Puerto Vallarta, Mexico

Friday, February 05, 1999

We are going to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico today with friends.  This is not a trip I would normally plan on my own and haven’t really been enthused about it. 

 This was mostly a travel day for us.  We left Orlando on a 757 Continental flight at 9:10AM. It was wonderful. The only snag was the poor ticketing by the travel agent.  No seat assignments on any but the first leg of the journey, and those seats were not together.  The Continental agent not only corrected that seat assignment, but also assigned us seats for the rest of the journey!  He was great. 

David and Mary Lou have a lovely little 3-bedroom adobe condo.  Richard and I are sleeping in a double bed and the room has its own bathroom (tiny – the door doesn’t open all the way because it hits the toilet) and we slept with just a ceiling fan.  It is not air-conditioned but I found the fan and a light blanked to be enough.  Tony and Claudia have a room with twin beds. 

We spent some time when we arrived just chatting and walking the complex, then went to this lovely restaurant (El Set) for dinner.  We had a great table near the edge of the balcony overlooking the bay.  Sunset was misty and the red ball disappeared fast.  David was disappointed but I enjoyed it.  The water and sky blended into an indistinguishable horizon.  The highlight of the evening was the appearance of the pirate ship out of the mist.  David told me they had dinner cruises aboard this ship, and daytime excursions to the Arches – a snorkeling area.

We were at the restaurant several hours.  Our waiter spoke very good English and I spoke what little Spanish I could.  Richard had fajita and I had broiled lobster tail.  The cooked parts were excellent, but some of the meat was undercooked.  The margarita I had was light on the alcohol and done to perfection.  We also had salsa and guacamole and tortilla dip.   

When we got back, we all went to bed almost immediately and although I was up several times – bathroom etc., I slept very well on the hard bed.  Richard said he slept poorly.  Tomorrow, David and Mary Lou are taking us sightseeing and Sunday is our jungle cruise.

adobe homes	restaurant courtyard	Arches	Night of the Iguana house
Predator area	bazaar	sunset from restaurant

Saturday, February 06, 1999

We had a wonderful day today.  Slept until 7 Vallarta time, which is only one time zone away from us because they are not on Daylight Savings Time.  However, they are so close to the time zone that they might as well be considered Mountain Time.

 Anyway, after waking and dressing, we walked to the marina and checked in with the jungle cruise tour (Vallarta Adventures) and then ate breakfast at a pancake house.  The food has been good and drinking bottled water, we have had no problems.

After breakfast, we piled in both cars and drove up to Mismaloya and the Arches area.  There is a beach there, which was loaded with holiday tourists.  This is where John Houston filmed “Night of the Iguana” and we saw the set along with crabs and black-colored iguanas.  On the beach, I was plied with the more traditional green iguanas while some boys took my picture – for free, they said, but I had no money to give them and told them so from the outset.  Peddlers attacked us at every turn, but not in an obnoxious way.

We watched para-sailing on the beach, then left and drove to the Predator movie set, which was a 3 mile dirt road, one car only width, that climbed about 1200 feet up the mountain.  There was a manmade waterfall dam at the set and a restaurant.  I bought some ironwood objects, a frog and a dolphin.  On the way down, a Mexican youngster asked for a ride and hitched with us back to Vallarta.  He said his name was David.  He was 15 and spoke little English and I was able to practice my Spanish with him.  I enjoyed it very much. 

Back in town, we stopped at the glass factory, but I didn’t buy anything.  Then we went to the bazaar where we all bought souvenirs.  I got Karen an embroidered tee for $7.00 and a couple of pewter birds for $4.00 each, a glazed, 3-footed fruit bowl for $8.00, two smaller 3 foot bowls for $3.00 each.  Then we went on to a ritzier area and I bought a glass turtle for $15 and some authentic native Indian pieces, a beaded gourd and a duck made by impressing beads into beeswax.

Lunch was light and at an open-air restaurant and bar.  Dinner was in Vallarta, also open air.  The food was excellent.  I had tortilla soup and coconut encrusted red snapper in a mango sauce.  The only problem was it was just too much food.  I was raised in the clean-your-plate era and it is hard to change so I tend to overeat.  Gotta watch that.  This sunset was more like what David expected but there wasn’t much of a colored sky because of the cloud structure.  However, we did see the sun “sink into the ocean.”

Sunday, February 7, 1999 

José, our safari guide	The Mercedes	along the route

Slept poorly last night.  Apparently, Mexico doesn’t have a quiet law and Richard had opened the sliding door for air.  We went to bed at 9:30 and I was up at 11, 2:15, 3 something and finally slammed the door shut and got some sound sleep until 6:45 when Richard woke up and I was again awakened.  Rather than trying to sleep more, I decided to continue this entry.

Today, breakfast will be pastries in the house and then on to our jungle cruise adventure.  We did a lot of walking yesterday, including one restaurant (the lunch break) that was set on many levels and we ate about ¾ of the way down the mountain.  Of course, we had all those stairs to climb again to get back to the car.  But the breezes and the view were worth the climb.  I’m a little achy this morning but not too bad.  Similar muscles to biking. 

We walked over to the marina where we hooked up with Vallarta Adventures for the Sierra Madré tour.  There was some more food that the tour put out for us – juice and coffee and donuts – but I didn’t eat anything.  At 9 we loaded into the trucks, 6 of them, 8 passengers apiece.  The trucks were Mercedes open air vehicles with benches along each side.  There were seatbelts for each passenger, which we definitely needed. 

Our guides were all personable and we had the best of all – a young man named Jose Luis of German/Mexican decent who was a fountain of information. 

The trip began along the highway, the wind blasting my right air.  Then we turned off onto an old telegraph road that if someone had told me this was a mountain bicycle path I would have believed it!  Without the seatbelts, we would have hit the roof on many a jar.

Tony found out that the tour runs all year long and some “roads” are used in the dry season (now) and others have to be used in the wet season.  We hit some potholes and I thought we might lose an axle.  But the vehicles were purchased from the Austrian Army, and they were sound.

Our first stop was for a snack, then a second stop was a town with a plaza where we toured a Catholic Church and learned the significance of the statues in the square.  We had to use the facilities and were pointed in the right direction, but didn’t know which building.  I went into the market and asked in Spanish and understood the answer so I guided our small group to the restaurant.  

This town was wealthy enough to have a baño but there were no doors on the stalls, no paper, no seats on the toilets.  There were showers and apparently, the town shared these common facilities.

Most of the towns we passed through were dirt roads with houses we would call hovels.  Even so, the people seemed happy and all were friendly.  Everyone helps everyone and Jose seemed to know almost everyone we passed.  Whenever we slowed down (we were the last vehicle) the kids would accumulate asking for “cola.”  José would throw them bottles of squirt and RC cola to share. 

Our next stop was for lunch and a jungle hike.  Lunch was a sandwich of tomato, cheese and mayo or mustard that you made yourself.  Richard and I had only the bread and a drink.  Beer was flowing.  I tried a little, but didn’t drink too much and stuck with the Squirt and cola.  Then we took about a mile hike through the jungle with José as our extremely knowledgeable guide.  He showed us daddy long leg spiders that clustered together like moss for protection, brown beetles, the larvae of lion ants, and how the soldier ant avoids a person’s hand because of the smell.  We heard parrots, but never saw any.  I did see a tiny hummingbird.  One of the trees José pointed out was called a “tourist” tree because it was red and the bark peeled.

 The neatest aspect to this jungle was the climate.  The botanist with us, Ignácio, said that this area was a transitional forest between the desert of Arizona and New Mexico and the lush jungles of the Amazon.  There were cacti among the trees.  One that he pointed out he said was 800 years old. 

The cattle we saw along the way on the ranches we drove through were scrawny and were Brahma’s, African Long Ears, and Long Horns.  These were the only types that could survive in the extreme dryness of the area.  We passed two dead cattle along the way. 

Several of us took “pottie” breaks in the trees.  Tony stood guard for Claudia and Richard stood guard for me.  Then some more drinks and back into the trucks for another jostling trip, this time to the beach. We had about an hour and a half at this stop, which included dinner.  When we arrived, Richard and I took off with Ziploc bag to shell hunt, after getting out the video camera for a quick bit of filming.  Despite the fact that this was not a shelling beach, I found several interesting varieties, including spiny clams.

Dinner was barbecue (burro we were told, although I think it was beef that I ate but there was also pork ) including a wonderful potatoe (their spelling) salad, apple delight with apples, whip cream and raisins, baked potato, bread.

After dinner, we piled back into the trucks to return to town.  We got back  to the condo and found it locked.  Within ½ hour, Mary Lou and David walked in.  They had gone down to the tour office to look for us.  After resting up a bit, we went out for Chinese dinner on the marina.  That area is within walking distance and is loaded with restaurants.

Monday, February 8, 1999

Today, we again woke early to head to the marina and our whale watching trip.  I had some orange juice in the morning, to swallow my pills, and it did not sit well with me.  I didn’t think I would be able to handle the cruise.  But I ate an energy bar while we waited and that helped.  Also, Richard and I wore our “Sea Bands” (these are acupressure bracelets that help immensely with seasickness).  We were on a 58’ schooner out of Connecticut called the “Elias Mann.”  Tony also suggested that if I felt queasy to look out at the horizon.  Don’t look down in the boat.  

Our party was ferried to the schooner by a pongo, a small motor boat. Climbing in and out, I’m sure, was a very ungraceful event.

We were out about an hour when we began to spot whale.  The first activity was to see the hump clearing the water and I clearly understood why this whale is called the Humpback.  It has nothing to do with a hump on its back.  It has everything to do with the way the whale arches its back when it is preparing to dive. 

Our whaling vessel	There be whales!	mother and calf	man compared to whale
up close	whale breach	whale tail	Blowhole
Modicon statuary	The Modicon

To say the whale sightings were spectacular is an understatement.  No superlative can come close to what we saw.  John, our skipper, sited on a pod and followed its “footprint” for the rest of the trip.  (A footprint is the water displaced by the dive.  That water remains calm for several minutes after the dive.)

There were several humping dives from the pod, lots of blow activity and lots of filming on our parts.  Richard mainly handled the video although I did some filming too.  I mostly handled the still camera.  I thought it was just amazing to be so close and see the tail come out of the air before a dive.  One whale had a very distinctive and pretty tail with white markings.  I zoomed in tight on his tail as he dove.

Later in the morning, the pod came up so close to the boat you could hear the air popping past the blowhole!  It can’t get any better than this, I thought.  Wrong!  One male put on a spectacular show (is there any other word for this?) slapping his tail on the water – what watchers call a tail dance – then slapping a fin, then, incredibly, breaching!  He must have breached a dozen times.  John was about to turn the boat in a different direction when he announced, “The show is getting better, folks, so we’ll just stay with this group a while longer.”  Absolutely incredible.

 They served lunch on the boat and I should have stayed away from the ham and cheese and mayonnaise.  I really did get queasy after that and it was a very long haul (under power) to the Arches where we were to snorkel.  Richard and I donned our wetsuit and gear and took the plunge.  The fish were beautiful and there were a lot because Jesús was feeding them, but Rich and I didn’t stay in the water long.  For us, IT WAS COLD.  Our wetsuits are only good down to 70° comfortably and the water was 65°.  I think they stayed there about ½ hour and then headed to shore.

When we got back, the first thing I did was head to bed and a nap.  I didn’t take the bands off my wrists until I had been lying down about 10 minutes.  Richard slept with them on.  They did prevent the heaves, but the world was still a rocky place.  For dinner, we ate at an Argentine restaurant and that was a wonderful meal, but Richard and I were now sharing one dish as the amount of food was huge.  Before eating, we watched part of the video and it was as spectacular as we had hoped.