Mexico, continued

So Pete and I have been really good about money during this vacation – we’ve only gone out to eat a few times and made all our other meals in the condo.

But I really wanted to try out a restaurant at another hotel set in the mountain called Las Bristas. The travel guide said it was a beautiful view of the ocean and you could see iguanas in the jungle trees in the morning. Cool!!!

So at about 10 this morning, Pete and I took a cab to Las Bristas and indulged in an awesome brunch. The waiter said the iguanas were usually out of sight by 7 am (drats!) but we still had fun. We finished breakfast around 11:30 and decided it would be fun if we walked back to the condo instead of cabbing it.

As we were paying the bill for brunch, our waiter said that he would “look the other way” if we wanted to look around the resort a little bit. We thought that sounded like a fine idea. All we wanted to do was take a look at the pool and be on our merry way.

And that’s when our Mexican nightmare began.

Las Bristas is like a maze. There are all these unmarked paths through the mountainside so it took us quite a bit of time just to find the pool. We stared at the old biddies floating on their backs for about five minutes before we decided to head home. It was getting close to noon at this point and the sun was getting pretty hot.

I suggested we just walk down to the beach and head back to our place from there. So we spent another 10 minutes trying to find the path leading down to the beach. Then we finally saw the beach. Yay!

“Eva, this is the wrong beach,” Pete pointed out, sweat beading on his forehead.

I looked down. Sure enough, there was a mountain separating the Las Bristas beach from the rest of the beach.

Oops.

“Bad idea. Bad idea,” Pete said to me, looking amused.

So back up the mountain we went. It was getting really freaking hot.

When we mastered the mountain path we were on, we both sighed in relief and prepared to walk back into the resort looking sheepish.

Except then we turned a corner and were faced with literally 1,000 steps. I’m not even kidding. Literally 1,000 steps to get back up to the lobby of the hotel.

So I’m not very patient but Pete has more patience and energy than anyone I’ve ever met. He was singing and hugging and kissing me through this whole debacle. At one point, when I expressed disappointment about the lack of wildlife I’d seen at Las Bristas, he said, “Well I think I just saw Nagini coming to get you!!!!”

Nagini is the giant snake from Harry Potter.

So we’re back at the steps. Pete decides to turn walking up the steps into a new game. Here’s how it goes: Take one step. Bump hips with Eva. Shout “Nagini!”

Step. Bump. Nagini!

Step. Bump. Nagini!

Well that game lost it’s charm pretty quickly and I had to tell him to knock it off because I was about to throw myself down the 1,000 steps.

Anyways, over an hour later, we had finally found our way back to the Las Bristas lobby, back to the main streets of Ixtapa and back to the condo, dripping with sweat and ready for a nap down by the pool.

This was a trip that should’ve taken us no more than 15 minutes, give or take.