We stayed at Punta Serena, a private resort on the Blue Bay off of the Pacific Ocean. It was actually pretty far south, about as close to Guatemala as it is to any point in the USA
The first thing to note about the resort is that it really did look like the pictures. There were exquisite views from everywhere, even the bathroom had an excellent view of the beach and ocean. There was a full sized pool, two hot tubs, and a private beach. The water was all a deep clear blue and the sky was clear enough to see the sunrises and sunsets, a full moon, stars, and even Venus. We were told that you later in the year you could see dolphins, turtles, and other wild life from the pools and beach, but we apparently came a little too early in the year for that. We did have the pleasure of a large iguana's company, who tended to hang out near one of the hot tubs. On the down side, the place had stairs everywhere, and it was a significant workout just to get to the beach.
The room itself was large but only moderately furnished. It was as if they didn't expect you to spend much time in it, It wasn't especially clean, or say adequately supplied with towels, but that seemed more of a cultural issue than a staff one. The room had a balcony which featured a hammock, of which I made great use.
At one point we got a little visitor in the bathroom that Becky befriended.
The food wasn't really what one would think of as Mexican, but closer to American dishes, steak, chicken, pasta, and fish, with local touches. The portions were small, which wasn't bad as it allowed for ordering of appetizers and desserts. They did have interesting water juices though, which was water mixed with whatever they had on hand (papaya, pineapple, oatmeal...). The menu was the same everyday, which could get tiring after a while, but weren't quite there long enough for it to be much of a problem. One interesting quirk was that they would always take orders from females before males. The restaurant was open air with a new roof that was erected after the previous one was defeated by a hurricane. It allowed for some nice views of sunsets at dinner, but did occasionally result in some insect competition for meals. All in all the food was solid, but not a reason to go there for.
They had an open bar by the pools, which offered snacks and drinks. They seemed to specialize in non-alcoholic fruit drinks, but had a pretty good supply of everything. There best one was a self titled Punta Serena, a mixture of half of a dozen fruit juices that they offered to all new guests.* They used the precise measuring system of a dollop of this and three splashes of that, which resulted in drinks tasting different each time. They seemed to use a lot of alcohol, but the drinks never reflected much of it, so perhaps the drinks were a bit watered down. We did discover the Jose special, a drink with chocolate, coconut milk and Kahlua, which Jose greatly appreciated serving. The staff were willing to deliver drinks and food to anywhere around the pool area, which was useful for maximizing laziness.
*We ordered it more once we figured out what it was called.
The staff spoke enough English to handle all common queries and were exceptionally accommodating of all requests. We later learned from a common visitor that there was very little turnover in the staff and many of the employees had been their for decades. We never really needed to speak Spanish, but we tried somewhat albeit mostly just with hola and gracious* It has been over a decade since I've taken any Spanish and even when I knew a word, I'd instinctively say the English anyway.
*We said gracious so much that it was hard to stop once we got back to America.
We journeyed over to the sister resort, Los Angeles Locos, one night to mingle amongst the commoners and get dinner. The way things are set up, we could visit Los Locos anytime we wanted, but they couldn't visit our resort. I'm sure it would be a nice family vacation destination*, but after staying at Punta Serena it seemed just loud and crowded. Dinner was good though other than the ant farm on the side of the table. Afterwards we were happy to get back to our own private resort.Our American tourist smugness is coming along well.
The pool did have a swim up bar.
One other thing worth mentioning. The resort was clothing optional. For the first part of our stay this didn't matter, as the wedding party decreed that grandma didn't need to see too much skin. After the wedding party cleared out and we started to get some new visitors, we got to see a few more exhibitionists.
No comments:
Post a Comment