We spent the holidays in Tampa and made a couple of day trips to Caliente. The first was on the Friday after Thanksgiving. We drove up to the gate and was asked if we would like a tour which would entitle us to a free pass for the day. She said that no one tries to sell you anything and she was right. A volunteer owner drove us around in a golf cart for about 20 minutes showing us the entire resort spending most of the time in the clubhouse-pool area. That was that, no sales pitch as everything is sold and only re-sales are available.

This is a real classy resort. Doors are opened for you as you enter the main clubhouse entrance. Lockers are free to use in the locker/steam and shower room downstairs next to the gym and spa. It requires a $5 deposit for the lock which is returned. Towels are provided free of charge. After changing into nothing, we went out to the pool area which is beautiful. There are 4 pool/ rec areas. The main landscaped pool (which was too cold to enter now) was directly behind the clubhouse. To the right and up on a terraced area there's a swerved heated conversation pool and a large hot tub. Directly across from the main pool is a stage area where music entertainment is provided. To the left of that and further back is another heated pool where most people hung out while we were there. A nice pool bar next to it. Further left, there were two heated water volley ball pools, and coming around the circle was bocciball, horseshoes, sand volleyball court and children's playground with tennis courts behind a ways. The hotel building is to the left there also rounding everything out. There are outdoor showers with spa conditioning soap despensers at the restroom building seperating the hotel from the clubhouse.

Our first day there, being sort of shy, we didn't really meet anyone. There was a family from MI there we spoke with for a while, three generations, grandparents, children and grandchildren. We ate at the pool bar and had Cheeseburgers ($9.25) which were really very good. Beers were a little pricey at $5-5.50 each, but they have to make a buck somewhere to provide all the amenities which was worth it as far as we were concerned. We left before dinner time that day planning to return on Sunday.

On Sunday morning, we were charged $27 each for day passes. Funny thing was that we met a buch of people because we stole someones noodles. Thinking that pool toys were left around the pool. we grabbed them and took them over to our chairs afterwards. Turns out that they belonged to someone. Other couples who knew this said nothing and the owner of the noodles didn't want to embarress and said nothing which brought Richard and Denise over to us smiling about how no one told us. We returned them to the rightful owner and that's how we met a bunch of people. On Sundays, they have the in season sports playing in the main clubhouse bar, which has about 10 screens with all different games playing. All afternoon we heard the roars. The pool bar also had a couple of screens and we were able to watch from the pool. Toward dinner time, they had kariokee which was a lot of fun. We decide to make our way to the clubhouse bar to have a few and eat. We had at first made dinner reservations in the restaurant but after meeting more people and playing pool, buying drinks, being bought drinks, we decided on a large pizza at the bar. Quite good and being use to NYC pizza, really was preety good. Afterwards we ventured out to the hot tub to sober up and watch the stars. We're definitly going to go back and stay onsite someday.

Chuck