February 22, 2009

Breakfast down stairs in the restaurant, where we are now recognized, (for wanting to pay twice hehehee) started our day. I’m hoping to get pictures tomorrow of the fruit carvings that done each day as decorations for the buffet. There was a chicken made from pineapple and tribal face from a watermelon. Can’t wait to see what tomorrows will be. You can really tell here that the chef takes a lot of pride in his food preparation.

Upon finishing breakfast we changed into our beach clothes and headed out for a walk to catch the bus to Progresso Beach. Normally the bus station is fairly close about 5 blocks but because of Carnaval the road was shut down for the parade this morning so we had to walk another 5 blocks to where the bus was leaving. The bus to Progresso is very nice, like a Greyhound bus and the ride was about 45 minutes. Progresso is similar to San Diego but here they have grass umbrellas out on the beach with tables and chairs where you can order a meal; we had dinner after taking in some sun and shopping.

Today there was a parade in Progresso for Carnaval. It was much smaller than the ones we had seen the last two evenings but fun all the same. The second time the parade came through we were like “wow here are the floats again” and then about 45 minutes later, they came through again and this went on the entire day. The people riding the floats and throwing candy and gum were just as enthusiastic the last time as the first and the crowd was just as excited to receive the treats. We lucked into a piece of bubble gum today. Our day was very low key, just resting, taking in the sun and watching the people care for the seagulls. Interesting enough they love feeding them. The gulls hover and the people throw stuff up to them and they catch it mid air. It really seems the people enjoy feeding them which is so the opposite in the US. If I remember correctly we don’t like to feed the seagulls because they won’t leave you alone. The vendors were out strong today at the beach selling food, dresses, belts and lots of jewelry.

We headed back to El Centro around sixish and stopped by Plaza Grande for the ever elusive churro before calling it a day. We lucked out to find a lady fixing them so we got them hot out of the pan…yummy. That's what's going on in the picture above.

Another blessed day. Beautiful, fun and exciting.

When we made it back to the hotel room, we discovered that Mom has much more stamina for the day than I do. The past couple nights have generally involved me conking out while she’s writing the blog just exhausted. Before we hit the hay though, we did paint out fingernails so now we have pretty fingers and toes =D

Cheers! <3 Kate and Sunny