4-9-2011 Alkumal Beach Resort - Mexico People - food

Home again on Saturday.

We had such a great relaxing time.

The food was inviting as you can see by the photos below. Desserts my favorite.

We met lots of interesting people.

Tom and Jenny from Calgary, Alberta, Canada were both electrical engineers. She worked in the tar sands where they extract oil from the sands. To make one gallon of oil it takes six gallons of water. Quite a controversial deal. She flies 10 days into a remote area and has 4 days off. Temperatures drop to minus 40 degrees Celsius in the winter. She works in an administrative building with not much venturing out to smell the roses.

Shelly, from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada is a bundle of energy. She is probably in her mid-thirties if that and has a love for the senior population. She expressed a genuine interest in how the "aged" maintain the excitement in life. She must have hit the jackpot when she met Stan and I with our dancing and prancing to polkas along with playing accordion and saxophone at 5 am in the morning. We must have seemed strange. Shelley works for the city and brings communities together with social projects like engaging all ages to create gardens and benches along the walkways. She has a knack for talking with people. Her husband has a PHD in Environmental engineering related to clean water. Her little kids were on their way to success. At age 10, her daughter can already swim 179 laps and her son is a champ at hockey. Both children are fluent in French, Canada's second language. Hockey seems to be the well-followed pastime requirement for all residents of Canada - eh?

At water aerobics Stan met Anna from British Columbia, Canada. Seems she is quite the quilter - all by hand. I talked to her later in the week. She has a ten foot spot in her living room with a quilt rolled on the stretchers where she can sit down and hand quilt the layers together. She, like myself, has giving a lot of them away to friends and relatives. She also works with the Red Cross. They give her bags of six inch square fabric that she hand sews into squares and then quilts for homeless type folks that the Red Cross helps. She is not much for triangles or other pointy patterns. It would be interesting to see what she does with her fabrics. I gave her my email address and blog, however she said she doesn't have a computer. That's probably why she has so much time to sew by hand.

She also cans food: fish, tomatoes and the like. Stan said she either was recovering from cancer or still had it. I didn't talk to her about that, but noticed she had a fresh ten inch tattoo of a tinker bell type fairy on her calf. Hhmm. Quilting and tattoos; that's an interesting combination. I suppose if you're going through a bout of cancer you can pretty much do what you want. If you want a tattoo, oh well then - get one.

There were people on the same schedule as we were that always seemed to gravitate to the same tables for meals. We didn't really talk with them, but noticed them as they probably did us. One family with three little kids were known as the hairless family as the father didn't have a scrap of hair on his arms or legs, only his head.

Another we called the Blue Bloods after the weekly cop show that always eats together on a big long table. These vacation Blue Bloods filled a table of 10 each day to enjoy each others company on a family get together.

The gay guys, bald with short cropped hair, tan buff bodies and a few tattoos were every present, but ever private keeping to themselves. We guessed that they must have been from Italy or Brazil.

One gal got up and sang New York, New York at karaoke night. She was quite the extrovert and show-person. On Miss / Mrs Alkumal night she gargled away singing La cucaracha (sp) song. Her husband must like it. He was always smiling.

As we were winding up our week the long necks showed up. Both husband and wife have extremely long necks - about three or four inches longer than most folks. They were pretty tall and skinny, which added to their head turning look. Their little boy looked normal so far.

All the servers were very polite and cheerful. They spoke Spanish and pocito English and and we tried to follow the conversation. We spoke pocito Spanish. A smile here and there helped.

It was a beautiful relaxing vacation. We would go back.