It was actually quite eventful and we found ourselves laughing quite often at what we were dealing with. The trip there went smoothly, here we are at the airport, waiting to board the plane.
When we arrived in Puerto Vallarta there was supposed to be someone there waiting for us to take us to the resort. So when we exited baggage there was a lady standing there with a clipboard looking all official and asked us were we were staying, then pointed over to a desk. It seemed pretty plausible, lady directing you to your motel's transportation desk. The guy at the counter, Cesar Romero, was VERY informative, and actually gave some useful information about Vallarta and what we should do on our stay, but it soon became apparent that Cesar was not from our motel, and that the lady with the clipboard had tricked us. After trying to sell us some tours, I asked Cesar "Is this some type of time share thing?" He assured me it wasn't. After trying to leave several times Cesar offered us 2 FREE tours, 2 Mexican blankets (because we didn't want the tequila), 1 sombrero, money for 2 taxi rides, and a ride personally by him if we would attend his "presentation" the next day. We took the deal. I love FREE stuff. And it did turn out to be a "time share thing."
When we finally got to the motel to check in we met Angel. He took our information and went to get our keys. When he came back he said that had us in a regular room, but he was going to try and "hook us up," and that if we wanted to give him something for his efforts we could. Well he returned with a new key, this time to a mini-suite. We, of course, rewarded his generosity and walked away feeling scammed again. We got up to the room and got settled in just in time to get a phone call from Cesar just to make sure we were still planning on attending the presentation in the morning.
We finally made it down to the beach for some relaxing and sunshine.
The next morning bright and early, sure enough, Cesar was waiting in front of our motel to take us to the presentation. Here we met Edwardo Herrera, who treated us to a delightful breakfast and tour of the Flamingo resort. Then sat us down to sell us a time share. Edwardo tried everything to make a sell, using Cesar tactics of sweetening the pot and lowering the price. But to no avail, we kindly declined his offer, collected all our free stuff and went on our way.
Straight back to the beach for more relaxing and sunshine.
When there's only 2 of you on vacation there's going to be a lot of self-taken headshots.
That night as we were getting ready for dinner I had plugged in my flat iron and was blow drying my hair when the power went out. It was raining outside and we thought for a moment that it was just a power outage until Javan walked out on the balcony and saw lights on down in the courtyard. So he began an inspection in our room, located the breaker panel, and found that the breaker had tripped. So he reset it. The power came back on for a few seconds, I resumed blow drying and it went out again. We continued this for a few minutes until Javan noticed that the breaker panel was getting really hot and he could smell something burning. So we called the front desk. When we finally got thru to them that the power wasn't coming on, not because we hadn't flipped the switch, but that the breaker was tripped, they finally sent someone up. He tried flipping the breaker too, just getting the same results and then said "uno momento" and left. So we sat in the dark waiting. He returned with a flashlight and screwdriver and took off the front panel of the breaker box. Well he no habla englais, and we no habla espanol. But we did understand "no bueno" when we looked under the breaker.
After it was determined that the breaker wasn't repairable they moved us to a suite to accommodate for the inconvenience. Holy cow, this place was nice! We didn't mind being inconvenienced at all. It had this huge bedroom with walk in closet, a living room, a giant bathroom with separate rooms for the shower and toilet and bidet, a wrap around balcony overlooking the pool and courtyard.
And a fridge full of soda that Javan could enjoy while watching TV, wearing his new FREE sombrero. We were living the dream.
The next morning we got up to go on our FREE tour. We gave the cabbie the paper with our destination and the money Cesar had given us and off we went. He dropped us off and drove away. We walked into the building and the ladies inside informed us we were at the wrong place, but she was very nice. She called around and found out where we were supposed to be and called us another taxi. By the time we arrived we had missed the boat. We were about to be sad but then remembered it was FREE and we weren't out anything. Then another family pulled up, who had also gotten lost, so the tour company loaded us all in a little dinghy and shuttled us to the big boat.
Javan overlooking Vallarta.
I guess I won't really say who/what we encountered on our tour, so as not to offend anyone. I'll just say it was very interesting, and quite the spectacle. We stopped at this rock to do some snorkeling.
Javan got stung by jellyfish.
Our next adventure was horse back rides up to a waterfall. These poor horses looked like they were about dead, they were so skinny and tiny, Javan looked like a giant atop his horse. But his horse was fast, and wanted to be at the front of the pack, so he left me in the dust.
The waterfall was beautiful. We decided not to swim, because wet horse back riding didn't sound that appealing.
And after reading this sign, we weren't sure it was safe either. lol
So we just explored a little. We found this funny looking lizard.
And massive amounts of tadpoles in small pools of water.
On the way back I got to experience having my knee go up the rear end of another horse while my horse was passing too close. I was wishing there was a waterfall to swim in now. Little hand sanitizer worked good. We got back on the boat and they treated us to a spaghetti and fajita lunch. Strange combination.
Me on the balcony, overlooking the pools and ocean.
Waiting for the evening show to start. The Mexican version of Grease. (We've now seen the Jamaican and the Mexican versions, very interesting.)
We had a great time. It's a trip we'll always remember, and it was nice to have a little break and spend some time with Javan. Thanks for the trip Hun.
Happy Anniversary! I love you!
