Puerto Vallarta with Ale (Part 1)

Friday: Tomorrow I am going to Mexico again to visit Ale and spend a week on the beach. It has been 5 months...5 long months. I walk through the house time and again wondering what I am forgetting and not really thinking about it. I am going to see my love tomorrow!! That is the main thing going through my head time and again. It is late but I don't want to go to bed either. It is after 10 and I am starting to worry a bit that I will oversleep or something horrible since I am leaving so early, but i have two alarm clocks so all is good.

Saturday:I had to be up at 4:00 A.M....I woke up at 3:00 A.M. bright-eyed and bushy tailed long before the clocks went off. I went ahead and showered and started pacing the house again pretending I was making sure I hadn't forgotten anything but really counting the minutes until I could leave to begin my trip to see my love!! The minutes ticked by terribly slow. It is always interesting how slow time crawls when you are are excited and how quickly it can pass when you are having fun.

The flight was mostly uneventful. I flew into Atlanta from Raleigh which was a short flight (about an hour) and managed to eat breakfast and check if I had gotten any last minute e-mails from my love as she was traveling today too to our rendezvous in Guadalajara before driving to Nuevo Vallarta Sunday morning. The flight to Guadalajara was uneventful and other than wanting to get out and push the plane along faster the three and a half hour flight went by quick enough.

I made it though immigration and customs in record time and was in a taxi barreling toward my destination for the night in no time. After checking in, I called Ale and after a short nap she arrived an hour later. Opening the door and finally seeing her again was a wonderful moment!! After showers and catching up a bit we headed out to run some errands and eat dinner. We ate at La Noche Azul again which is a delightful little fondue restaurant that was a nice reminder of my first visit to see her (not to mention the food is tasty). We had talked about going to a movie but the day was catching up with us so we returned to the hotel and turned in for the night. I fell asleep smiling at how wonderful it was to be with Ale again!

Sunday:I had booked the reservation for the rental car for 8:00 AM because we had originally intended to get up and leave early. However, we were unable to complete one errand the night before and had to wait until noon to complete it. Due to that fact, we slept in a little and didn't get to the rental place until 10:00 AM and they informed us that because we were late they had rented the car. This caused a bit of frustration trying to find another car that was of adequate size and price. We almost rented a tank of an SUV at one place but luckily Ale talked me out of it. It would have been a pain driving that behemoth around not to mention the extra gas. We finally found a place with a VW Jetta that turned out to be a good car to drive around as it was big enough to be comfortable but small enough to be easy to get around in. Comfort was a big issue to me because I did not want us straining Ale's back too much especially knowing that all the driving was already pushing things with her back.

We headed out for the beach around 12:30 or so. It took a little longer (5 hours) than I had hoped but overall was a nice ride. Winding through the Sierra Madre’s definitely slowed things down but at the same time it did make for some nice scenery along the way. It was a welcome relief though to finally see the ocean and know that we were close. The directions we had were sufficient and finding the condo was not too horribly difficult. The condo complex was a very nice gated building and well taken care of which was another nice relief. I always get nervous booking places online because you never know for sure what they will be like. I have had a couple of times that I have booked a place only to get there and it be a dump. Even with pictures posted, you never know if they were taken recently or 30 years ago before the place fell apart.

We checked in and got the keys. The condo was very nice and well kept. It had a big living room and pretty nice kitchen setup that was open to the living room. There were two bedrooms and two bathrooms. The master had a nice king sized bed and a big bathroom with a jacuzzi tub and big walk in shower as well. The other bedroom had two full sized beds and the bathroom that was attached also opened to the entrance hallway which made it convenient. The balcony was one of the best parts as it was a nice size and had a table and chairs as well as a couple of plants out on it. The view was over the marina entrance but we also had a very nice view out over the actual ocean.

The grounds were well taken care of and there was a pool and hot tub as well as a palapa to lounge under when the sun was too hot. There was also a fancy grill that we put to good use one of the days we were there. A gate led out onto a public beach which was nice as well although it wasn't taken care of quite as well as some of the other beaches being that it was public.

Being a bit tired from all the travel we took naps and regretfully I slept through the first sunset which kind of disappointed me but certainly wasn't the end of the world. We headed over to Paradise Village on the other side of the Marina to get checked in there. Paradise Village was more of a resort set up covering about 400 acres with a hotel, condos, a golf course, several restaurants and a much more well kept beach. The same developer had built both our condo complex and Paradise Village so there was a deal where you could check in there as well for $1.50 a day (that still strikes me as a weird fee) and we were given a fake room number to be able to charge stuff around the place. Regretfully, I forgot to bring a document that we had to have from the room so we couldn't complete that process at that time. We went ahead and ate a nice dinner out on a veranda at one of the restaurants (El Faro de Tulum) that night though. Ale had some Shrimp with a nice garlic mango sauce and I had a steak. Both dishes were quite tasty. It was nice to sit and talk as we ate outside. One of the nicest things during my trip was the conversations about this, that and everything with my love!

The weather all week was very nice to me. Prime season had officially ended at the end of the previous month (which was nice for the wallet) primarily due to heat and what not, but honestly I thought it was pretty mild most of the time we were there and I am a polar bear by nature. Except for a few times when the breeze quit blowing and the humidity got stifling, I was very comfortable all week and I always prefer vacationing off season in places because the crowds are less. As ironic as it may sound since I was one, tourists (especially my fellow gringos) annoy me to no end especially in other countries.

Although it was rather late after dinner, we headed toward Puerto Vallarta to pick up some groceries and what not that we needed. We ended up at Wal-Mart since they were still open at that hour. As we discovered when we returned later in the week, it was a good time to have been there as it was not too horribly crowded. The only real issue was that we couldn't get any fresh tortillas for the enchiladas that Ale had promised to cook me during the week so we skipped getting the stuff for them. I was looking forward to them because she had sent me a recipe a long time ago but I had never really gotten it right so I was ready to see them prepared. We got some nice fruit for breakfast and snacks along with some other food and beverages. With groceries in tow, we made it back to the condo for the night.