Secrets Plays Bonita Panama: Day Two - Adapting to Mediocrity

I left off yesterday after breakfast.  Maybe our first full day would improve?

I wish.  Granted it didn't get any worse...not that I think that could even be possible.

For lunch we hit the Seaside Grill.  It was actually open this time and we could order off the full menu.  We actually got the app that they said we couldn't have the day before.  It wasn't really worth the wait.  It wasn't bad, it was just a bunch of small baked / fried things with a dipping sauce.

I will say that the Cesar chicken wrap I ordered was decent, even if the fries that came with it reminded me greatly of the cheap fries they served back in my school days.

It's a good thing the wrap was good, because I gave half of it to my wife.  She ordered fish tacos.  The fish was supposed to be battered and fried.  It was battered and partly fried.  The batter wasn't cooked and the fish was raw.  Yumminess.

So on a side note -  we have discovered that if you like beer that tastes like beer and not water, order Balboa.  Atlas is your next option.  Unless you like water beer - avoid the other options.  Now if straight alcohol content is what you want, Balboa has 4.8%.  Atlas has 3.8% .

Balboa Beer

Now as far as swimming goes - I'd avoid the ocean water.  Most of the time the whole beach is red flagged.  They consider that a high risk, but not enough to close the beach.  I can't tell if they do this because of liability or if the water is actually dangerous.  The pools are really nice and not heated.  That's a good thing in Panama.  The sun heats them enough.

There are two main pools.  The loud, bar pool, which has a number of attached pools and the quiet pool.  They call them the Main Pool and the Relaxation Pool.  The funny thing is, you can tell this place is a retrofit.  The Main Pool has this odd one foot deep pool.  I think that used to be the kids pool.  Secrets doesn't allow kids, so now adults drag seats into it.

For dinner we hit Bordeaux.  That's the French restaurant....that plays old school American Rock.  Very French.  Overall the food was decent, with a few exceptions.  First - if you order beef you get to pick between medium or well done.  I didn't see well done but I can tell you that medium for both my wife and I was rare.  I mean seriously rare, not just under cooked.

Bordeaux

The French Onion Soup tastes good, but it's not baked (at least it shows no signs of being baked) and it has no cheese that I could see.  So in other words...it's not French Onion Soup.  It's like Campbell's Onion Soup with a biscuit in it.

Desert was funny.  I ordered a tart and got a hard wafer with goo on it.  My wife ordered the "lava cake" thingy.  I call it that because it was this tiny little cake in a shot glass next to a puddle of chocolate diarrhea.  I'll order it next time and grab a photo so you can see it.  I guess it tasted good, but was possible the most unappetizing thing I've ever seen.

Breakfast day two!

I skipped it.  I went hiking through the jungle instead.  I had zero desire to repeat the misery of the day before.

So you can walk through a nice buggy path in hot and humid conditions too!  It's a great way to lose about ten pounds of liquid weight!  It wasn't really that bad, but unless you like to hike or love exercise, it's hard to say trek is worth the effort.  There wasn't a whole lot to see.

Well, here is what you can see:

It doesn't really look this good.  This is the result of zooming and editing

A Panama Tree (I'm super excited!)

The Far Beach - Great place if you want privacy.

I believe this is a Coati

A Two-toed Sloth.  I call him Schlomo.

Jump ahead to lunch. We hit the seaside grill again (Not like you really have a choice).  We both ordered the Greek salad.  It was a salad with no olives, no feta, and a drizzle of indistinct dressing.  Yum!

I ordered the buffalo wings too.  They were nice and spicy.  The sauce wasn't terrible either.  It's nice to note though, that they were crazy messy.

My wife ordered a burger that was overcooked, but pretty good.  I ordered the pizza.  It looked and tasted like a microwave pizza.  Actually, I've had some microwave pizza's that were much better than this.  This is the nasty microwave pizza they served in grade school.

Another side note - for anyone worried about the weather - it hasn't really rained yet.  It's also been around 90F each day.  That's not as bad as it sounds because there is a constant breeze that keeps it feeling cooler.  The sun is MUCH stronger than in the Caribbean.  You will burn very quickly.  My wife and I have avoided that so far, but there are a lot of walking lobsters here.