Mexico - Part One
Pictures from January 2008/Mexico Trip: http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v299/sailormomma/January%202008/
A couple years ago Scott's parents sold everything and moved into a beautiful motorhome with the plans of taking it to Mexico for the winters. Last year didn't work out for them, but this year they got down there around the 1st of November and have been loving it. You can read their adventures here:
Anyway, Scott got a little over a week off, so we decided to go for a visit. We had everything set to go Thursday morning, but Wednesday night we had to say goodbye to our cat, Ashes. We were all very emotional and decided to spend a day in LA to try to get our emotions in check. We thought the kids could play in the pool and we could just relax a bit, but as we stepped off the plane expecting nice, warm weather, we were blasted by a very cold, rainy, wind. So much for spending the day at the pool. Oh well. We didn't have much luck finding a kid-friendly place to eat, but we all turned in pretty early and were excited about seeing Grandma and Grandpa in Mexico the next day. We woke up early and put on our "summer clothes" and headed to the airport.
We got on the flight with no problems and about 2-3 hours later, we touched down in Puerto Vallarta. Going through immigrations and customs wasn't a problem. It's kind of funny how you just push the button to see if customs needs to search your bags. Red light they search, green light you're ok to go. Luckily we had a green light. As we headed out the doors from customs there were people everywhere trying to get us to use their taxi, limo, bus, or whatever to get where we were going. It was kind of nice saying that we had family picking us up and finally saw George (Scott's Dad) through the crowd. Retirement is definitely suiting him and his tan is great! After a round of hugs, we loaded into the car and headed out.
The place they are staying is called La Penita and is about 1 1/2 hours north of Puerto Vallarta. It was so nice getting out of the big city and seeing a different side of Mexico. As we were driving George pointed out various towns and landmarks that we ended up seeing later in the week. Turning onto the main street in La Penita, we could definitely tell we were in a different world. Little shops and restaurants lined the street and there was quite a bit of activity, but you could tell that they all seemed laid back. Kathleen was meeting us at small restuarant at the end of the street before our hotel. She looks fabulous:
We checked into our hotel, the Don Jose, and met Hector, who led us up to our room on the third floor. The room had a kitchenette, a separate bedroom, and bathroom. It didn't have a phone, clock, or much of anything else. It was PERFECT! We unpacked and then headed to George & Kathleens coach at the RV park to check things out there. The kids had some Christmas presents from Grandma & Grandpa:
And then they headed to the pool to test everything out.
That night we took a walk down to the beach that is located just down from the RV Park. It was a nice sunset and a great start to the week:
Day Two
We woke up pretty early the next day and figured we would check out the town before George & Kathleen came to pick us up. Here's some pictures from La Penita:
When George & Kathleen came to pick us up they had something to do in the town of Lo de Marcos, so we rode along and had breakfast in town. We decided to go to the beach while we were waiting and the kids had so much fun playing in the water.
We headed back to George & Kathleens RV Park and headed to the beach there. Zak was itching to go "surfing" on his boogie board, so we took those down with us. Zak did great! He caught on so quickly and had so much fun:
Ellie took a little more time getting used to it, but she had some good rides:
It was a great day at the beach. We ended up having pizza for dinner. The guy at the pool makes a fabulous pizza and delivers it right to the RV. It was a great day and we headed back to our hotel pretty early. The kids were in bed by 8pm and Scott and I stayed up and read. The noises drifting in from outside were wonderful. We heard Mariochi bands, dance music, kids screaming, birds, and many other sounds. It's hard to explain, but it was great!
Our first full day of this trip was more than we expected.
