We woke up in Puerto Vallerta. The ship was stable, there were no rioting mobs, and the warring drug lords were thankfully absent.
Emma started the day by spotting wildlife. She saw some sort of ray in the water outside our stateroom window. Which was gone by the time I got there. It came back after I walked away. Emma called for me to come, I ran over – and it dived out of sight. And again.
I finally saw one of the rays, briefly, before it disappeared. Just enough of a sighting to know Emma wasn’t making the whole thing up.
I concluded there were a pair of squirrel spotters with high-powered binoculars co-ordinating the rays movements.
We took a van into Purto Vallerta with eight other people from the ship. Our feeble bartering skills were exposed before we left the docks when we found out we were paying five dollars each, while the others were only charged $3.50.
It was a pretty place to drive in to. The town is clearly designed to appeal to tourists, with newly cobble-stoned streets in the old town, and plenty of galleries, jewellery stores and tourist shops, but for the most part they’re tastefully done, and still quite Mexican in style and content.
I should qualify that. Usually they're Mexican in style. I freely admit that I have no idea why someone from north of the border would travel all the way to Mexico to eat at a Pizza Hut.
Emma and I hung out with Jim and Ken, who had been to Puerto Vallerta before. The highlight for Emma, Jim and Ken were the shops. The highlight for me was hitting the bar at 10am.
Because of the view, of course.
We walked along the esplanade after this. Or at least Jim and I did, while Emma and Ken walked along the shop-side of the road, looking for opportunities to further max-out our credit cards.
The beach-side walk gave me a chance to have a good look at some of the sand sculptures local artists were building on the beach.
The detail on some of them was amazing. I have neither the skill nor patience to attempt something like this:
Emma indulged her passion for buying tchotchkes (tchotchkes being the Yiddish word for “tourist crap”), particularly with t-shirts. In fairness I have to admit the t-shirts here were rather nice, and I added a few to the pile.
Another feature of Mexican tchotchkes are the skeletons paintings and figurines. This style of artwork has a complex history, drawing on ancient Mexican traditions involved with the Day of the Dead, and various artists that have adapted it for political reasons.
Some of them are quite stunning works of art, some our cheap bits of junk, and the variety of subjects is staggering. Here’s one of the ancient Mexican folk hero Hulk Hogan.
Back on the ship, while waiting for the sail-out party, I put myself hard to work blogging.
The weather for the sail-out was perfect, and the party was a blast. Roger McGuinn joined the Filipino band to perform the Byrd’s hit “Turn, Turn, Turn”, and the dance team led the guests in a performance of the Village People’s “YMCA”.
Best of all were the free Coronas, Margaritas and Tequila Sunrise. They were rather nice, nice enough that Emma broke a 25 year tequila-drinking drought. This is our table at the half-way point:
Which probably explains how Emma saw a whale as we sailed out.
Actually I saw it too, just as it was diving. Pretty cool. And the drinks weren’t that strong.
The only downside of the party was about an hour out of port we had to turn around due to a medical emergency. We heard later that one of the Australians had collapsed, and had to be taken to shore. We later learned that she was still in intensive care, but would be OK.
That night’s performance was from comedian named Jim Travis, who opened his set with 15 minutes on the dramas he had gone through getting to the ship.
He was originally supposed to board at Acapulco, then Hualtulco, and finally made it onboard in Puerto Vallerta. Because the scheduling was being re-written by the hour this entailed him flying from Florida to Charleston, then Atlanta, Fort Worth, Mexico City, Hualtulco, back to Mexico City, then finally to Puerto Vallerta where he spent the night in some spider-ridden dump. Just what you need after 36 hours of air-travel.
As they say, comedy is pain. Preferably somebody else's.
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