Puerto Vallarta Day 7: I’ve Already Been Here A Week??

Ah, how time does fly!

Today was very nice and laid back. I slugged around the condo until well after lunch, working on yesterday’s blog (ssh, I didn’t really write it yesterday – don’t tell!) and finishing one of my books. I’ve nearly run out of books to read. I only brought four, which I was sure would be enough, but I’ve been gobbling them up. I found a whole stash of Abandoned Vacation Reading under the TV, though, and plucked up a copy of Kurt Vonnegut Jr.’s Timequake. It could be one of the strangest things I’ve ever read, but it’s fast reading, so I’ll keep at it.

The grand victory of the day was spotting some sea-life in the ocean. When we arrived, Bonnie told us we could see sting rays and pointy-nosed fish and schools of crazy little fish all from the balcony, using the binoculars. She also told us we would see whales. Seven days of looking later and we’d seen nothing. Today was nearly a bingo, though. Dustin started us off by spotting crazy little schools of jumping fish, then, a bit later, the pointy-nosed fish. We decided these must be needle fish. A bit after that, I spotted a couple dark blobs that turned out to be a pair of sting rays. Success! Now we just need to spot some whales before we go. I don’t even know what sort of whales.

We went into town for dinner at a place called Cafe de Olla which turned out to be super delicious. I got beef enchalladas which I could hardly finish because I also got an apatizer of “tamal” (not sure why they weren’t “tamales”) which was so good I ate nearly the whole thing all by myself. But now I have leftovers for lunch tomorrow, which is really good news, since I’m a little tired of our regular options.

And now here I am, writing another blog. No great Tales of Interest for the day, but that’s not such a bad thing. Be back tomorrow!

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Puerto Vallarta Day 6: Creepy Spiders & Breakfast Burritos

(Don’t worry – no spiders IN the breakfast burritos.)

It is amazing how quickly you can run out of groceries when you can only bring home as much as you can carry on the bus. So today we went into town for groceries and lunch.

Before completing either of these tasks, we did a bit of wandering about. The walk along the beach in Puerto Vallarta is quite nice, and then if you turn inland at the river, there is a whole long island full of tacky tourist shops where you get heckled and heckled. Dustin likes to be heckled, so I just let him deal with them while I wander all moon-eyed through the booths. There’s no danger of me accidentally buying anything, because we came without any checked luggage, and there is NO place to shove any souvenirs on our trip back. Besides which, I’m all scroogey with our money.

There was a lovely moment, however, when I got distracted by a spider. I have been looking for spiders since I got here, they being something of a fascination for me, and I’ve seen plenty of webs and plenty of crabs, but no spiders. This time, I saw a web in a tree, and sure enough, someone was home. I made Dustin take a picture for my collection (squeemish beware: this is one super-creepy looking spider):

Isn’t she awesome?? She was about the size of a nickel. I’m going to have nightmares about him for weeks.

While we were busy playing with the spider, Bonnie got tired and helped herself to a plastic chair belonging to one of the heckling vendors. When he returned – looking plenty surprised to see his chair taken over – she said, “Mister! Please, come into my shop! Look at my beautiful things!” The vendor, delightfully quick on his feet, put his hand thoughtfully up to his chin and said, “No, no, I’m just looking.” Hahaha!

I love Bonnie. This is very typical of her. As another example, when we were walking down the street toward the restaurant to eat, we passed a man carrying flowers that he was obviously going to deliver to someone. “Are they for me?” Bonnie asked him, sounding oh-so-wistful. The poor man was confused for a moment before he realized she was being silly and told her “No, no sorry. Not for you!”

The other noteworthy event of my day was cooking up breakfast burritos using chorizo saussage. This is only interesting if you know that I’m a fervent maple-flavored-saussage fanatic, so going outside my comfort zone was a big risk. It turned out the saussage was wonderful, but I thought the potatos were only so-so. They were very sweet and tasted very earthy. Kind of strange. I think everyone else liked them a lot, though, so it was just fine. They can eat the leftovers.

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Puerto Vallarta Day 5: Crabs Abound

That’s right, crabs are running amok through my vacation, and I am one of them.

I don’t know why, but today I’ve been in a mood that just shouldn’t be allowed to exist on vacations. I’m having a hard time sleeping well, so I suppose that might have something to do with it. An ocean located directly out the window is a lot louder than you might expect, and the cars on the highway out the other window sound like they’re all 18-wheelers going about 110mph.

See! Look at that! I’m complaining about being in a beach house! Gah.

When I have my own beach house, it’s going to be a 3 minute walk away from the ocean. That will be perfect. And it will be dome-shaped so hurricanes can’t knock it over. Brilliant.

Right then, what did I do today? Other than moping and being unpleasant for my housemates (sorry Dustin and Bonnie… I’ll try to be better tomorrow) the highlight of the day was the nature walk Dustin and I took, clamboring over the rocks on the north side of the beach during low tide and exploring the strange and rocky landscapes beyond. And better yet, I was no longer the only crab on the beach. Here are some pictures of the many and varied crabs we discovered today:

The little guy above lives in the stairs that lead down from the condo patio onto the beach. I saw him by luck out of the corner of my eye as he scuttled for cover. He politely stuck around and posed while Dustin got a picture. He’s abut the size of my big toe.

Now THIS little guy is really little. He’s about the size of my thumbnail, and you’d never see him on the sand except that they scuttle like mad when you walk past and catch them out of their hidey-holes. The holes are only about the size of a pencil, so the past few days I wasn’t sure WHAT could be living in them. Ever since we saw this guy, we’ve been seeing his buddies everywhere. Can you see the shadows his little googly eyes cast on his back? He’s really pretty cute.

I’m not the only one who likes coconut rum! We found this coconut washed up in the rocks that we were clamboring over. We’ve seen quite a few beached coconuts, but most of them have been floating in the ocean so long they’re now pickled. This one, as you can see, was still quite fresh. And it was FULL of these little crabs. This guy was the biggest of the crew. I think there’s enough coconut in the shell you can tell about how big he was.

Here are the commonest crabs. They live on the jetties and rock piles and they blend in really well until they start scuttling about. The smallest one I’ve seen was no bigger than a sand crab. The biggest was probably about the size of a salad plate. They’re quite pretty colors if you can get close enough to see them, which is difficult unless they’re dead and half-eaten. (Alas.) Here’s a close-up:

This guy’s about the size of a tea saucer.

And that is the story of my crabby day.

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Puerto Vallarta Day 4: Night of the Iguanas (and Cat)

Today’s adventures began with a trip to the little village of Mismaloya, about 15 minutes by daunting bus ride south of here. Aside from a lovely little beach that was populated by nearly as many hawkers of “almost free!” jewelry as it was tourists, Mismaloya is the site where the film Night of the Iguanas was filmed in 1964.

(As a side note, I was rather disappointed to learn that the movie is based on a play by Tennessee Williams and has nothing to do with giant iguanas rampaging hither and thither.)

Once you dodge through all the hecklers, you can walk along a rather ill-kept path out to the point of the cove. We were there at high tide, and the waves splashed up against the rocks as we walked past, causing crabs and iguanas alike to scuttle for higher ground. The iguanas were pretty cool – not green like you often see, but grey with orange splashes on their sides, the better to hide in the rocks and dead leaves.

The set itself was locked away behind gates with razorwire on top, which was ridiculous because about six meters further down were places you could easily clambor over. The parts we could see looked like lovely ruins. I can’t figure out how long they’ve been abandoned, because wikipedia says after the movie was filmed, they turned the site into a cafe (John Houston Cafe) which was quite famous. The movie is given sole credit, in fact, for making Puerto Vallarta a tourist destination at all, but I suppose as the movie faded into obscurity, so did Mismaloya. Puerto Vallarta had established itself as a resort town on its own right, by then. I’m going to have to go rent the movie when I get home. Maybe I can write my first bestselling novel about rampaging iguanas.

We had lunch on the beach, so close to the water our toes got wet a few times before the tide backed out a bit. I have no idea how authentic or not the food in restaurants around here is, but it was very tasty. I especially liked my side of rice, which had yellow and green peppers in it. Mmm.

Next was a stopover at the house to do a bit of lounging on the beach. But, as today was all about outings to visit animals and eat food, I shall continue on to dinner.

We went back into Puerto Vallarta for dinner, to one of Bonnie’s favorite restaurants, the Fajita Republic. They pour tequilla over your fajitas and light them on fire right before they serve them to you. Totally delicious. The best part about dinner, however, was not the food, but the company. There was a cat wandering around the restaurant begging for food. Being in withdrawl from my own cat, (I need to pause this sentence for a moment to point out that Dustin is reading over my shoulder, and he strenuously objects that I mention the cat as the best part of company, and not him, my wonderful husband. That was unkind of me. I love him more than the cat. Just for the record.), I was delighted to find something furry to pay attention to. The cat accepted one scritch of the ears as an invitation to move in with me. He jumped up on my lap and immediately curled up for a nap. I was a happy diner. I gave him a bit of steak when we left for the evening.

I’ve been writing this post for about three hours now, and although I’ve got pictures, I’ve run out of energy to do anything about them. I’ll give that a stab tomorrow. Along with proofreading this thing. Good night!

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Puerto Vallarta Days 3: A Day In The Life…

There was no traveling on the schedule for today, so we decided to take a walk on the beach in the morning. Bonnie discovered that when you come across a pile of rocks that is within reach of the waves, you can listen as the rocks are rolled over each other by the movement of the water and the sound is absolutely beautiful. I decided that if you could hear the music of the spheres, that is what it ought to sound like. (The association has nothing to do with my personal metaphysics – just the fact that spherical objects were making music and it all makes sense in my head.)

Dustin and I were splashing in the waves as we walked, and I managed to get just wet enough that it looked like I had wet myself. As a result, I had to get deeper into the water so it didn’t look like I had bladder control problems, as a result of which I got a whole swimsuit full of sand. Serves me right. I should have just gone all the way in at that point, but I was having lack-of-sunscreen anxiety (I hadn’t meant to stay out quite so long) so we went back up to the pool, which was still shaded at that time of day, for our swim.

After a bit of lunch, we set to salsa-making. We added all the usual ingredients minus green pepper (which we didn’t have) plus orange mystery pepper and with pineapple vinegar instead of the regular stuff. It wound up being rather sweet and strange, but still pretty tasty.

After more lounging by the pool and kicking around in the waves, we had lots and lots of margaritas and then pork chops. I spent my time waiting for dinner spying on a Mexican couple who were down on the beach digging up something and putting it into a sack. The man would hunker down with his feet in the waves and watch, then he’d see something and go running to it and start digging in the sand. Then he’d chuck whatever he was finding to the woman, who stuck it in a sack. We couldn’t tell what they were getting, even with the binoculars. I figure it must be some sort of clam. Later, I tried digging a hole myself to see if I could find anything, but as soon as my fingers brushed something other than sand, I shrieked like a little girl. It turned out only to be a rock anyway. (To excuse my shrieking, I must point out that when I WAS a little girl, digging in the sand at Santa Cruz, I kept finding creepy little blue crabs. I wasn’t interested in getting my fingers pinched.)

A lovely day on the beach, if I do say so.

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Puerto Vallarta Day Two: Town & Taco Surprise

I am totally wiped out. I feel like I’ve been relaxing all day, so I was a little confused about why I should be so tired, but then I realized that in the course of relaxing, I’ve gotten about five times as much exercise as I get on a regular day. Hooray exercise!

We went to bed at about 10:00 last night and slept straight through until almost 10:00 this morning. Aah! When I walked out to the balcony after waking, there was a brief moment where I wondered if the condo had detached from the shore and floated off into the ocean while we slept. I had thought the water came up close to the building last night, but it was nothing compared to how close it was this morning. I could see only water out the window until I walked up to the rail and looked straight down. The waves were lapping up against the stone wall that contains the condo’s patio and swimming pool. The stairs down from the patio let off directly into the water. It was really beautiful and, honestly, a little frightening. (I am much more easily frightened by nature than by boogey men.)

I had excellent bread and so-so cheese for breakfast (why not? it feels exotic and vacationy, unlike the Zucaritos (frosted flakes) Dustin had). We sat on the balcony and stared at the ocean for awhile until we decided to head into town and get some groceries.

A trip into town (Puerto Vallarta proper – we’re about five miles south in Punta Negra) can be had for 6 pesos on the local bus. Bus drivers are people who failed out of taxi school, I believe. The buses themselves only hold together by prayers. We careened through narrow roads between sheer cliffs and on the edge of sheer cliffs, coming within inches of disaster several times, and nearly killing at least three or four people who were waiting to be picked up. It was the same sort of thrill you get from a roller coaster.

This is the first Mexican town I’ve visited other than Cancun, and it struck me as a little less tourist-centric. Many of the signs were still in both Spanish and English (how is it we complain about doing the same thing in our own country, we who are so selfishly monolinguistic that we demand it of everyone else? Oh wait…) and we did get heckled walking along the shops, but there were also regular Mexicans going about their daily business with no concern for us at all, which is more than I can say for Cancun. We didn’t do a lot of touring, though. Dustin hadn’t been out to the beach at all yet, having spent most of yesterday working, so mostly we just wanted to get groceries and get back.

The grocery store was remarkable mostly for its multitudinous selection of peppers. Dustin went wild, buying all sorts of fresh and dried peppers that no one else is going to be brave enough to even try, since we can’t figure out what they are or how spicy they might be. They all look rather Death Spicy to me, especially the dried ones. Something about drying peppers makes them look evil.

We toted our selections home and chowed down on more tasty bread and so-so cheese for lunch (there was “salami” to add to the mix now too, but I thought it looked a little too slimy to be willing to try it). We then retired to the pool where I accidentally took a nap while streched out on the pool chair (oh, how I hope I’m not sunburned!) When I woke up, I convinced Dustin to take a walk up and down the beach with me.

There is only so far you can walk in either direction. To the south, even if you dodge around the jetties, you eventually come to a field of beautiful rounded boulders that completely replace the sandy beach. To the north, there is a jut of cliff that sticks way out into the water. The whole place is much more cliff-y/mountain-y than I expected. Our condo building is 10 stories. The first story lets out onto the beach, the 5th story lets out onto the street on the other side, and our rooms, on the 8th floor, look across the street into the lower bits of a mountain covered with palm trees. Pretty cool. Even the beach slopes down into the water much more steeply than any other beach I’ve ever visited.

After wallowing in the bathwater-temperature pool for awhile, we dragged ourselves back upstairs and I set to making dinner while Dustin went back to work. The theory for dinner was tacos, since we’d picked up FRESH tortillas and tortilla chips at the Toritilla Factory in town, but I discovered that the only spices in the entire joint were salt and pepper. I should have expected as much, but I’m spoiled with my own over-stocked spice cabinet at home, and didn’t even think about it while we were at the grocery store. This is what I came up with, and it wasn’t half bad:

ground beef
tomatoes (however many)
onion (about one)
garlic (the more the merrier)
jalepeno (one is more than enough)
mystery yellow pepper (which we made Dustin taste-test first to make sure it wasn’t Death-on-a-Stick)
pineapple vinegar (a few good splashes – why pineapple you ask? why not!)
ketchup (a little squeeze’ll do ya)
picante sauce (shake, two, three, four)
salt, pepper

I sauteed up all the veggies together with some vinegar, browned the meat separately, then added them to the same pan. Added a little ketchup and picante sauce to juice it up a bit, eh voila. It was a little bland – I would have loved some chili powder and cumin – but entirely passable. With fresh tortillas and a pile of cheese, it was a right respectable meal.

And now I’m writing up my blog and listening to the waves crash outside. They’re really loud.

Tomorrow’s schedule includes more swimming in the pool, kicking around in the waves, reading of books, and trying of the mango I bought today. I’ll also try to get some pictures I can put up. But not of me. My hair has gone totally poof-tastic in the humidity.

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Puerto Vallarta Day One: Evil Alarms and Fresh Margritas

Something about being on a beach makes me want to write. It probably started on Topsail Island, where I was in my phase of compulsive journaling and continued on Tybee Island where keeping a journal was an assignment. I equate beaches with writing and so that’s what I’m in the mood to do tonight. Since I have not kept a regular personal journal since I started keeping a blog, you’ll have to forgive me if I start waxing dangerously poetic. (Also, I’m on my second margarita of the evening.)

I am on vacation! I started the day thinking that nothing – not even vacation – could be worth the pain of waking up at 4:00am after going to bed sometime after midnight. Of course, now that the ordeal of traveling is concluded, I feel much better about my sacrifice.

We are currently visiting Dustin’s grandmother, Bonnie, in Puerto Vallarta. She had rented a condo here for the three most dreadful months of South Dakota winter, and as she is a very social creature, it would be unkind to leave her alone for all three of those months. She has carefully scheduled many visitors who will fill up nearly her entire stay down here. We are round three.

We arrived in Puerto Vallarta at about 2:00 today and were driven to Punta Negra by a maniac cab driver who was pretty sure we had underpaid for our ride (apparently, from the airport, you pay in advance). I have come to terms with the fact that cab drivers are, as a rule, maniacs. I’ve had a few very harrowing rides where I spent the entire time digging my nails into my companion’s arm and fearing for my life, but since then I’ve learned to relax. You really never hear news stories about horrible taxicab diasters, so I guess the maniacs must be very good at what they do.

Bonnie’s place is exactly what I expected: a pre-furnished vacation unit decorated very traditionally. It has wonderful huge windows and sliding doors and little balconies all over the place. Everything is tiled – floors, walls, counters – to keep the water and sand as manageable as possible. It is on the 8th floor, which provides a wonderful view of the ocean (which is close enough that I could probably dive from the back balcony at high tide at make it with no problem). Pelicans frequent the area, as do crabs, I understand, though I’ve yet to see any of those for myself.

I started my afternoon by hanging out by the pool with Bonnie while poor Dustin tried to finish the project that he wanted to have done before we ever left. The pool is probalby 85 degrees, and I splashed around, happy as the proverbial clam, until I got shrivelly and hungry and decided to get out.

My goal for the week is to do as much of nothing as I can get away with. In fact, updating my blog is hopefully the most ambitious thing I will accomplish. Maybe I’ll try to learn a little more about the area – the geography looks absolutely fascinating – and I will read books. I brought five. I would love to finish them all. They are all easy paperbacks and I feel like doing nothing so much as laying around in the sun (copiously slathered in 30spf sunblock) and devouring my books.

Tomorrow I think we’ll go over to the market, which is also a lovely thing. We’ll need to do some cooking for Bonnie while we’re here. Eating and vacation simply go together. I’m already in love with the fresh made tortilla chips and salsa (I even discovered the guacamole isn’t so bad) and I squeezed limes for fresh margaritas tonight too. Whew, speaking of which, dinner isn’t on yet, and I feel like another nap. I blame the 4am thing.

So off I go. Hopefully there will be a few more updates while I’m here. Don’t be too jealous – when I’m done, I have to go back to work to confront the Wrath of the Tax Lady.

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Epic Emails find a new home

If you’ve known me longer than a couple years, you probably know what an Epic Email is. I’ve spent time living and studying in France, Belgium, and the Netherlands, and while I was there, I wrote emails home nearly every week telling my probably less-than-enthusiastic audience all about what I was up to. They chronicle my life during those times, and I’d like to keep track of them. For posterity, you know.

So I have begun importing the epic emails into this blog. You’ll be able to find them (if you’re interested) under the category – what else? – Epic Emails. I’ll also be adding lots of pictures.

Hopefully, there will be future series of Epic Emails to add as well. I’m thinking Africa.

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Last European Epic

Hullo family (of the related and not-so-related varieties!)

Since my last epic was boring and only for letting you know I’m
home and safe, I thought I’d pop off one more to tell you about
my exciting last few weeks in Europe.

At last Epic, I had just finished playing in the mud and was
running off to Belgium to get my last minute chores finished up.
Taking my bicycle back to the rental shop was definitely the
low-light. I dragged it all the way across town and actually
managed to get lost once, so I had to back track a bit. That was
a real bummer. After all that, I only got half my deposit back
since it was locked with no keys. Stupid bike locks.

Then I closed my bank account. I managed to save a surprising
amount of money, but then the bank went and lost it somewhere
during the international wire. I finally got it back today, only
three weeks after ordering the transfer. Sheesh. Fortunately,
going this direction, the exchange rate is in my favor, so it
looks like I saved even more money! Yay! (Now I just need a job
so I can make some more!)

I got to spend a bit of time with Marianne while I was in
Leuven, which was excellent. Poor thing was stuck in the middle
of exams, but I did a fine job distracting her. And she kept
me company, so it was a good swap.

I did some last minute souvenir shopping and headed back to the
Netherlands on Thursday night. Sadly, I missed my friend in
Germany (we’ll figure it out one of these days, Jan!) but I had
another surprise waiting for me.

On Friday morning, I heard a thump-thumping on my bedroom door.
After a bit of serious confusion (the knocking was being done on
a door that is permanently locked), I scrambled around and
finally managed to identify the source of my mysterious wake-up
call: Dustin!

He arrived in Amsterdam early that morning and got a ride to
Nijmegen from a friend who lives there. I’ll get out of bed any
time for a surprise like that!

But that wasn’t the only surprise. He had plane tickets to Paris
for the weekend, so off we went, dark and early the next
morning.  We had a great time. We strolled up the Champs-Elysee,
checked out the parks (no pigeons-dans-les-fleurs this time),
visited the Rodin museum, and had lunch in little cafes, feeling
perfectly french.

On Sunday we met with a guy name Greg who Dustin knows through
work. He’s fascinated with Calamity Jane, and wants to make a
documentary of her life. I’d say he’s a little fanatical, but it
was fun to get a french perspective on how cool the wild west
is. He also gave us an awesome recommendation for dinner.

For anyone planning to go to Paris any time ever, I highly
recommend Le Petit Chatelet for dinner. Mmmmm. It’s possible
I’ve never had a better steak, and saying that is probably
sacrelige for a South Dakotan. Dessert was also unbelievable
(two varieties of creme brulee, for me, chocolate covered
profiteroles for Dustin) and the waiter was not just friendly,
but funny.

We capped off the stay with a walk down along the river. It was
a happening place that time of night. Notre Dame and the Eiffel
Tower (and some other important buildings) were all lit up, and
all along the bank, groups of people were playing music and
dancing. Because Dustin is the best boyfriend ever, we stopped
off and did a bit of dancing of our own. (Are you totally
grossed out yet? Don’t worry, it gets better!)

It was shortly thereafter, in a nice quiet spot, that he got
down on one knee and asked me to marry him. (Eeeeeee! Yes yes
yes!)

So I’m engaged now. No, there isn’t a date yet, although it
will probably be some time next summer, and hopefully in Europe.
I’ll pass out more details when they’re available. If I
accidentally included some of my Michigan family on this email
list, don’t tell gramma!! Hehe.

The rest of my news you already know – I made it home safely,
and after Steve (my cousin)’s wedding this weekend, I’ll try to
get serious about finding a job. I have a few leads, but I
haven’t done much about them yet. Again, I’ll keep you updated.

So until next time, much love and many hugs!!

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(Not-So)Epic I’m Home Email

Hullo, one and all! This won’t be very long for the moment I’m afraid, but I wanted to let everyone know that I arrived home in one piece and my family is very happy to have me back. (I’m pretty happy to see them too!!)

I’m in Denver until Friday, and then I’ll go back to South Dakota, so if you’re in SD, I’ll be looking for you!

I promise to send more details once I have a better internet connection. Until then, take care!

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