Baru, Colombia, South America

I had a really good night’s sleep last night. I was exhausted from all the drinking and dancing last night. That’s certainly not what I’ve been used to when traveling on my own for the last nine months. We got up and met for breakfast at the buffet again, which was excellent. I love having a real breakfast like this. It’s such a nice change from toast and jam.

After breakfast Melissa, Vanessa, Juan Carlos, Paola, and I went down to the beach and rented some kayaks. It was free to rent, so that was a bonus. We each had our own kayak and we went zipping around in the bay for about 40 minutes, which was really fun. I haven’t been out in a kayak for a long time, so it was fun to do that again. There wasn’t much to see out there, but it was just really nice to enjoy the crystal clear water and the beautiful surroundings.

We finished up our kayaking and got a little ferry boat over to a small island owned by the resort. It was really beautiful, and much quieter than the beach on the peninsula, so it was a perfect place to relax for a bit. We had a couple of drinks and went for a dip in the sea before heading back to meet the rest of the family for lunch. We had to have an early lunch because we were all getting massages in the afternoon, and you don’t want to have food right before a massage.

We went down to the spa pool after lunch and had a nap at poolside while we waited for our massages. Luz Mery was so amazing to pay for all of to get half hour massages at the spa. It was perfect. I had a great massage at poolside and couldn’t have felt more relaxed. It was phenomenal. The only ones who were not able to get a massage were Melissa and Luz Mery, which I felt terrible about. Apparently there was a problem with one of the masseuses, so they weren’t able to fit everyone in. Hopefully they’ll be able to get one when we get to the resort in Santa Marta.

Melissa and I felt like doing something active so we didn’t fall asleep again before dinner, so we played some ping pong. Juan Carlos joined in at the end too and we had a nice little round robin game going on. We had to finish up around 5:30pm so we could go get ready for dinner.

We had a reservation for dinner tonight at the Eurasian restaurant. It was definitely the nicest looking restaurant we’ve been to, but the food was my least favorite. I had pad thai for my main meal, and it just wasn’t very tasty. It’s tough to please me with a pad thai now though because I’ve had so many amazing ones around the world.

After dinner Melissa and I went to play tennis at one of the courts near our room. We got out there for about 8:40pm, only to find out that they close the courts at 9pm. We stayed on until about 9:30pm when the lights went off, and then headed back to the rooms to get ready. I had a shower and then went to meet Melissa, but she hadn’t gotten ready yet. We were both so exhausted that we decided not to go out tonight and we’re just going to get a good night’s sleep and try to play tennis in the morning at about 7am. Hopefully we’ll have better luck then, and it won’t be too hot yet!