Monday - February 26 - Breakfast both days was included in the price and it was a great buffet, lots of fruit, sausage, pancakes, French toast etc. and wonderful omelets - very scrumptious. The bus left the hotel at 9:30 and Joe (the bus driver) took us to a shopping place which was very much like Algadones but at least the vendors there weren’t in your face like they are in Algadones. After that we stopped at a local artist’s place, he uses sea shells and his work is lovely, he has a large piece of his work at the Vatican, pieces at the Smithsonian Institute, etc. I think he made some good sales from the bus but we didn’t buy anything as we have no place to put it. From there we went on a tour of some very large million $ homes, what was interesting though was that although these homes were on the ocean and very expensive it was all dirt roads - I can’t imagine having that kind of a home on a dirt road. The dust there is incredible because only the main roads are paved so it would be a killer trying to keep a house there clean.

From there we went to the port area for lunch and more shopping, then returned to the hotel about 2. John and I went for a long walk along the beach, they are building all kinds of condos along the beach and there is also a large RV park which was part of our hotel complex. We walked through the park but weren’t very impressed, the sites were all dirt and close together. We also heard that it was very expensive and there was a 3 year waiting list to get into the park. We came back and sat on the balcony for a while just watching the ocean, the shrimp boats, the people on the beach etc. and watched the local vendors come in with all their wares to sell. They walked across a huge lot sand loaded down with their goodies and they started coming about 3:45, guess they knew happy hour on the patio was from 4 to 6. It would be a very hard walk in all the sand loaded down with their wares, we wondered if they actually sold very much.

We went down about 5 for happy hour then dinner and again had an early evening, all the fresh air and exercise is tiring!