Day Three - Paradise Found

There was no hurricane damage over the course of the night. A few leaves were scattered on the ground and one small branch on the palm tree outside my window had snapped but otherwise, that was about it. We were anxious to move back to our original hotel but our hosts at the sister property were being a bit difficult about letting us leave. Perhaps they were experiencing separation anxiety because they kept prolonging the time of our return. Not wanting to waste a third day, we took control of the situation and ordered a taxi-cab to take us to Hacienda Encantada. Our departure was held up twice - once to wait for an inspection of the rooms and then some lame excuse to waste even more of our time.

I was the only one who hadn't already been to Hacienda Encantada so I had the most to gain from the return. Everyone else had gone from amazing to mediocre but I was doing the opposite. The room blew me away. After a drive on an oversized golf cart from the reception to Phase One of the room blocks, I knew it would be great, but wow. The room was very well decorated and the view from the balcony (seen above) was impressive.

We were given two rooms which inter-connected via a third (common) room. This intermediary room consisted of a full kitchen, dining room, sitting room with TV/DVD, balcony and another (huge) bathroom. Both bedrooms had all of those features as well. All three rooms overlooked the five-tiered pool so after one minute of checking out the room, we didn't waste any more time getting to the glorious sunshine.

The day by the pool (which was one of those endless-type pools which looks like it blends right into the ocean) was great. I took a small hike on the beach to explore the affect-effects of the high waters from the hurricane. All I could find was a washed-up fish with it's eye pecked out and a crab with bits of it removed as well. The beach wasn't great and the water was unswimmable, but I will take a pool over a beach anyday so the rocky beach was no disappointment to me. There were fierce undercurrents and plenty of rocks under the water too, making any attempt at swimming rather suicidal/in denial.

We finally went out for dinner at around 11pm after a few rounds of Pancake Poker. The thing was, it wasn't dinner (I was tricked). We went clubbing to Cabo Wabo, a spacious club with no fixed demographic but a decent band covering hard-rock tunes from the 80's and 90's. They played a bit too much Van Halen but I supposed they had to since the club is owned by former Van Halen front-person...Sammy Hagar. I bet you were thinking David Lee Roth. Nope. I meant Sammy. I can't recall more than one song by Van Halen featuring Sammy. No that's not true. Two songs. "Right Now" and "Why Can't This Be Love?".

Dinner was finally celebrated at about 2 a.m. We asked a cab driver to take us to a tacqueria - an outdoor (sheltered) hole-in-the-wall, in-the-middle-of-nowhere taco/quesadilla restaurant with tasty food. I had BBQ chicken tacos (some flour, some corn) with a rather runny guacamole with a rather spicy tomato-cilantro chutney. It was too spicy for me but being so stubborn, I piled it on, although I can't remember what I was being so stubborn about. It comes so naturally to me...

Bedtime came at 4 a.m. No one puked so I think it was a successful night.