Up early and off to another buffet breakfast. We have an hour or so until we have to convene with our tour consultants to take us off the ship and to another boat for transport to the mainland. Another place without a dock, but thankfully this time the boat ride will be very short. We can see Cozumel from our balcony.
We are greeted in the mainland by our tour guide, Juan Pablo (I am not making that name up), and whisked into a taxi for the 15 minute drive to the resort/water park where our cooking class is held. Fifteen minutes by Mexican taxi is the equivalent to 45 minutes by all other forms of ground transportation. Holy shit. There are marks in that Taxi from my fingernails.
We arrive, incredibly, unscathed at Playa Mia, which I'm sure is Spanish for "60 dollars for that cheap bracelet, are you kidding me???", and are greeted shortly by our chef, Moises, who is going to lead us through a few Mexican traditional dishes. After the class they handed out recipes but I forgot our copy there so I can't really remember exactly the correct names of the dishes we cooked, but it was something like this:
Shrimp (chicken in Tracey's case) in a tomato cream sauce in a homemade tortilla bowl
Grouper with some kind of crazy Mexican sauce
Fried plantains with caramelized sugar in a chocolate sauce
After we finished making the dishes we prepared we ate them for lunch, and they were damn good! So good, in fact, that my wife ate fish for the first time in 30+ years! She didn't eat it all, but she ate some, and that's something. I'm so proud :)
This was the dessert, the chocolate plantains.
The class was a lot of fun, and it came with a bonus: an open bar! We put down more than a few piña coladas, let me tell you. The cooking class was smart too, cutting up the ingredients for us so they didn't have to match "sharp knives" with "open bar".
After lunch we were supposed to have some beach time but the class ran a bit long so we shopped around the "buy my cheap crap" stores and then our taxi was ready to take us back to the cruise ship. This taxi driver was only half as crazy as the first guy.
Back on the ship and we are both wiped. Three days of activities in a row, we are looking forward to tomorrow's sea day where we can do whatever we want all day,
Oh and despite the fact that I spent zero time in the sun today, I have some odd news to report. Dean has a sunburn, and quite a significant one. Dean does not gets sunburns. Dean holds grudges and likes spicy chicken, and sometimes refers to himself in the third person, but he does not get sunburns.
Tracey has one too, but if you know her that is hardly newsworthy. Her delicate alabaster skin can stand about 28 seconds in the sun before it turns bright red, and she spends hours outside by the pool, so you do the math.
No exciting dinner plans so off to the buffet which is serving Mexican food tonight. Of course we are in Mexico so an argument could be made they are just serving "food" but I digress.
After dinner up to one of the lounges which is featuring Movie Tune Trivia. I actually miss the themes from two movies I have never seen, Dr. Zhivago and The Bridge on the River Kwai, and am defeated by one point. I feel shame.
After my humiliating, life-altering embarrassment at trivia, we are up to the room to relax and recover from the last few days. Tomorrow we sleep until noon!! Yeah right I'll probably be up at 6 but here's hoping.......
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