We spent 10 days in Ixtapa to celebrate Thanksgiving and Lance's Dads 80th birthday.
We stayed at the Bay View Grand- residential. We've been staying there for years. Its a great condo complex with nice pools and a restaurant/ bar. It is walking distance to many restaurants and a street market.
Most of Lance's family were able to make it for part or all of the time. Lance's Dad Tom and his wife Annette, Lance's brother Peter and his wife Susan plus their 2 kids and significant others, Lance's brother Aaron and his 2 boys, and our niece Mira. It was a great turnout!
Our first night we wandered across the street and went to Daniel's restaurant. Daniel was so friendly and made an amazing tequila shrimp. We loved all the cats wandering around!
Lance and Carson walked the beach our first morning there and were fortunate to see baby turtles! They were so tiny and cute!
We had many breakfasts at this spot at the hotel restaraunt. I loved the fruit plate.
We took a water taxi from Playa Linda and visited Isla Ixtapa for some snorkeling and relaxing on the beach.
We ate some delicious food and had some fun drinks.
There were some big crocodiles and lizards near Playa Linda, they were fun to look at.
Lance, the kids, Papa and Aaron got some fun henna tattoos at the beach.
Some of us took a bus back from Playa Linda. It was an experience to say the least. Very very hot!
We had to take everyone to our favorite restaurant- Emilios. Delicious wood fired pizza. So so good. We went twice!
Most of the group went fishing. They split into 3 boats. Papa Toms boat caught 2 giant Marlin. Aaron's boat caught 3 sailfish. Lance, Mira and kids boat caught 1 sailfish. It was as tall as Mira!
Everyone had a great time fishing.
We took Papa Tom to El Farro for his bday dinner. It was a gorgeous setting and the food was even better then the view! There was live music downstairs and they even sang Happy Bday to Papa!
We took the tram to and from dinner. Its one of my favorite parts!
Family pics before dinner.
The kids did some boogie boarding and night swimming. There was lots of body surfing and swimming with the whole family. Some even saw some sting rays and pufferfish while body surfing.
Daniel gave us a recommendation for a snorkeling excursion so we decided why not?
We went out on the Gran Jefe II. It was just our family on the boat which was amazing!!
We were able to fish on the way out to the snorkeling spot, almost everyone caught at least one bonita.
We snorkeled near Playa Manzanilla. It was great. We saw a big turtle swimming, pufferfish, sea stars, schools of fish and eels.
We had a great time. I will definitely do this again on my next trip!
The sunsets were amazing every single night. We had a beautiful view from our room.
On one of our nightly beach walks we came across some security guards releasing a bunch of baby turtles they had found after being hatched in front of a hotel. They were so adorable! I loved watching them try to make their way to the water. They got turned around so many times and needed assistance getting back in the right direction.
A few people went fishing again, this time for rooster fish. Lance ended up catching a spanish mackerel.
There were a couple of iguanas that hung out by the hotel pool.
Lance and the kids went jet skiing one day. They had a great time!
We moved hotels for our last night. We had to change our flight to a day later (darn) so we thought it would be fun to stay in Zihuantanejo for a night. We stayed at the Hotel Irma. It was so cute. It had a beautiful infinity pool and beach access (if you went down a ton of stairs). I would definitely stay there again!
We wandered around town, did a little shopping and ate dinner on the beach. It was a great last night!
It was a wonderful vacation filled with memories that will last a lifetime. Happy Birthday Papa!
