fun on wheels

Hello all- Very quick blog here mostly to finally post a few pictures: 

Here is Eliza and our favourite beach people in Barra de Navidad.

Here´s just a pretty scene from the town square.

One of the streets in the center of town. 

This here´s in Puerto Vallarta. Just a big ol´ blossoming ball of goodness. 

Orosco, one of Mexico´s great muralists left his zesty revolutionary mark on Gadalajara. 

Remenants of the “Cow Parade” that made it´s appearance in Guadalajara last year. 

This photo is mislabeled. It is the Cathedral of Guadalajara, Jalisco, and not the other way around (just in case you cared). 

The only really importrant bit of news that I´ll append to this e-mail is that Eliza and I have officially gotten sick of being on vacation. We´ve been having- and are still having -a great time, but the charms of living out of bags and having to come up with new activities every day has taken its toll. On that note we fly out of Guadalajara on Saturday morning to New York from where we will head up to Norefolk Connecticut for a spell. In other news we´ve been having a splashy time with Jacob and Mel who are easing nicely into vacation life with us. Tonight the girls go to a spa and Jacob and I go to the bull fights- talk about gender stereotyping but there you have it. Perhaps there will be another blog posting before we wind things up, but I can´t promise anything. We have a lot to do in the next days- tequilla tasting being high on everyone´s list, but also some snorkeling, some tanning, some swimming, and a lot of eating.

 Via con Dios, B&E

Hello all-

 OK everyone who´s in a little fishing village on the Pacific coast of Mexico raise your hand…. No -not you reading this blog. You´re in some wintery hell! OK that´s most of the gloating that there´s going to be in this blog posting.

Leaving Guadalajara we hitched a ride with a friend who was headed to Puerto Vallarta for a wedding. This worked out perfectly since we wanted to scope out the place and line up our accomodations for next week when Jacob and Mel will be sharing their holliday with us. It´s actually way cooler than we had expected. We had heard repeatedly from little traveling bohemian kids and Mexicans alike that Puerto Vallarta was a giant tourist stink hole. While they aren´t exactly wrong, I think these people are being a little to harsh on poor old Puerto V. Most of the tourist hullabaloo is focused on a long strip of super resorts coming into the town along the ¨highway¨, and a boardwalk type thing right along the beach through most of the town. On the other hand, tourists seem to stick pretty tighly to these two areas. Going up the hills behind this strip lies a great little Mexican town. Like other Mexican towns its quite quiet throughout the day, but comes alive when the sun goes down. The taco stands open up and all the locals come out for dinner with their kids. Later the sounds of salsa, mariachi and latino pop music come streaming out of a hundred little courtyard cafes and bars. By this time, of course, all the gringo all-inclusive customers are either passed out drunk, or hanging out in one of the big box bars that cater to them. The beach is what you´d expect for one of Mexico´s highest profile tourist resourt: beautiful- but only in the town, which is the big joke as far as I´m concerened. All the giant resort places are built going North up the shore from the actuall town which ends abrupty to the south, cut off by a big bluff. The old town and its modest citizens still occupy the best real estate. We also managed to find a great little traditional courtyard hotel in the old city ¨practically free¨ to borrow a local phrase. In the middle of the courtyard there is an enormous mango tree that easily clears the three stories of the hotel. Ocassionally it also leaves little presents in the courtyard. And here again, newer is not necessarily better. With its cement walls, wooden shutters and old fan, the room we had was by far and away cooler than the last airconditioned one we had had in Guadalajara. Go figure. Anyway, once we had gotten the lay of the land and had one last hang out session with our friend Darwin (pronounced Daar-veen), we decided to skip on down the coast to see some of the wilder parts we had heard so much about.

We are currently in a place called Barra de Navidad, but it should be called Playa de Perritos because this town is home to more wild beach dogs than you can shake a stick at. They´re friendly, they´re cute, they come into the town streets at night to beg for scraps and chase things/each other- We have also noticed a serious gap in the cat section of the local person population. The town sits on one side of a rather large bay looking over at its neighbour Malaque. The bay is ringed by a perfect beach. The waves are just big enough to play in without attracting the attention of the larger Mexican surfing community (we´ve heard they can be pretty tough customers), and the water wavers throughout the day somewhere just south of body temperature. Behind the town is a big freshwater laguna that feeds into the ocean. A short local bus ride away we´re told there is some epic snorkeling to be done- that´s on the menu for tomorrow. Now, on the downside:

 Did you really think there would be one? That´s because it´s cold and dark where you are and you´re basically opperating in a perpetual state of low-level depression… and hey- Don´t shoot the messenger.

 Well I wish there were more to tell, but we´re pretty much running day to day here with no great plan. I can say that we probably will switch towns again before we head back to Puerto Vallarta to meet up with Jacob and Mel.

 Oh and one last thing. We saw the coolest thing today. On a little stage in the center of town there where fourty or so of the local kids ranging in ages from 8 to 16 all having their weekly tap dancing lesson. They were all wearing white heeled women´s tap shoes- even the 16 year old boys. The little ones where mostly having fun spinning around in in circles with their little heels and toes tap tap tapping away. They had a pretty beefy sound system set up for it too, so as we walked away through the town we could still here the great Mexican tunes wafting through the air punctuated with a clatter every time the kids all jumped in unison to hit the beat. Wow. Cute.