Mexico Day 2

I will fill out questionnaires, write exhaustive secret shopper reports, and drive out of my way to attend market research panels, but it turns out my limit for what I'll endure for free stuff ends right at time share pitches. It sucks enough you're being toured around to hear about stuff you could never afford, but then there's the added pressure of trying to put up the facade that you're the type of person that might be interested in this, but you just happen to not be interested. To make things harder, the woman giving the spiel was young, funny and well-traveled. I think we would have had fun hanging out together under different circumstances.

Once the 90 minutes was up, we had our rental car and headed straight down to Tulum to check out some ruins.

We forgot our swimsuits, which was unfortunate because it was very hot and the beach there was incredibly beautiful. I don't know how I caught sight of it, but there was the tiniest lizard ever scurrying around on the ground.

Back in town that evening, we prepared for a dinner with the family and the bride-and-groom-to-be. We drove to the super fancy resort and were struck a little numb with the sheer immensity of it. Fountains, chandeliers, champagne, cushy lounges, marble floors...and this was just the lobby.

We told the front desk we were meeting family for a dinner and they were less than impressed. Since the resort was all-inclusive, they asked if we intended to buy a day pass. Being that it was already close to 6 at night, we said we hadn't planned on it. They insisted that the only way we would get inside would be by paying for a day pass: $80 each.

We knew we'd have to buy day passes for the wedding, so it was a bit of a shock to get it the night before, too. We eventually found J's brother, who tried to get them to waive the fee, but they wouldn't budge. It was terrible having something like this come down to money. On one hand, we came all this way just for this. On the other hand, we'd budgeted and spent a lot of money coming all the way down for this. Could we really throw down another $160 just to see the family for a couple hours?

In the end, we left without going to dinner and it was awful. I felt disappointed, and somewhat humiliated. I wished we didn't have to worry about money and that we could throw $300 around and have it not be a big deal. I wished we could have afforded to stay in the resort with the other guests. I wished we had just paid the money and then I'd be worried about something dumb like money instead of something heartbreaking like missing a rehearsal dinner.

We ate at a funny Chinese/Italian restaurant in town and I drank some beer, which helped. A family in a van full of pastries pulled up and we bought a bag full of donuts and sweet bread. That helped, too. Who doesn't like a van full of pastries?

We sat outside our room and listened to the waves lap up; J ran down to the beach to chase some dark sea bird. Things would surely look up in the morning.