A beautiful day. We got a palapa on the beach and went swimming in the artificially created bahia. It wasn't particularly refreshing--no waves and no current. A good breakfast. I read on the beach. Carol went to water aerobics with Octavio.

Lunch is the best meal, with a big buffet and grilled hamburgers, ribs, skirt steak, and chicken to order. Lots of good guacamole and spicy salsa. Margaritas. Not one piña colada for the entire vacation--Atkins. Ha!

In the late afternoon, Carol went for an 80-minute massage that she says was the best she ever had. I returned to the room to find no running water. I called maintenance, and they said they'd send someone. Twenty minutes later, I heard the toilet filling up. So I opened the valve to the hot tub to find no hot water. I called maintenace. They said to wait half an hour. I waited and turned on the spigot. Out came agua de merda in brown chunks. "No esta merda," explained the maintenance lady on my next call, but she was at a loss for words to explain just what it was. So, I didn't drink the water...I soaked in it.

Our last dinner was at La Huerta, a "California spa cuisine" restaurant. The waiter did make Caesar salad at the table, something you rarely see anymore, and it wasn't bad. He reassured us not to worry about Salmonella in the raw egg: "All our chickens have Salmonella, signor." Gazpacho tasted like pineapple juice. Fish filet was barely adequate. They did make espresso.

Afterward, we did a bit of shopping at the gift shop, which had its own cigar maker.

We stopped at a fancy jewelry store, Lapis, where I asked to see something better than ordinary. "Something George Bush," I explained. The man had me try on a silver ring with 5 carats of diamonds in it. It weighed a ton. "Gran mafioso!" proclaimed the salesman.

..

We skipped the Karaoke Night and went to bed.