#6 We took a Christmas cruise to Mexico.

We thought we would share our trip with you.

Saturday 12/13

Manzanillo, Mexico

 

                      We woke up to a beautiful sunrise over the ocean.

Following breakfast, we trotted over to the Rolling Stone Lounge to meet up with the excursion group for the Manzanillo City and Shopping tour.

They soon called our group and off we went to meet on our air-conditioned tour bus.  The driver’s name was Jaime (Jimmy in English) and our guide, Rolando.

First stop was the Historic District plaza. A lot of building repairs were underway. The plaza was beautifully decorated for Christmas with a large Christmas tree, garlands, lights and a sleigh. It was funny to see all the winter related items in a tropical setting.

 

There was a film crew shooting a Colombian TV series in the plaza. We saw a large statue of Snoopy holding a sailfish. Apparently, Manzanillo is the Sailfish capital of the world, and the statue was donated by some Americans.

 

We strolled through the plaza and turned down a side street where we found a shop that had a banner above the door that read “Buenvenidos Turistas” or “Welcome Tourists.”  Bill found a great tan, Panama hat for only $10. What a deal!

The tour took us about nine miles to the hotel district and up a steep hill by Hotel Las Hadas by Brisas. It looked like the Greek islands with all the whitewashed buildings perched on rugged hills. The view from up there was fantastic. The most harrowing part of our tour was the trip back down from the hills. The road was very narrow, and we passed within inches of a dump truck that we thought was going to crash through the window on our side. Our driver was very good.

As we emerged back onto the main road we were amazed at the presence of American businesses, like Burger King, Lil Caesar’s Pizza, KFC, WalMart, Sam’s Club, Carl’s Jr, Chevrolet dealers, and some Chinese and French car dealers we don’t see in the US anymore like Renault and Peugeot. This part of the city was much more developed and well-maintained. There was a proliferation of what they call tuk-tuks. (Three-wheeled motor scooter taxis) Speaking of taxi’s we saw an overturned taxicab next to a building with all the emergency crews on scene. We couldn’t figure out how the car got upside down. A pickup truck of fully armed Mexican Marines passed by our bus window. After we drove through the city we came to the coast and drove along the beaches. The beaches were beautiful.

 

                                                      

Last stop was at a restaurant for drinks it was called “Corona y Tridente” the Crown and the Trident. We had free cold, bottled water next to the beach. Again the views were fantastic. We met so many people on this tour from Canada and all over the US.

Finally made it back to the ship where we were greeted with cold towels, cold lemonade and ice water! How nice!  We passed through security and onto the ship. When we got to our stateroom, Bill couldn’t find his cellphone! He zoomed back down to the entry door and found he’d left it in the tray at the Xray station. They’d held it for him! How nice!

Bill met Janet up at the buffet, it was amazing that we found each other in the crowd at noon.

At dinner in the main dining room, we were seated at a table for ten people. We had among others, a retired Tupperware lady, journalist, speech therapist and others. Th table was so large it was difficult to converse with everyone.

We saw it was already 7:30 when we finished dessert and missed the beginning of the singer Mary-Jess again. We listened to some Christmas tunes and a song from Frozen “Let it go” in English and Mandarin.