Puerto Vallarta, Mexico

 

Thursday 11^th of May 2006

Place: Los Angeles, USA to Puerto Vallarta Mexico
Climate: sunny and warm, 24⁰C
Health: Both Henk and Anit in good condition
Thought of the day: Let’s see what Mexico will bring us (Henk) Mexico has always bee my dream, and it all started with the delicious Mexican food (Anit)

We had looked at different possibilities how to get from LA to Mexico and in the end it seemed that the most convenient way was to fly half way Mexico to Puerto Vallarta. Henk new this place a bit, since his parents had been there 2 times. We flew with Air Alaska, which was fine.
When we arrived in Puerto Vallarta we took a bus to our hotel. Always better than these airport taxis that try to rip you off. For convenience we had booked the Holiday Inn from the points. It’s a safe place to start and it saved us money. Moreover, Holiday Inns wherever they are, they are more or less the same standard.
We received a nice room with view on the Pacific Ocean (in our dreams we could see Fiji from the window).
We had arrived in the afternoon and after check-in we looked a bit around at the hotel, Henk had a swim in the pool and we had dinner. Actually most important question we had to answer was… from here, what next??


Friday 12^th of May 2006

Place: Puerto Vallarta, Mexico
Climate: sunny and warm, 30⁰C
Health: Both Henk and Anit feeling good
Thought of the day: Mexico is tranquil (Henk) First impression, well, I don't know, I'm not so impressed (Anit)

After we had read last night in our Lonely Planet and discussing our options we agreed that we flew to the wrong place. Well, wrong place was maybe not the right word, because the Puerto Vallarta is very nice. The thing was that to get from Puerto Vallarta somewhere else was not so easy. We had no big experience with Latin America and our LP advised us not to take the road down south. Also Mexico is a big country and traveling by bus somewhere will take you more than a day.
Our idea was just to travel through Mexico, taste something of the flavor and move on to Guatemala.
Anit found out that the Yucatan province was nice, but it was on the east side and we were west at that moment. What to do? Well, fly again! We checked the web, found a good deal with Mexico Airlines and tried to book online. No success. Then via our travel agency in the hotel. The lady checked for us and she advised us to go directly to the airline office.
So said, so done.

At the office of Mexico Airlines a very nice gentleman helped us really good. Henk had some problems with his credit card, and also initially the gentlemen wanted to see the passport in order to check it with the card. He didn't have it. He trusted our faces and approved the payment.
Now we had a flight to Merida, via Mexico City tomorrow morning, Good!

Later that day we went down town Puerto Vallarta and had a nice dinner at a little restaurant, actually quite close to the hotel were Henk’s parents used to stay during their holidays.