the top. It was okay. Drinks were served in huge glasses that were very tall and tippy. Stacey’s leaked and soaked the table area in front of her. She also was issued a bib for her fish tacos, as was her father with his chicken tacos.
Following the extremely loud and noisy meal (and the random picture-taking seen here), we went back to the bus stop. To take the bus downtown costs 8 and ½ pesos, per person. That means that 12 of us could take the bus for 102 pesos, which is less than $10. A cab driver, seeing just Scott at the bus stop, tried to suggest that he could take all of us for the same price as the bus. When he learned that we had twelve people, it quickly became apparent that his plan was unworkable.
Ava really liked the bus. All the way downtown she kept putting her head out the window, like a dog, and saying, “Wow!” Elise seemed to like the bus as well.
When most of us (10 out of 12) returned to the Royal Sands (last week’s haven), the 2 girls went off on a club-hopping adventure. It seems slightly more dangerous in the downtown areas of the city (especially if you do not speak Spanish), but it still seems safe in Cancun. I would not want to send my young adults off by themselves, whether they were male or female (but especially if they were female), after events like the slaying of the young girl in Aruba, and my last words were,” Don’t let anyone put roofies in your drinks.” This may have seemed like a joke; it wasn’t. I am happy to report that both girls displayed enough common sense to have a good time making the rounds and return safely to the Sands.
As we waited for the bus to come to pick the girls up to take them to the airport for their flight back to Nashville, Emmie said that her boyfriend’s parents have a place at the Moon Palace, and we talked about where that was, in relation to our location. The Moon Palace, which I have heard is very nice, has “floating” weeks. In other words, you don’t have one particular week that is reserved for you. We have “fixed” weeks, but it is possible to trade your week…for a $159 fee.
Satch and Scott listened to our long-time favorite, Richard (Ricardo) “pitch” them on a penthouse unit at the Sands that went on the market for $14,000. The normal going rate for a penthouse unit, said Richard, had been $47,000. This was a “distress” sale. He didn’t know what the “distress” was (divorce? Ill health? Someone lost his or her job?) but he predicted it would not remain in the system long. The next closest, in terms of a good deal, was every-other-week, which would cost you $16,000 for a non-penthouse unit.
The boys were interested in (maybe) splitting the cost of a unit, but the economic times do not suggest that this is the wisest course of action, just now. They refrained from any purchases and agreed to consider for the future whether any such investment was in their future.
We learned that we first bought in 1997. We had been coming for 3 years prior, which would be 1994, when Stacey was 7 years old. Our first 2 years, we stayed in 2 connecting suites at the Fiesta Americana Condessa. The third year, when Stacey was 10 years old, we brought friend Lisa Lage with us. (That year we flew out of St. Louis and had a horrible time, as we did not have notarized paperwork from Lisa’s parents with us, which caused us to almost have to stay in Texas to rectify the situation.) We bought at the Islander when Stacey was 11, and we have been coming to the Islander and the Sands (one week in each place) ever since.
Our time at the Royal Islander, where we are on the 9th floor in the penthouse (and where I am typing this now) will expire when we are 77 years old. Our time at the Royal Sands will expire when we are 105. Or, in all probability, we will expire before our time does.