On Friday the 13th (not unlucky for us) we awoke to our last full day at the resort. Tim’s goal was to check off a bunch of final ‘to do’ items. After breakfast, Tim recorded a walking tour of the resort, starting out front of the main building and walking all the way through down to the beach. A 9-minute view into the beauty of the Riu resort.
Walking back from the beach, Tim saw this butterfly near the pool.
Tim continued his touring by climbing up to the top level of the resort floors (lucky us to just be one floor off the ground) for a panoramic view of the Riu courtyard.
Then Janie and Tim prepped and headed for some more pool-side relaxation. Here, Janie is in her favorite position.
While the pool was still pretty empty, Tim decided to swim up to the bar for a drink. The all-inclusive resort also included unlimited drinks at the 5 (?) bars across the property. It may not have been top-notch alcohol, but we liked most of the drinks.
It was after 5pm somewhere, right??
After lunch, we headed down to the beach. Janie was happy reading and relaxing in the shade. Tim was itching to explore. The resort offered tours for $$ like guided scuba diving as well as free options like kayaking. Tim decided to give the ocean kayaking a try.
It was more difficult than he was expecting, based on his experiences with river kayaks – which are longer, more protected from the water, and have back supports. This kayak was none of those. It almost seemed like Tim was sitting on the water’s surface, on a nearly flat board. So, it was a bit of a workout (especially on the hips while sitting and paddling), with the waves occasionally splashing over him. He was glad that he kept his camera in a sealed plastic bag, except to pull it out and balance for a few pictures. We noticed later that water still got in the bag…which rendered the camera useless for the rest of the day. At least he was able to get these shots first.
Back on the beach, Tim borrowed Janie’s camera and set off to walk the length of the beach. Once a little aways from the Riu area, there were a lot of small crabs digging holes in the sand and running around.
Tim chased one crab around some that was unable to find an unoccupied hole to hide in – each hole it came to yielded another crab that chased it off. Finally it got tired and crouched down in a footprint, letting him get closer.
At the end of the beach was a pretty panoramic view back towards the Riu.
The edge of the beach hit a rocky outcropping and cliff dotted with cacti and several trees.
This dead crap was picturesque.
Walking back, this sign just screamed to be checked out by Tim.
No crocodiles were spotted, however there were plenty of small lizards and some large birds looking for dinner.
On the tours, Elvis pointed out ‘strangulation trees’ which grew like vines up and around other trees, eventually killing the original ones. Near the beach were many trees that looked like them – or else they just had different trunks.
This little lizard peered at Tim before disappearing.
The iridescent green bird in the left-center of this picture caught Tim’s eye, but wouldn’t let him get closer before flying off. The saguaro-like cactus also caught Tim’s eye – must be an ideal temperature for them.
We met up for our last dinner at the resort. We could sense that the resort was filling back up for the weekend as there were many ‘new’ guests there were dinner. We knew our time was coming to an end and we retired to our rooms to pack up our bags.
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