It's been just over a week since I've gotten back from Puerto Vallarta. Here I am still reflecting on all the sites, all the sounds, all the memories. I'm sure these things will stick with me for a long long time. There are so many things that I can talk about, which rightfully deserve their own little posts: the food, the culture, the drinking, the people. This posting and the next few postings will detail my trip broken down in days.
Day 1
The day started off with a 4 hour shift at my part time job, I couldn't get the day off but my team leader was more then happy to send me home early. The gang took different paths to the Greyhound station, where we all met up at around 5:30pm. Everything up until now went smooth, a great way to start off a trip. I took notice that my luggage was surprisingly smaller compared to everyone else, but I didn't pack all that much and I had no intention of buying a whole lot while I was down there. The Greyhound ride down to Seattle wasn't too bad, a short snooze, and equipped with my Tom Clancy Rainbow Six book, the time went by relatively fast; over three hours.
We made a few pit stops, but ended up in downtown Seattle's Greyhound station close to midnight. In order to catch the downtown bus to the Seatac airport we had to sprint 5 blocks (+1 for small luggage). The bus ride was horrible, despite it being midnight the bus was packed, and the ride was long. We didn't know where to get off, and ended up getting off a stop too early. The early stop cost us $5 in taxi money, this would be the beginning of our taxi woes.
We weren't able to check in with the Seatac essentially closed from midnight until 5am. Starved from the bus ride and the 5 block sprint, Shum and Julio found a 24 hour restaurant not too far away called '13 Coins.' 13 Coins was nice enough to store our luggage for us while we ate; unfortunately the food wasn't too good, maybe it was the time that we went (2am), maybe we weren't used to US food, maybe we were just tired? Whatever the reason, most of us agreed not to go back (I mean all of us).
After a quick snooze we woke up at 5am and checked in for our flight (I was able to sleep despite drinking a medium sized coffee, says a lot about me, or the coffee). Within a few short hours we were on the plane on way to Puerto Vallarta! I'm lying, we were heading to Phoenix to catch a connecting flight, all to save a few hundred bucks on airfare. The airport at Phoenix was huge, complete with its own horizontal escalators. Spending roughly two hours there made us rethink the benefits of saving money by using connecting flights.
We finally got on the plane to Puerto Vallarta at around 1 (I think, I don't remember). Flying over Puerto Vallarta you can see the beach coast, where it meets the waves of water. You can't help but to have a smile on your face; that is until you step out of the plane. It was hot, I was wearing a t-shirt and jeans and I was sweating by the time I made it to the airport entrance from the tarmac.
Stepping out of the airport we were hounded by tourism people all asking us if we wanted to sign up for tours. Having done our research we politely declined and headed out the door. Out the door we were again hounded this time by taxi drivers: 'Where you go?' 'We're going to the Westin' 'Five people, 250 pesos' 'We'll give you 100 pesos' 'No, no no no no no.'
I'm not one for bargaining but 25 bucks to go 5 minutes is steep. We ended up walking a block away from the airport and got into a taxi that charged us 150 pesos ($15 US). The roads in Puerto Vallarta are horrible, it's not smooth pavement, it's big huge rocks mixed with cement. The speedbumps are monstrous, if Brandon was driving his Beamer there he'd cry.
Just outside of the Westin was a restaurant called 'Tacos and Beer' what a name, we made a mental note to try it before we leave. The view from our room was astounding. We could see the pool, and the beach, with clusters of 4-5 story high palm trees. This was going to be a great trip I thought.
We went to the local Oxxo (equivalent to 7-11) to get some drinks, we were enticed to buy Sol beer for $0.50, but ended up buying the Gatorade that was on special. The Gatorade got warm after 10 minutes.
We walked around looking for Vallarta Adventures which was supposed to be the biggest (and most trustworthy) Tourism place. Efforts went in vain as we wasted an hour plus looking for it. It was a great walk though, the palm trees along the streets had coconuts on them.
We walked to the Marina where we met Miguel Manini. We've been hounded by tourism people all day but Manini seemed genuine. He told us about all the tourism attractions he could hook us up with, and offered us great prices (albeit after some bargaining, I was beginning to get good at it). The selling point for me was that he told us he'd be at his stand everyday and that if the trip wasn't as he said we could come back and talk to him. We ended up signing up for one trip, the snorkeling trip for $35 US each, which included breakfast, lunch and an open bar (the other selling point for me).
We ended up taking the bus to the local Walmart after, to buy some clean water. The buses in Puerto Vallarta cost around $0.55 a person, which is way cheaper then taking the taxi. The buses had NO suspensions though, we felt every bump every pot hole, everything. On top of that the exit doors were open the whole time. People getting off the buses didn't even wait till the bus came to a full stop before they got out (women and children included). But we arrived to Walmart in one piece.
We bought some snacks, water, and some weird tequila baileys mix called 1921. Upon checking out though we realized that we weren't at Walmart, we were at Sam's club (think costco-esque warehouse store), this meant that we had to buy a membership. Carrying the groceries back to the hotel wasn't much of a problem, the bus that we took wasn't too full, and the groceries weighed us down from bouncing off the chairs.
We decided to eat at the on-site restaurant at the Westin that night, since Shum would get 50% off the dinner. The food was great, and it was nice to finally enjoy the trip as we spent most of the day running around.
Back at the room, we drank most of the 1921 bottle before lights out. We had to wake up early tomorrow for our snorkeling trip.
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