Cozumel 12/3 - Happy Birthday Michelle!

Today is Cozumel and it's Michelle's birthday! Our excursion today, picked by the birthday girl is at  Discover Mexico  and it's a Chocolate making, tequila tasting and lunch combo! When we got off the boat we had a few hours to kill, but we were afraid we didn't know where to go and it was only 500 yards from the pier, supposedly. So we started walking and it was way further than that! I kinda remembered it from the last time we were here becuase that's where we learned to ride segways on our cruise in 2011. But... I went along with the group :) anyway, we got down there and asked if since we were there we could go ahead and get started instead of waiting until 1pm. It was around 11am and they went ahead and took us! Good thing, the weather was not going to cooperate! We watched a short film and had a "punch" with punch they handed us, then on to the chocolate making. Our guide Ruy was a hoot, so fun, but a little hard to understand sometimes!  It was cool, we learned a bit about beans and roasting, etc and ground our beans three times, adding sugar and cinnamon to make a hot chocolate disc for later.

 To make a chocolate bar it would need to be ground 14 times, and we were using a hand crank grinder. :) So, we got all cleaned up from that and headed to the Jose Quervo area.
The building was made of containers and so nice and elegant! We had the room to ourselves and they had the table all set up with 3 different kinds of tequila and water. Ruy went over the different colors and kinds and how to sip it without it tasting like gasoline. Well, it didn't work, it still was pretty harsh!

 It was interesting to learn about tequila, why the colors are different, etc. But didn't change my mind about drinking it! ;) We took a tour thru the park looking at replicas of the Mayan ruins and learning a little more about the history of Mexico. Then we were about to the time for lunch and as we were waiting they made us Mango Margaritas and they were really good! Then came the rain, deluge is more like it and the area we were having lunch was covered, but getting there was not. Luckily we had brought our towels from the ship with us and we got over there not quite as soaked as we could be. Lunch was a typical Mexican lunch, tortillas, meat, beans rice, etc and was very good! They of course took us thru the shop on the premises and we hung out in there until the taxi showed up for us to leave. We had a few hours to mess around in Cozumel, but the weather was horrible and the roads there were getting flooded already, so we made our way back to the boat to get dry and relax before our dinner. We were celebrating in style in the Steakhouse for Michelle's birthday!