Location: Nuevo
Vallarta, Mexico (Paradise Village Marina)
We moved into our home for the summer, Paradise Village
Marina, on Monday, May 26. Paradise
Village is a luxury hotel/resort with lots of amenities including four swimming
pools, a spa with massages, hot tubs, saunas and work-out facilities, tennis
courts, a golf course and a nice beach.
Check out their web site at www.paradisevillage.com. This place is definitely at the other end of
the spectrum from where we spent last summer in Panama. We have been taking advantage of the
facilities and have enjoyed a massage and we go to the beach or the pool every
other day.
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| Man cutting down coconuts. At some of the resorts, they cut down the coconuts so that they don't fall on people's heads. |
They also have a local yacht
club, which we got free access to for two weeks, so we took advantage and had a
few drinks and meals up there and used their free internet. Most of the people that come here for
vacation only come for a week, so they have a welcome ceremony every Sunday
night, with native dancers, games, prizes and they offer discounts for spa treatments,
golf and some of the adventure trips. There
are so many things to do that I can’t imagine only staying here for one
week. The only downside is that it is
like living in the suburbs. We are
isolated from the Mexican culture and don’t have easy access to local
restaurants or watering holes. The good
news is there are plenty of buses and taxis available if we want to do any
exploring.
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| Pelicans following a local fisherman in the estuary near our slip. Guess it's easier to get a fish from him instead of diving for their own. |
Speaking of exploring, the local buses are very easy to use
and don’t cost much ($0.50 to $1.50) so we have been learning the system and
riding the buses to Puerto Vallarta and to the major nearby shopping
centers. You can decipher the bus routes
and stops by reading the writing on the front windshield of each bus and by
checking with the driver when you first get on.
The first time we went into town, we asked the bus driver to let us off
at the Marina Vallarta near the hotel district.
Apparently he forgot, so we rode the bus all the way to the bus station
and then had to walk about two blocks away to get a bus going back in the other
direction. Another time, we were waiting
at the bus stop to come back to our marina, but none of the buses for Nuevo
Vallarta were stopping at our bus stop.
We hopped on another bus with “Wal-mart” on the windshield thinking that
we could catch a transfer once we got to Wal-mart. We ended up riding the bus through the
streets of Ixtapa, a small town just north of here and then got off,
transferred to another bus, went back the way we came and got off at the
airport, where we knew we could cross the road and catch a bus home. Turns out the original bus we were on does go
to Wal-mart, it just happens to be the one about two stops before we got on the
bus and not the one near our marina. We
learned later that the buses to our location “Nuevo Vallarta” only stop at the
airport, at the other Wal-mart and then at the bus station at the other end of
the line. So now we use the airport as
our transfer station to get to other places we want to go. Needless to say, we have been able to “tour”
some of the countryside and the local villages.
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| Tree blooming near the golf course. This is Dave's favorite tropical tree. We tried to grow some in Alabama but the winters are too cold. |
We’ve been walking for an hour every morning, which is
nice. It is cool and there is usually a light breeze and there are
always lots of birds and iguanas to enjoy along the way.
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| Iguana sunning himself in a tree. |
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| Iguana sunning on a rock |
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| Woodpecker atop a light pole. He was sitting up there tapping away. |
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| Looking north up the estuary |
And of course, there are always boat chores
to keep us busy. Dave has been up north
in the land of free air-conditioning, so I have been doing inventory of all the
spare parts we have on the boat.
Now
that we have the new shelves in the lazarette and the shelves in the steering
flat it is much easier to store and organize our stuff. Except for a few odds and ends, everything is
counted and cataloged. We have also
completed computerizing our maintenance tasks. The next step is to tie the two together so that when it comes time to
do maintenance we will have the parts available and will know where to find
them; and, when we need to replenish our inventory, we will have a system that
tells us what parts and how many we need to order.
We are preparing to haul the boat to have the bottom painted next week and we have been meeting with several contractors to discuss other projects including installing sunshades over monkey island and the poop deck and installing solar panels. Since we are here for the summer and they have good facilities and resources, we are planning to check a few projects off of our list.
Happy Summer
Solstice! Can you believe the year is
almost half over?
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| Sunrise |
