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Published: September 17th 2008
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I've just gotten back from a week wandering down the Pacific coastline of Mexico and it was amazing! No, I didn't blow off uni to travel, I'm not that kind of girl. September 16th is Independence Day for mexico and as such we got Monday and Tuesday off uni so all in all Katherine and I were looking at six days of no uni and that is an opportunity too good to pass up. So Wednesday afternoon after our last class we packed ourselves up into one backpack and toddled off to the bus station to visit the wonderful worlds of San Blas, Puerto Vallarta and Barra de Navidad, three destinations that we've heard good things about from locals and travelers alike.
First stop on our whirlwind tour was San Blas, a little town about 5 hours north-west of Guadalajara. We arrived at about 9pm at night and it was absolutely POURING down. San Blas essentially is built on a swamp so stepping out of the bus station we found the streets flooded and no taxis in sight to take us to our hotel. The good news was by the time we started walking to our hostel it had stopped
raining. The bad news was the streets were still flooded so we were essentially wading through the streets with our Lonely Planet map and a torch hoping we were headed in the right direction. We were, we found the place eventually! Right by the ocean, we stayed in the gorgeous (but really small) cabana (cabin on stilts thing), which although it was blessed with electricity, there was little protection against the mozzies.
Our only full day in San Blas we hired some bikes and wandered around the town, explored the ruins on the top of the hill (look at the photos from the top of the hill and you can see how swamp-like the town is), and walked along the beach directly outside our cabana. The water is I grant you a little dirtier but apparently San Blas has the best surfing waves in Mexico and the owner of our hostel was the national champion. It was a pity the weather wasn't right to have lessons otherwise I think I would've been out there! That night our roommate Carlos and his dutch friend tycho (pronounced Di-ho) joined us for the trip.
The next morning we hired a boat
and headed up through the mangroves to check out the local wildlife (crocodiles included!!) and had a swim in this beautiful little lagoon-type thing. Then we packed up and headed by bus 5 or so hours south to a big touristy city called Puerto Vallarta.
Puerto Vallarta is just like surfers Paradise with a not so nice beach fronted my thousands of hotels and the whole place geared towards (in this case American) tourists. It was intense to notice that EVERY mexican we talked to could speak fluent english. On our only full day here Katherine and I went horse riding up to a waterfall. We both got a bit upset at one of the horses (the poor thing looked half dead) but due to circumstances beyond our control all the other horses were on trails so we had to take this poor thing. The waterfall wasn't much to look at, mostly being man made for the Arnold movie "the Predator" which neither of us have seen so a lot of the local sites were lost on us. I decided on the way down to ride the sad, half dead horse and the poor thing tripped halfway down, sending
me flying over its head onto the road which wasn't so nice. The guide rushed over to me with this look of horror like I was going straight to the local lawyer and suing him he didn't even look at the horse, whereas I only wanted to know the horse wasn't dead. I was annoyed enough about the whole thing that we didn't leave a tip or anything and legged it out of there pretty quickly once the tour was over.
The next day we caught the bus down to Barra de Navidad, this tiny little town on one end of this gorgeous bay and a popular holiday destination for Mexicans from Guadalajara. I liked this town the best, it was laid-back without be completely over-the-top touristy, the beach was the best we saw (although Katherine and I are spoilt in our idea of a beach). And typically the weather wasn't all that crash hot for our one full day there, overcast and spitting through the afternoon but we managed a bit of swimming and lazing about on the sand. Unfortunately everywhere we went the cleanliness of the water and the beach wasn't to the same standards as back
in Aus, but Barra de Navidad was the one place that got the closest to home.
This morning (again typically a gorgeous day) we packed up our stuff and left around midday to head back to the real world but I had a great time, which I hope the pictures prove!!
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