Puerto Vallarta - The Strip

Day 4

We woke up this morning, and had lunch at the hotel again. Although not as good as the first time, it was still stupendous (I'm running out of words to describe the food). Afterwards we made our way again back to the downtown strip. Today would be shopping day. I'm not big on shopping, but I had to get some souvenirs. By now we were used to the pushy sales people, we no longer felt guilty for saying no, a few of the times we just flat out ignored them. The few sales people that we did talk to, they were really friendly. Genuinely friendly? Who knows.

I didn't know what souvenirs to get so I would just wing it. Costa was looking for a shirt, Will was looking for alcohol. The strip was filled with souvenir shops, clothing, key chains, shot glasses, food, the works. Throughout the day we saw a lot of Huichol shops. These shops sold clay sculptures; what made them special was that they had beads on the sculptures held in place using bee wax. The beads were put on one at a time by hand, strategically placed to form symbols, each with a different meaning.

Shum and Julio both bought a lizard about the size of a 8x11" sheet of paper, Costa bought a snake for his brother, and I bought a vase and a dolphin. Not for me...

At the end of the strip we reached a night market-esque location. Little stand alone booths selling random things. It took us a while but Julio, Will, and I talked a guy down from $30 to $10 each for Luchidore masks. Best $10 I ever spent. As we were leaving we tried to look for Rodriguez but he was nowhere to be found.

On our way back we stopped by La Playa, where we picked up some alcohol. They had free tequila tasting there. Most of us bought Jose Cuervo, Julio bought a really nice bottle of Don Julio. We also saw some bottles with scorpions and worms inside.

The taxi ride back to the hotel would be the worse taxi ride we've ever taken, and will probably ever take. The cabbie kept wanting $10, $10 could've got us from downtown back to the hotel, La Playa was half way. There was no way we would pay $10, and after 5 minutes of back and forth he settled for $6. Before he drove off he said something to his cabbie friend, something that sounded like chino (Chinese). The whole ride back was dead quiet, and the cabbie drove like a mad man. Tailgating, lane changing, speeding; this was not worth saving $4. We miss Rodriguez.

After dropping everything off, we went back to downtown, because we're weird like that. We wanted to go to Carlos O'Brien's because it was advertised that they were having a wet t-shirt contest, we wanted to go for the food not for the wet t-shirt contest. When we walked by it was pretty dead so we didn't go in, I mean the food was dead... We went into Senor Frogs again, this time the live band was already kicking it. They were surprisingly really good. They played Franz Ferdinand's Take me out, Beastie Boy's Fight for your right. A bunch of girls got on stage and started to dance with the lead singer, who looked unphased, must happen a lot. Mental note, join a band.

We ran into Devin again who told us where to go again, but we ended up going back to the hotel. We were sick of downtown by now.

Costa passed out right away, running backwards does that to a man, the rest of us finished 24 cans of beer. It only cost us $20, what a steal. We were going to drink enough to make a pyramid. La Pyramide! 24 wasn't enough though, but we were tired, La Pyramide would have to wait for tomorrow.