Bienvenidos!
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Playa Bonita
Hola fans! After spending a lazy morning on Wednesday contemplating getting up and doing stuff, we finally got around to packing our overnight bags and headed out to the Playa Bonita hotel to take advantage of our $45 (well, $180 if we'd been paying for all of it ourselves...) dollars' worth of all-inclusiveness. Mario had made the reservation under my name as he didn't want all the staff knowing he was there, but as soon as we pulled up to the valet parking bit he recognised the guy at the desk - they used to work together at the Marriott. It was pretty much like that for the rest of the stay, except for the wake-up call Thursday morning when the girl on the desk called him Mr Mills... Excuse me while I snigger... He spent a while chatting to the dude, then we went and checked in and were shown to our room. Wow. It was gorgeous. There were complementary bathrobes and slippers in the bathroom, the bed was kingsize and so comfortable, and the balcony overlooked the pool complex and beach. To get something like that back in the UK you would have to pay at least double that price. We ran around like kids at christmas for a few minutes looking for all the special features, gawping at the minibar prices and taking pictures of the room and the view, before putting our swimwear on under our clothes and going down to look at the pools and the beach.
We went down to the sea and splashed about a bit, but the tide was too low to do much more, then rinsed our feet off, took some towels from the lady in the booth and went to the pools. There were 5 altogether - two shallow children's pools, one with a net strung across it, and then two slightly deeper pools. One had a pool bar and the other was a bit further away and surrounded by hammocks and little bohios (think welsh 'boyo' and that's about the right pronunciation). That one was empty so we went in there. The water had been warmed by the sun all day so felt lovely, and we spent about an hour just messing about in the water before going back to the other pool which was now almost empty. the view from this one was quite something - from one end it looked as though the end of the pool water merged with the sea, and you could see all the ships lining up to go into the canal, and the reflections from the sky were so pretty. Mario risked his camera and took a picture standing in the water so I'll put that one up when we get the films back. After a bit more swimming the breeze started to pick up so we took the towels back and went back inside to shower and eat. The shower was nice but had a bad habit of swinging suddenly from hot to cold to scorching, so I stayed out of the stream unless I really needed to rinse or something. Plus the hot water made my sunburn sting. We dressed, I put on a bit of maekup, and we went down for dinner. All our meals and non-alcoholic drinks were included in our offer, so I decided to try a little bit of everything. It was an Italian buffet and my gosh it was so good! We started with the salad bar before moving on the the pasta dishes. I had about a spoonful each of ricotta tortellini, penne a la puttanesca, seafood lasagne, chicken in lemon and fish in some sort of tomato sauce. There was also brocolli and cauliflower so I took a couple of spoons of those as well. I finished everything except the puttanesca. Something in it was a bit overpowering and I didn't really like it. The seafood lasagne however was amazing - I didn't know if I'd like it because I'm not usually a fan of mussels, squid and octopus, but I think because I couldn't actually see what each bit was I just let myself enjoy the flavour and it was damn tasty. I also had a taste of the cheese lasagne that Mario had but it was a bit too greasy for my liking. I was starting to feel a bit full but managed to squeeze in some dessert. I've noticed recently that dessert is no longer the best part of the meal - I'm enjoying the starters and mains more. I think my tastebuds are maturing or something, but nowadays a dessert has to be something really special to grab my attention. Pancakes and waffles will do it, but I just can't get excited about chocolate cake or tiramisu anymore... Having said that, the flan (panamanian style. A bit like a creme caramel but less wobbly) was lovely. After dinner we went for a walk outside to look at the pools and the beach in the dark. It was so pretty. There were fireflies blinking in the grass banks and frogs croaking down in the hollows, and a couple of bats kept skimming the water catching the bugs that get attracted to the light. The beach at night was so peaceful. The lights on the lines of ships looked like a city on the water, and the stars were just coming out from the clouds. as we stood there a lightning storm started up in the clouds offshore, and every so often the sky would light up from behind. Sometimes The lightning would break through and you would see it strike somewhere out to sea, and sometimes it would flash like white-hot veins along the sky. The storm started moving closer so we decided to head back inside and get an early night as we'd decided to sign up for the trail walk early the next morning.
At about 6:00am the phone rang and we got up to go down to the beach. Mario made coffee and we sat on the balcony for a few minutes enjoying the morning. almost everyone else was asleep, but a couple of people went down to the pool for an early-morning swim. We sunscreened up and headed out. We got there a few minutes early but there was only one other gentleman joining us, and the guide. The walk took us up and down a few hills and through the woods, and the guide said that sometimes you get to see things and sometimes you don't. We saw a lot of spiders, and something ran across the path behind me when I wasn't looking, but that was about it. Still, it was a fun thing to do, even if I wished I was wearing trainers instead of my Doc Marten sandals. The trail would never have passed a UK inspection, but it would have taken all the fun out of it if there had been actual steps and handrails... The trail ended after about an hour or so's hiking at a small secluded beach. The guide radioed his associate, who brought the kayaks round whilst I re-sunscreened and put on a long-sleeved top. I was in a kayak with Mario, and after a tentative start we managed to get co-ordinated and followed the other kayak at a decent pace. The guide had told us that sometimes you see dolphins but they apparently didn't want to play that day. The trip back was quite relaxing, if a bit hard on the arms. It took about 25 minutes to reach the hotel beach, after which we walked along the sand for a bit before going to get showered and have breakfast.
It was another buffet, and after the hike I was so hungry. We started with fruit and cinnamon oatmeal, then I had an omelette, pancakes with syrup and a croissant, and Mario took the same plus some sausage and cold cuts of meat. He didn't manage to finish everything this time, though. We went back up to the room after breakfast and I went back to sleep for an hour whilst Mario watched TV and sat on the balcony. We packed up at about 12 and went down to check out. We still had use of the facilities until 5, so we put the bags in the car and took some stuff in the beach bag Mari-Gabi gave us as a gift. We had a tour of the spa, suites and ballrooms then went down to the poolside again. I would have liked to use the spa but it was separated into a male and female side and I didn't really want to go in on my own. I lounged around in a hammock for a bit, still full from breakfast, whilst Mario went in the pool. After a while I went and sat on the side with my feet in the water, but I didn't want to go in again as I wouldn't be able to shower afterwards. Mario got out and dried off, and we both lay in a hammock for a while before deciding to go and have lunch. Neither of us were that hungry, so we had a little from the salad bar and a bit of dessert before taking out lemonades and going to sit under a bohio on the sand. After a while there was a bit of commotion in one of the trees behind us - it turned out that a sloth had managed to get into a birds' nest up there and the birds were none too happy about that, so the hotel decided to get it down. They sent a guy to climb the tree and try and snare it, but the sloth wasn't having any of it. In the end, and after about half an hour persuading it to get onto a palm frond, the guy at the top tied off the frond and cut it to lower the sloth to the ground. Then a load of stupid kids decided to sit and pose with it like it was they who got it down from the tree, and one stupid mother kept telling them to touch it. I felt like getting a pole, poking her all over with it and then asking her if she wanted to be stroked and prodded. In the end they took the poor little thing over to the forest out of harm's way. After this it was about half four so we decided to pack up and head home. It was an absolutely fantastic stay and a great way to make up for not doing anything for our anniversary back in April.
Today we've just caught up on laundry and Mario's family is trying to sort out a problem with his sister's flight home. It's very humid right now. I kind of miss the air-conditioned coolness of the hotel room. There's a thunderstorm coming though, so maybe the rain will cool things down a bit. Laters all xxx
1:36 p.m. - 2006-07-21
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