Due to some bad weather and some danger in Mazatlan, our itinerary changed quite a bit. We ended up with a extra "fun day at sea." While it was "fun," it was fairly cold. The next day we stopped in La Paz. The line for the bus into town was REAAAALY long, so we went back to the ship for a bit. B braved the waterslide while we were waiting...but only once! It was too cold for me, and I hate saltwater pools/waterslides, so I stood by and took a photo.
We liked La Paz. It was windy and pretty cold by Mexico standards (high 60's, low 70's).
The beach was covered with little tiny hermit crabs. They were so small that you couldn't really see them until you looked at the shells for a bit and saw them moving.
We spent an embarrassingly long time watching this bird (an egret?) fishing on the shores of the beach. It was so fascinating to watch it's amazingly good crab-grabbing skills. It was eating crabs that were way bigger than it seemed like it could swallow, and we kept waiting to see if it would choke (do birds choke?).
From La Paz, we headed to Puerto Vallerta. In order to appease us from losing a port stop we had a very long time there. We walked around a little bit and found out that without a taxi it wasn't easy to get past the endless fence around the cruise port. We found a nice taxi driver that took us about an hour and a half into the "jungle." Mexican jungle sure is different than my vision of "jungle." The claim to fame in the jungle outside of Puerto Vallerta is that Predator was filmed there. You drive forever on a narrow, winding, dirt mountain road. First stop was an interesting tequila factory.
Tequila starts out as agave.
We got to try a piece as part of the tour. It was very sweet (think agave nectar).
Then we got to try 5 different kinds of tequila. No pictures of that (I was busy drinking!), but it was delicious. A few of the kinds tasted very creamy. At $35 a bottle, we passed at buying any, but it was a nice tourist stop. From there we headed to the Predator filming location. It was pretty and you could swim in the water if you wanted, but again, it was way too cold. Mountain water isn't pleasant in weather in the high 60's!
From there our cabbie took us to "the most beautiful view in Puerto Vallerta. It didn't disappoint, although the aggressive people at the top selling their crap at "almost free" was a little annoying.
After driving around for hours, we were starving. We had been having a conversation with our cab driver about how much we didn't like the tourist restaurants (why would we come to Mexico and eat at Planet Hollywood or Bubba Gumps?), so we told him to take us to a good local restaurant. We didn't get quite what we were envisioning, but it was good. They made fresh guacamole at our table. B will probably kill me for posting this picture, as I'm pretty sure he didn't know he was in it!
We also enjoyed "small" margaritas. I can't imagine how big the large one would be!
We were in Puerto Vallerta until 10pm, so we watched the sunset on the beach.
Just going back through all of these photos makes me want to be on vacation again. It was so nice to be able to spend time together without the stress of work, chores, endless to-do list, and allergies. It had been a long time since we had true down time together, and it made both of us realize how much we actually really like each other :)
