I know it is a bit strange to blog while on a trip, but I want to remember some things and what better way for that than to write it down? So I am going to take not of a few things we have done so far, etc.
This is the view of the beach from our hotel room-
of the city--
Closer
Goofy pic @ Mikado. Hotel restaurants are good, but cost a lot and none of them are really "Mexican". This is dinner Saturday night.
I know, I am an *awesome* photographer! These next pics are not that great, but they get across the point I am trying to make/remember. This place at night is so serene and beautiful.
Our hotel- our room is on the 8th floor of the building on the left.
Just a recap-- Jody was bumped to first class due to his status, so he let me sit up there in his place. It was nice. The flight was enjoyable. I watched a show on my computer, until it died, then I read The Help. A friend in my ward lent me her Kindle and I am in love with it. SO we arrive. We get our stuff and make our way out this little corridor. Let's call this the.... paseo de los buitres... the walk of vultures! I could tell they were selling something cause they just had that look, I thought. So I walked & avoided eye contact. Then someone, Hector, grabbed my attention and asked me if we needed help getting to our hotel. I thought maybe I misjudged them and this was where you contact your shuttles. Haha. No dice. So anyway, he pulled out a map of the area, showed us places we need to go, then said oh do this tour and that. THEN he told us how he could help us do those tours. OH SNAP. I have been had! So after a bit, we were signed up to go see this presentation for Paradise Village in Nuevo Vallarta. If we do that, we get trans to hotel & back to airport, and THREE excursions. We are uh... sans dinero.... so we agreed. Craziness. Something we really hate, btw. We had to deposit $60, which kind of sucked. But we would get that back if we showed up to our appt (which they would send taxi for us and pay for that too, as well as the breakfast during the presentation).
So the next morning (Sunday) we headed out to Paradise Village. I am sure, if we had money we did not know what to do with, we would totally go back and get Ricardo, our "host" and buy one from him. We loved the place. But we were able to get through all 3 salesmen with no problems whatsoever and they were so *nice*. Unheard of. We got our tickets to our stuff and we were out of there. SO, in hindsight, we are pretty glad it has worked out this way so far.
We had our cabbie take us to Costco. We bought a few things, water bottles, Diet Coke, some bagels, cheese, pastries, grapes. Just a funny little note- it was like $5 and a bagel in our deli here at the hotel (little market & they do sammies too) for one is the same amount. We bought skittles, chocolate bars (little), and two sodas and it was like $15. EEK! So anyway we bought a flat of coke for the price of our two. Here, you kind of need to drink everything from a can or bottle, so we figured it was a necessity.
It was fun to go to Costco and see it was pretty much the same layout as the Murray one (except the giant alcohol section) and know what everything is even thought it is in another language. Something else I noted as well was most of the milk that was offered is boxed. A few in the fridge, but the others in boxes. Interesting. Oh and lots of cookies. These peeps like their packaged galletas.
I forgot to mention Jose, our cabbie from Paradise Village to Costco. He is 54, has like 4 kids and 4 grandkids or something like that. He showed us pictures of his son & his son's kids. While in that cab, I was noticing the music (his was a nicer car, with a/c and seatbelts- others are just roll down the windows and hope they drive safe!) and I was like.. .I know this song! So I nudged Jody to see if he recognized it and we both cracked up laughing! It was Total Eclipse of the Heart, in Espanol. So funny. I love it. So I was laughing cause of that, and I was envisioning in my head the literal music video (kind of an inside joke).
Anywho, good times so far. Part 2 (parte dos) will include the rest of Sunday as well as Monday.
Adios for now!
