Mexico

Hola Amigos!


I started this post when we got home, but that's only how far I got. Pathetic huh? It's now a week later and I'm making myself write about our trip before the details get lost in my brain.



We went to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico for a week and had a blast! Dave finished up his 3rd year and he was ready for a break. Anna and I loved spending time with him since we don't see him much. He starts 4th year on Monday and it's sad to give him up again to the hospital again. Anyway, we loved hanging out at the pool and the beach and exploring a new city. Puerto Vallarta is a beautiful place. I was a little nervous about taking Anna, but she did great on the trip! She LOVED the pool and attracted so much attention everywhere we went. If you want to hear more about our trip, read on. (Warning: I am including the day-to-day details for my own journal, so it's REALLY long. I normally take a travel journal with me on trips, but I forgot it this time, so this is it people! Also, sorry for the slideshow frenzy. I thought it would be a good way to get a lot of pics in a little space.) The details might be boring to you, so feel free to ignore the rest of this and visit our blog another day. :)


Getting there...
Traveling with an infant is always exciting because you never know what to expect. I was nervous about the plane ride, but we were lucky and got an extra seat on our row. Too bad we already checked her car seat. It was nice to have the space and a little less awkward when it came time to feed her. :) Anna did great during the flight only fussing for about 10 minutes (which felt like 2 hours) before she fell asleep. Three hours later and we're in Puerto Vallarta! Luckily we had a transfer from the airport to our hotel because the airport was a madhouse! Timeshare sharks everywhere! We beelined it out of there and got safely to our hotel. We stayed at the Marriott CasaMagna and loved it.


Sunday night...
We checked in and explored the hotel and it's surroundings. We found the marina which was just a 5 minute walk from our hotel and it had lots of restaurants and beautiful boats that I wish we could sail on. We ate some yummy dinner at an authentic Mexican restaurant and then went back to our hotel to watch a fiesta that was part of a party for a group of GM employees. How nice is that? A corporate retreat in Puerto Vallarta? Sign me up for that job! The hotel brought up a port-a-crib for Anna and along with it they gave her a little fish stuffed animal and a bag of baby supplies. I love it when hotels do things like that! Bonus points in my book! As soon as Anna saw the fish, she knew it was hers and she had a smile on her face. It was so funny.


Monday...
Veg-out day. We just hung out at the pool and beach all day. It was so nice! Our hotel had an amazing pool with comfy lounge chairs right on the beach. We found our own little grass umbrella and claimed our spot for the rest of the day. This was Anna's first time ever in a swimming pool and she LOVED it! It was so fun to see her reaction. She was a little apprehensive at first, but once she decided it was okay, she couldn't get enough of it! She was all smiles and giggles kicking her little legs and trying to drink the nasty water. Since she loved the pool, we thought she would like the ocean too. We dipped her toes in the ocean and she screamed instantly. We calmed her down and tried again...nope! Still hated it. We might need to give her some time to warm up to the ocean. So Dave jumped in for a swim while I calmed Anna down from her hysteria. That night we went back to the marina and had another delicious Mexican meal.

Tuesday...
We hopped in a cab and headed for the city to take in the real Mexican flavor. Our hotel was about a 15 minute cab ride from downtown Puerto Vallarta. It's quite an exciting 15 minutes, since the taxis don't have seat belts and the drivers drive like they are James Bond. We took a stroll down the Malecon (the Boardwalk). I was starving so our first priority was lunch. We found this great restaurant that had a make your own tacos bar. It was delicious! Dave and I both love Mexican food, so we were in heaven. The Malecon is interesting because it's touristy, artsy, and quite the party scene all at once. There are cool sand sculptures as well as other statues all along the shoreline. After exploring the length of this strip in the heat of the humid day, we were boiling hot! We dragged our hot sweaty bods back up to grab a taxi, but found a gelato cafe first. Gelato in Mexico? Why not?! It was really good, although we gave Anna a taste and she didn't seem to enjoy it. Like the ocean, I'm sure she'll change her mind about that someday!

Wednesday...
We hit the pool and the beach again in the morning. Anna loved being pulled around the pool in her floatie. She was quite the hit in the pool. Our pool had one of those bars right in the water, so it was pretty funny having all of the alch-eys come up and talk to her. That afternoon we headed to the Malecon again. We explored some new areas and we even ate at Senor Frogs! Yes, with Anna. We had a $50 voucher from our travel agency, so we figured we'd enjoy a free dinner. I was worried that the loud music was going to freak Anna out and damage her ears, but she seemed to like it. (not sure what that means for her teenage years!) Afterwards we enjoyed the sunset on the beach and headed home.

Thursday...
Just another lazy day. We went to the marina for breakfast and ate at a little bagel/coffee shop owned by an American. I must admit, after so much Mexican food, it was nice to have a plain old American bagel. We headed back to the hotel and got some more pool and beach time in. When we weren't in the pool, Anna would hang out in her own lounge chair and play with her toys. She would get sleepy and almost fall asleep numerous times, but that would startle her and she would freak out that she almost fell asleep. I don't get it. Anyway, there weren't many naps at the pool of course. Too much action I'm sure.

Friday..

This was an action packed day, so this is going to be a long one! We decided we'd had enough pool time and wanted to go exploring. We rented a car and Dave was brave enough to take on the Mexican roads. (I need to give my husband props for his foreign driving skills. He always does such a good, safe job regardless of the chaos and strange driving practices.) We drove through the city and up the coast. We headed up to a cool rain forest we had heard about called El Eden. I guess its famous (or infamous) for the set of the movie Predator with the Governator. I've never seen it, but Dave assured me it was an Arnold classic. Right by the old set was the coolest natural swimming hole. There was huge smooth rock that you could slide down into the pool (river I guess) and they added a swing rope too. It was so much fun! We didn't take Anna in, since the water was freezing, but she had fun hanging out while we took turns playing.

After we had enough of the rain forest, we thought we would check out what was on the other end of Puerto Vallarta. Someone from our hotel had told us about this area called Punta Mita. It's a little tiny peninsula about 45 minutes from town. It's owned by the Four Seasons, but you can go have lunch there and check out the grounds. We thought that sounded like fun, so we made the drive. We pulled up to the gate and it felt like we were trying to get into the White House or something. We told them we wanted to eat at the restaurant and they had to call down and make reservations for us. I was kind of worried what we were getting ourselves into. We didn't know anything about the restaurant. It could be $100 a plate for all we knew. They took our information and told us that the restaurant would be waiting for us. Well, we were still in our beach clothes from the rain forest and it was time for Anna's dinner. So instead of heading for the hotel once we past the gate, we headed towards the golf course and pulled over in an inconspicuous parking lot to change and take care of Anna. Twenty minutes later we head towards the hotel. There's another gate and when we pulled up they said, "Mr. and Mrs. Kelly, we've been expecting you. Did you get lost?" Uhhh Ya. So when we pull up to the hotel, there's only valet, so we handed over the keys to our posh Nissan Sentra. This detail will be important later. When we walked into the lobby, I knew we were out of our element. All of the women were dressed in fancy beach attire along with their chloe bags and manolo blahnik high heels. Hey, at least we had changed into somewhat decent clothes and we weren't in our swimsuits still. The hotel was absolutely gorgeous with an open air lobby that overlooked the ocean. Still a little nervous about what this ordeal was going to cost us. "Mr and Mrs Kelly, we're ready for you." We follow a guy outside and get in a golf cart to go to the restaurant. The grounds were gorgeous! We pulled up to this huge grass hut overlooking the ocean. It was awesome. I can't even explain it to do it justice, so just look at the pictures. We had a great dinner and it we didn't even have to take out a loan. (Luckily, we chose the casual restaurant, so it was "cheaper") We couldn't have timed it better. We enjoyed a gorgeous sunset just as we finished our meal. This dinner definitely goes into the hall of fame in my book. It was absolutely perfect! After dinner we walked down to the beach and explored the grounds. We saw this little cliff above the beach with a table surrounded by tiki torches. Then I saw a waiter walking up to them to serve them dinner. How cool is that? Now that is probably a dinner that we would have to take out a loan for! By now it was 9:30 and time to head back and get Anna in bed. The excitement does not end here. We gave the valet guy our ticket to get our car. They told us to wait in the lobby and they'd come get us. Twenty minutes later, I went to ask what was taking so long. "It seems as though we cannot find your key. The valet who parked your car put your key in his pocket and it must have fallen out. We are trying to locate it as soon as possible." OhhhKaayyy. Of course this happens to us! They gave us some free drinks and we waited in the lobby. They had to find the car they parked after ours, but the lady wasn't at the hotel still, so they had to drive to her place and ask if they could search her car. What an ordeal! After an hour, I was hoping they would just let us stay at this gorgeous hotel for the night. That would have been a fair trade for me! :) At 11:00, they had given up. They offered a taxi to drive us home, but the problem is we had a boat trip booked for the next day and all of our swim stuff was still in the car! They somehow jimmied our car open so we could grab our stuff. The only thing we wouldn't get out of the trunk was our stroller, so we told them to just leave it with the bellman at our hotel. I was thinking we would be in one of those cramped taxis with no a/c or seat belts, but instead a nice Suburban pulls up and we head back to our hotel. Anna was a good sport through all of this until we got in the car. She was SO tired and screamed for the first 20 minutes of the ride home until she finally fell asleep. Our rental car was due back the next day by 11:00 so they had to call the agency and get a spare key and return it for us. Oh ya, they also had to fill it up with gas before returning it. Kind of an expensive mistake for the hotel considering a normal taxi ride from there to PV is $80 each way, but like I said, I would have gladly taken a free night a the hotel instead! This event right here is why I hate valet parking. We are perfectly capable of parking our car ourselves and walking to the enterance. Oh well. At least it happened at a nice place and so they took care of us. It was a pretty funny night to end a fabulous day!

Saturday...
Instead of giving in to the timeshare sharks with all of their generous offers of free fiestas and boat cruises, we opted to just buy tickets for our own boat trip. We got to the dock at 8:30 to board the boat. We met the nicest little couple named Lynn and Eddie from Brooklyn while we were in line. They are now retired and live in Walnut Creek, CA. When we got on the boat, they headed for the shade and we sat at the front of the boat and met another nice couple from Shreveport, Lousiana. It's so fun to meet new people on vacations! We usually end up becoming friends with people that we would never expect to click with. We arrived at a private beach called, Las Caletas. It was beautiful and they had tons of activities for you to do throughout the day. We took turns snorkeling and Dave headed out kayaking while I fed Anna and talked with our Louisiana friends. Dave took cute little Lynn out in the kayak. Dave did most of the rowing of course. (Lynn is probably in her 70's) I tried the ocean again with Anna, but she didn't like this beach either. They had a great lunch for us at the beach and Anna loved it because they even had a high chair for her. Next we checked out the animals. They had a sea lion in the water, and then on land they had a big nasty snake, a monkey, and some parrots. Before we knew it, the day was over and it was time to head back on the boat. We must have not heard the bell, so we had to rush back and grab our stuff and we were the last ones on the boat. Luckily, our Lousiana friends saved us some chairs. Our boat crew was fun and they played a bunch of silly games and blasted music all the way back. When we got back to the hotel, we were glad to hear that everything got settled with our rental car. However, our stroller wasn't there. We made a few phone calls, and for some reason, our stroller was at the airport! Don't ask me whay it would be there! So, they arranged to pick it up and drop it back off to us. So funny! We relaxed for the rest of the evening and savored every minute of our last night there!

Sunday...
For our last day, we headed out to the pool and enjoyed some omlettes and french toast by the pool. Anna took her last dip in the pool and we packed up and said goodbye! The flight home went perfectly. We lucked out with an extra seat next to us (well, not really, but a guy moved for us.) And we had the car seat with us this time. Anna fell right asleep when we took off and woke up happy for the last hour of the flight. Ahhh bliss! We had such a fun time together and even though having Anna with us made it a little harder, I'm so glad we took her! It was so fun to experience all these new things with her. I think family vacations are so important. Our lives get so busy and you hardly see each other sometimes, so it's good to have some time to just be together and enjoy each other and experience new things. I'm grateful for my parents for teaching me this lesson. So instead of buying something new that you don't need for your house, go on vacation instead! Now to plan our next trip... :)

I can't believe this post is so long. Hopefully I didn't bore you if you managed to make it this far.