Along the yucatan peninsula on the riviera maya, there are only a few actual towns. One of them is Puerto Aventuras. It’s a bit more upscale, mostly condos, has a marina, and is pretty gringo. They have one of those swim with the dolphins things in the middle of the town, and it’s all open so you can watch the spectacle. It’s pretty fun. Dolphins are pretty f’in cute.
We wanted a quick bite, and unlike Akumal, there’s actually a good number of places to eat there. We ended up at Wahoo Sports Bar & Grill on the far end of the marina.
Sipping a mexican soda, which is actually made with sugar and not high fructose corn syrup, while watching dolphins, isn’t a bad way to spend an afternoon. One annoyance is that this place is so gringo that they do not have apple soda. Grrr…. don’t they know that the availability of apple soda is one of my most favorite things about mexico?
Complimentary chips and pico de gallo. Dudes, these chips were amazing. Warm, super crunchy, and too good to not be home made. And the pico was just right.
R got the chicken tacos. These were pretty bare bones. Rolled up in those flour tortillas was just plain chicken, and nothing else. And it came with a side of rice and some beans. According to R, this was her favorite meal of the entire trip. Plain ol chicken tacos.
I got the beef enchiladas. I ordered steak enchiladas but it came with ground beef. I didn’t care. I also had a choice of green or red sauce, but they didn’t ask me. And it just came out with red sauce. Had I been asked, I would have picked green. Again, I didn’t care. However gringo this sports bar is, my mexican dish was great. It was made with love and I could tell with every bite. The beans were also very good, and that’s always a good litmus test for how good mexican food is. Service was good and they were very polite to us. Since we were sitting outside and we were in mexico, there were people smoking. But luckily, it didn’t bother us one bit.

Our lovely little condo has a full kitchen, so we stopped at the Chedraui in Playa Del Carmen to stock up on some groceries. Shopping in Mexico is so much fun. It’s all in spanish, first of all, and all the stuff is different. Frosted Flakes? There’s no such thing, only Zucaritas! And it’s mad cheap too. They’re ggggreat! Svelty! Ha! It’s nice to call this yogurt something that you hope it would make you. We have Wonder and Stroehmann bread, they have Bimbo bread. It’s good too. What do you put on your Bimbo bread? Well, certainly not grape jelly! In this wall full of jams, preserves, and jellies, they don’t have grape jelly. They have blueberry up the wazoo, but no grape jelly to speak of. It does not exist in mexico!

The condo in Akumal wasn’t available until Sunday, so we were forced to find other accommodations for saturday night. That’s how we ended up at the Avalon Grand Cancun for a night. It’s kind of the low or mid season here, so we ended up getting a sweet oceanfront room with a balcony. Whoo hoo! Buffet breakfast was included, so we got to enjoy a nice, late, leisurely brunch on Sunday. R got an omelette, bacon, french toast. There was tons to choose from at this buffet, mostly americanized, since Cancun is a big tourist spot. I got some fried eggs over hard, and also tried the french toast and bacon. The bacon was too crunchy and the french toast was ok, but nothing exciting. Eggs were great, but then how do you screw up eggs on a big commercial griddle? I tried a couple of the hot sauces they had, and damn, they were way too friggin hot. Like habanero hot. Oye! But the best part of my brunch was the chilaquiles. So damn good!

Other observations… Juices are made with nectar, so it’s a bit watered down. The yogurt here is high in artificial coloring, so everything has a dayglow brightness. The pastries look sweet, since they usually have a sugar coating, but really aren’t that sweet.