Progreso, Mexico is not my favorite place. It was nice to see it once, for the experience, but the beach paled in comparison to the two near-perfect locations we previously visited. And there wasn't really anything to do there.
We did a little shopping, and the boys picked up some souvenirs.
We had heard about a double-decker bus tour, so we inquired about that and got a little bit of a runaround from the bus driver that took us unto town. He tried to imply that his tour bus (which did not look fun) was the only one in town. We decided to do a little tour on foot and walked a half a block and found the double-decker bus. And it was more then half the cost!
I did enjoy the tour. It was great for my boys to see what life outside the U.S. is like. The school had columns and a roof, but no walls. The children were sitting cross-legged on a concrete floor while they learned. There were people on the streets peddling all kinds of things and lots of places were closed down.
During the tour, I had seen an interesting looking restaurant called Flamingos, so after the tour, we took off on foot to see if we could find it again for lunch. Once we got down to the beach, we were inundated with massage ladies shoving cards in our hands with their names on it. They were everywhere! And they had no concern for personal space. I started getting a little anxious, and the boys didn't know what to think about the whole show. We managed to get out of there, and found the restaurant. I'm so glad we did, it was awesome and the staff was so nice! We stayed there for a little while and had lunch and drinks.
A couple of times, peddlers came into the restaurant and to our table to sell us items. This was more intrusive than I had ever experienced. We did buy candy for the boys from one guy though.
So cheesy!
Adam and I did end up getting beach massages from a little place that wasn't so crazy. We took turns while the other watched the boys. The beach was packed, hardly anywhere to sit. And the sand was full of broken shells and kind of hard to walk on. At one point, I was watching Ethan, then turned my head to watch a heated exchange with a beach peddler and when I turned back, Ethan was gone. I panicked! I rand down to the exact spot where he had been only two minutes before and I looked up and down the beach. Then I went back up the the table to look and I heard someone saying, "Ma'am?" She was a tourist, maybe even from our ship? And she had Ethan. PRAISE GOD. I thought I lost my child in Mexico. That kid is way too fast. Apparently, he thought he saw some good shells about 10 feet away and went for them. But there were so many people on the beach that it was hard to see his head.
Not my favorite place.
This was about 4 minutes before he disappeared.
One fun new experience was the coconut stand. On our walk back to the bus, we passed a father and son coconut stand where they will slice up a coconut for you to drink right there on the street. Ethan really wanted to try it (also on his bucket list), so we bought one. The boys were AMAZED watching the guy chop and slice coconuts to either eat or drink.
I was impressed - this is normally where Aden draws the line at trying new food items but he embraced it and tried it!
The consensus was that it was warm and not really that sweet, so it wasn't going to be our new favorite thing. But it wasn't bad.
Then it was back to the boat!
Aden opted for Camp Carnival dinner with new friends (who IS this kid??) and Ethan wanted to go to fancy dinner.
We did catch Camp Carnival just in time to watch a "volcano" erupt. These camp coordinators are so much fun!
