PV #9

The same thing happened yesterday as always, minus having dinner. It was Caribbean night at the resort, and since we had already seen two minutes of the show before hand, we decided that drinking at the bar with our favorite bartender, Antonio (who also turned 40 while we have been here), was a far better option. After all, he hands-down makes the best drinks.

Again, it was hot, humid, and the shaded area where we sat this time by the pool was a very nice change. Cat and Janet decided they wanted to play Scrabble, only to find that the set had way more vowels than normal, and included double l's, double r's, a "ch" and an "n" with the squiggly line. Yes, the Spanish version. They made do with what they had, and had an opportunity to expand their knowledge of basic Hawaiian.

We did try to go to a small Mexican tienda along the beach so that we could find sarongs for the ladies, and some for my nieces. After dinking around for about 25 minutes, having the guy take literally all of his merchandise out of his 3 black plastic trash bags (having been put away from it starting to rain-the only time during the day it rained), he insisted that we pay $25 each for the basic rectangular pieces of fabric with some machined embroidery and sequins. When we offered $40 for the four of them, he quickly snatched them out of my hands, and started folding them to put them back in his bag, saying that he couldn't just give them away.

With the amount of tourists they have seen this year, he might have been better off giving them away...

Anyhow, we started heading back to the resort when he started trying to negotiate again, at $80 for the four sarongs. Needless to say, we kept walking as he muttered some Spanish insults at us in the process.

Still in our swimming suits, we hung out at the bar with all sorts of different people at different stages of their vacations. Many of the people that we ran into were from the Midwest, including a woman who was originally from Lake Geneva, and another woman whose sister lives in the small burg of Sharon.

On the other hand, we did manage to run into some obnoxious Texans with horrible Texified Spanish accents, who kept ending all of their sentences with the duo-syllabic word "shit" (more like she-ot). Antonio asked me in Spanish what the word was they kept saying (and making him repeat like a parrot), and when I told him it was the Texas accent for the word "mierda," his face turned bright red.

That was the last time he said that again.

Finally, Monette, Cat, and I felt that it was necessary to eat (as it was now VERY late in the evening). Antonio scored us a bottle of champagne to celebrate the end of the trip, and we went up and ordered room service.

In doing so, Cat had the opportunity to use her Spanish to order it. Of course though, with the booze, it was a bit tricky, especially because the guy on the other end of the line kept asking a bunch of questions in Spanish. Finally getting stumped, Cat started laughing, only to be told by the guy, "I do speak English, you know." We laughed even harder. Even the Mexicans have sass.

We finished the champagne and much needed food, and went to bed. It was late, but we certainly enjoyed ourselves, and had a lot of laughs. Reality set in when we realized it was the last night of the vacation. Sigh!